Category: Uncategorized
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The Great Radio Handicap
1923 was the first year that 1% of American households had a radio. That same year, New York Times Magazine reported that “radio parties” were taking off, and it was becoming harder to sell homes in areas with poor radio signals. The radio party is becoming quite the thing, particularly among commuters. When the owner of…
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Charge of the Little Embassies at Washington
While Prohibition applied almost everywhere in the U.S. in the 1930s, foreign embassies were exempt. As a 1923 New York Times Magazine article described, this made embassies some of the hottest tickets in D.C. The embassies and legations were to discover that they had the monopoly on a fast-disappearing social talent of serving unlimited sparkling…
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Washington’s Prohibition Farce
In 1923, bootleggers and speakeasies bypassed the ostensible ban on alcohol. As a New York Times Magazine article documented, that even occurred in the nation’s capital, where the Prohibition constitutional amendment originated. Certain minor employees about the House and Senate supplement their meagre [sic] salaries, it is said, by doing a little bootlegging on the…
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Glimpses of the Great
When the writer Agnes M. Miall penned a 1923 New York Times Magazine piece about interviewing, she claimed to have invented a new word in that very piece: “interviewee.” Today, the word is used in everyday conversation. While Merriam-Webster dictionary says the word’s first known use was in 1884, clearly it was essentially unknown by…
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Women Alone in New York
Amid a rise in unmarried women, and two years after women were granted the constitutional right to vote, a 1922 New York Times Magazine article profiled “Women Alone in New York.” The byline was “By one of them.” The article described both the positives of this lifestyle… But the thing which appeals most is the…
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The Importance of Being Thrilled
During the Roaring Twenties, a 1922 New York Times Magazine article discussed how many more people were using variations of the word “thrill” in conversation. The stats say people wouldn’t do so at that level again until the mid-2010s. Per the 1922 article: Thrills are in vogue in the younger set. It is quite the…
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The Feminist Magna Carta
In 1920, a constitutional amendment gave women the right to vote. In 1921, Wisconsin became the first state to enact an equal rights law for women in all respects, not just voting. In 1922, advocates wanted that nationally. As a 1922 New York Times Magazine article described: They find they can’t have absolute equality with…
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The Shortage of Supermen
A 1922 New York Times Magazine article posited that, compared to prior eras, there was now an “unquestionable sterility of the twentieth century in the production of very great men.” The anonymous author cites multiple examples from previous centuries of those who exhibited “dazzling and outstanding genius,” including (among others) William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton,…
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Hitler’s first NYT mention was 100 years ago this week
On Tuesday, November 21, 1922, the New York Times printed its first profile article of Adolf Hitler. It would not be the last. Under the headline “New Popular Idol Rises In Bavaria,” journalist Cyril Brown reported: The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are popularly nicknamed “the Hakenkreuzler.” So…
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Ford, Democracy, and the Motor Car
A 1922 New York Times Magazine article argued that Henry Ford proved the promise of America’s free market system, during the exact same period as Vladimir Lenin proved the inexorably grim fate of the opposite economic system: The twentieth century opened with a struggle between Capital and the Commune, which the war brought sharply to an…
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