Month: May 2017
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American Song Makers Seek War Tune of the ‘Tipperary’ Kind
No particularly notable or well-recognized patriotic songs had been composed in the months America’s involvement in World War I, lamented this June 1917 article. That problem was clearly rectified by 1918, when Irving Berlin composed God Bless America, even if the song did not truly take off until World War II a few decade later. Today, it […]
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Three Film Stars Get $1,000,000 a Year Each
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks were earning a then- staggering $1 million per year in 1917. $1 million in May 1917 would be worth $17.5 million today. How does that compare to the highest-grossing movie stars now? That would only make Chaplin the 24th-highest paid movie star in the world last year. Forbes ranked […]
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Man’s Labor the Best, British Committee Decides; Woman Handicapped
As men entered World War I, women were called upon to perform traditionally male roles involving more physical labor and brawn. The British Health of Munition Workers Committee found: “that, compared with man, woman has less strength, less endurance; that she can undergo neither such long hours nor such long periods of labor; that she […]
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Making Vice Unattractive in Soldiers’ Camps
A new Federal Commission on Training Camp Activities was created shortly after the outset of American involvement in World War I, in hopes of preventing sin and vice among soldiers such as excessive drinking and prostitution. Among the attempted solutions: all soldiers were required to participate in sports and physical exercises, and soldiers were paired […]
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Captain Rupert Hughes Calls Authors to War
A then-popular novelist and National Guard member advised all writers and authors who were eligible to serve in World War I to do so. Indeed, some of what are considered the greatest novels ever written came out of experience in World War I: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, A Farewell to Arms by […]
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Conscript Inheritances, Suggests Bishop Brent
The first federal estate tax was created in 1916, with a top rate of 10 percent levied on transfers of assets to beneficiaries after one’s death. A year later in 1917, at the outset of American involvement in World War I, this essay proposed that the rate be essentially raised to 100 percent, thus ending […]
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Russia and democracy – nervous bridegroom
This cartoon from NYT Sunday Magazine 100 years ago this week holds up eerily well. From Sunday, May 13, 1917
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Wealthy Men Willing to Pay Higher Taxes
The top income bracket always tries to fight increased taxes, but historically just about the only time they willingly acquiesce is during wartime, when abrupt increased governmental expenditures are required. What made 2001-02 so unprecedented was that President George W. Bush simultaneously lowered tax on the top income bracket while launching war and requiring increased […]
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Doctors Ready to Go, at Tremendous Sacrifice
Physicians called up for wartime medical service during World War I took tremendous pay cuts in the name of patriotism. The highest professional income in the corps is said to be $140,000 earned annually heretofore by a New York surgeon. In the seven hospital units of this city it is estimated that there are more […]
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Real Democracy’s Need Is Discipline of Youth
Why was everything going to hell in 1917? Ralph Philip Boas, Associate Professor of English at Whitman College, suggested a large measure of blame should be placed on young people: The danger of democracy is never that it will be too stern, too rigid, too intellectual, too conservative. No, the danger of democracy is that […]
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