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Click here to read about the introduction of the T shirt to the world of fashion.


Dalton Trumbo Brings on the Storm
(Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1946)

Blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905 – 1976) did not do himself any favors when he wrote the attached essay outlining his sympathies for Stalin's Soviet Union at the expense of the United States. A year later he would find himself in the hot-seat in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938 - 1975) where his non-cooperation landed him eleven months in the hoosegow on contempt of Congress charges.

In 1887 the NEW YORK TIMES reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it...

The Era of Bartering (Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)

"Scrip (sometimes called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit" - so reads the Wikipedia definition for those items that served as currency in those portions of the U.S. where the bucks were scarce.

The attached news column tells a scrip story from the early Thirties - the sort of story that was probably most common on the old frontier.


Why Is God So Silent? (Jesus People, 1973)

Frederic W. Farrar (1831 - 1903), Dean of Canterbury Cathedral during the last eight years of the Victorian era saw fit to examine God's silence and seeming indifference while humanity struggles:

"God makes no ado. He does not defend Himself. He suffers men to blaspheme. His enemies make a murmuring but he refrains. And much of what is said is awfully true - for those who utter it. To men, to nations, God is silent; there is no God. Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. They who love the darkness have it. To those who will not listen, God does not speak."


The Alphabet Bureaucrats (New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

"It would be difficult to select the typical New Deal bureau. In not a few there is considerable friction between different degrees and elements of thought as to how far the New Deal should really go... The program is so vast, the limits of its intent so completely shrouded in the vague phraseology of the new idealism, that there appears to be plenty of work for all. [For example] unwanted surplusses were found in the electrical power and appliance field. It was perceived that here was a case of 'under-consumption' on the part of American homeowners. How to solve the problem? With another bureau, of course. And so we have the EHFA - the Electric Home and Farm Authority."

In order to fund all these agencies plenty wampum would be needed - for that reason the New Dealers saw to it that taxes were cruelly high, which only stymied the economic recovery all the more; click here to read about that.

The New Deal Was Not Fascist (The Atlantic Monthly, 1933)

"In certain quarters it is asserted that Mr. Roosevelt's 'New Deal' is nothing other than the first stage of an American movement toward Fascism. It is said that, although the United States has not yet adopted the political structure of Italy and Germany, the economic structure of the country is rapidly being molded upon the Fascist pattern."


''A Flapper's Appeal to Parents'' (The Outlook, 1922)

"If one judges by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am within the age limit, I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright colored sweaters, and scarves and waists with Peter Pan collars and low-heeled 'finale hopper' shoes. I adore to dance... But then there are many degrees of a flapper. There is the semi-flapper, the flapper, the super-flapper. Each of these three main general divisions has its degrees of variation. I might possibly be placed somewhere in the middle of the first class".

The Pershing M26 Tank (Yank Magazine, 1945)

"Although the the Pershing M26 didn't get into the fighting in Europe until very late in the game (March, 1945), it was long enough to prove itself. This new 43-toner is the Ordnance Department's answer to the heavier German Tiger. It mounts a 90-mm high-velocity gun, equipped with a muzzle-brake, as opposed to the 88-mm on a Tiger."

The M26 Pershing tank was the one featured in the movie, Fury (2014).


The Deep German Dugouts (L'Illustration, 1915)

A French photograph showing the entry to one of the many subterranean shelters that dotted the Western front during the First World War - also included is a diagram of what one of the smaller German dugouts with a similar entry-way.

This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L'Illustration.
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.