Recently Added Articles

"is not the ordinary story of women's victimization, her subjection in a man-made world. She, after all, accepts of herself this silent "decree of fashion" and rushes to it. It is woman-made, this particular enslavement


The House of Lucile (Hearst's Sunday American, 1917)

Fashion and Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer wrote of Lady Duff Gordon (born Lucy Sutherland, 1863 - 1935):

"...she was the first to introduce the French word chic into the English language, particularly in relation to fashion. She was the first dressmaker to employ mannequin parades (ie. models) in the showing of clothes...She was responsible for many fads and her clothes made many people famous. She was the most expensive dressmaker of her time, and the most aloof."

Lucile was one of the few souls to survive the TITANIC sinking; click here to read her account of that sad night.

•Read about the 1943 crochet revival•


Women Behind the Guns (Assorted Magazines, 1942)

When it became clear to the employers on the American home front that there was going to be a shortage of men, their attention turned to a portion of the labor pool who had seldom been allowed to prove their mettle: they were called women. This article recalls those heady days at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground when local women were trained to fire enormous artillery pieces in order that the Army weapons specialists understand the gun's capabilities. This column primarily concerns the delight on all the men's faces when it was discovered that women were able to perform their tasks just as well as the men.

The Pandemic of 1918 (Scribner's Magazine, 1938)

"The Spanish Influenza (February 1918 - April 1920) struck hard in the U.S. Army camps. Every fourth man came down with the flu, every twenty-fourth man caught pneumonia, every sixth man died." By the time the virus ran its course in the United States 675,000 Americans would succumb (although this article estimated the loss at 500,000).


Witness on Azusa Street (LA Times, 1906)

Between 1906 and 1909, the Holy Spirit had come to dwell among the people in Los Angeles. One April day, in a run-down livery stable that was converted to a church, Pastor William Seymore (1870 – 1922) broke out into tongues and so did everyone within earshot. In fact, people blocks away began to speak in tongues and witnessing to all passersby. Within no time, the walls of that "tumble-down shack on Azusa Street" were decorated with the crutches, canes and hearing horns of the recently healed. The attached article was written by one of the few attendees to remain totally unaltered by the righteous energy that permeated the neighborhood.


Pain and Hope (Coronet Magazine, 1942)

Attached herein are a few pages from 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright (1908 – 1960). The book, published in 1942, is a poetic account of the challenging lives lead by African Americans both before the great migration and after their arrival in the North. The editors of Coronet showed their sympathies for this minority by publishing these pages, but they also showed their total racial insensitivities by running crude pigeon English captions beneath each of the accompanying photographs.


Wanderers No More (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Here is a pretty middle-of-the-road type of article that explains the creation of British Palestine, the Jewish migration and the Arab unrest:

"Writing in his History of Zionism, Nahum Sokalow looked in to the future: 'The Jews have grown tired of their roll as the homeless Chosen People and would prefer to be a self-supporting small nation with a quiet spot of earth for themselves...'. The spot for which the Jews had yearned proved to be about as quiet as a live volcano."


The Capture of General Hideko Tojo (Yank Magazine, 1945)

War correspondent George Burns reported on the momentous day when the American Army came to arrest the former Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, General Hideko Tojo (1884 - 1948). Tojo served as Japan's Prime Minister between 1941 and 1944 and is remembered for having ordered the attack on the American naval installation at Pearl Harbor, as well as the invasions of many other Western outposts in the Pacific. Judged as incompetent by the Emperor, he was removed from office in the summer of 1944.


The Blowtorch Blonde (Coronet Magazine, 1952)

Here is an article about the legendary Marilyn Monroe (né Norma Jeane Mortenson: 1926 – 1962), her painful beginnings, the cheesecake pictures, the bit-parts and her enormous popularity as a star are all woven into a narrative that never lets the reader forget that her unique type of appeal was something entirely new.


Japanese Feudalism Overturned (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

The reforms that were imposed upon Occupied Japan in the Forties and Fifties did not simply come in the form of death sentences for war criminals - but additionally the Japanese came to know the rights and protections that are guaranteed to All Americans under the United States Constitution. For the first time ever Japanese women were permitted to vote, unions were legalized and equality under the law was mandated. This small notice concerned the overthrow of the feudal laws that governed the Japanese tenant farmers.