Category: Debate
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An American Viceroy For Europe?
In 1922, four years after World War I ended, P.W. Wilson wrote a New York Times Magazine column advocating for American occupation of Europe — like how the Allies would later occupy Japan and Germany for several years after World War II. Mere military, money, and moralities will never save Europe. Like the Phillippines, she…
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Who’ll Be Head of the Family?
In February 1923, New York Times Magazine asked: who should be considered the preeminent moral leader of the western world? For various reasons, writer Anne O’Hare McCormick cast doubt on then-leaders in the U.S., U.K., France, and even the pope. Where is the spokeman strong enough to speak for us — the more flexible Wilson,…
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The Child, the Book and the Movie
In 1921, as the nascent medium of film had recently soared in popularity, New York Times Magazine commissioned a debate: would movies decrease or increase children’s love of reading books? Alexander Black predicted it would increase, though his argument was in no small based on how movies of the time required considerable reading with title cards…
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Is the New Woman a Traitor to the Race?
In 1921, women were becoming more educated, getting married at later ages (or not at all), and having fewer children. Some considered this a crisis, though all three of those trends would become far more pronounced by 2021. Getting together a variety of statistics which deal with the biological results of the higher education of…
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Book Reviews — Signed or Unsigned?
A relatively recent trend was emerging around 1921: reviewers appending their names to their reviews. It is only in this twentieth century that the newspapers of New York have chosen to declare the authorship of their reviews of books, of plays, of pictures and of music…. [But] even now, a certain proportion of the book…
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Doctor by Any Other Name
Last December, controversy swirled when a Wall Street Journal op-ed argued Jill Biden shouldn’t go by “Dr. Jill.” The same debate occurred a century prior, when in 1921 a group at UVA formed the Society for the Rationalization of the Title of Doctor. The New York Times Sunday Magazine covered the story: “It may be that the hovering spirit…
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Should Women Choose Their Mates?
As women gained voting rights and more independence in 1921, a debate raged: should women choose their mates? Maude Radford Warren gathered several young men and women together to discuss the question for the New York Times Magazine. This concept was so novel that first it had to be defined. “Choosing,” said one of the men,…
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Our Japanese Question
In 1921, a Harvard government professor warned that “There has never been a time of such uneasy and hostile feeling between the two nations” of the U.S. and Japan. 20 years later came Pearl Harbor. Albert Bushnell Hart noted that the animosity was a relatively recent development: Can two countries be found with a longer…
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Cox or Harding?: Each Answers the Question for the New York Times
The Sunday before Election Day 1920, the New York Times asked both presidential candidates for a short essay explaining why they deserved the White House. Here’s what they each wrote, and how their promises stack up in 2020. Democratic candidate and Ohio Gov. James M. Cox: There has been no time in the history of the…
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Chauncey M. Depew on the Middle Class Union
Advocacy organizations exist for various interests: AARP for the elderly, NRA for gun rights supporters, unions for teachers and transportation workers. In 1920, many proposed a “middle class union” to advocate for the middle class on all issues. The transportation strike hit the doctor of philosophy who commuted to his classes at Columbia just as it…
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