The Devil's Own Method of Advertising

Beauty Contests are "the devils own method of advertising," declared directors of the Trenton Y.W.C.A., they are "harmful in everyway."

How moral are the "beauty queens" recently crowned in Atlantic City?

The Literary Digest reprinted excerpts from the press debate about the beauty contests drawing huge crowds to the beach resort:

The General Secretary of the Trenton Y.W.C.A.,Pauline B. Smith described the effects of a beauty contest on the innocent for a World reporter:

"Before the competition they were splendid examples of innocent and pure womanhood. Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas."

"We are not prompted by mawkish sentiments. The Board believes these contests are a destroying factor. It is believes, further, that not only these particularly objectionable bathing-beauty parades should be stopped at once, but that all beauty contests should cease. The worst of these latter is that they provoke envy, malice and vanity, and often lead a girl to a career that ends in her moral and mental destruction."

From the Newark News:

"they did not arrive at any degree of success until the advent of the one-piece bathing-suit."

[No good comes to participants] "aside from a movie contract or a few years of posing for advertising"

From The New York Times:

"no girl of sense and delicacy of mind combined would think of entering one of these competitions, in any dress whatever, but sense is not a notable characteristic of youth, masculine or feminine, and the modern parent, in this as in several other matters, is strangely negligent and lets daughters do strange things."

The "Trenton wise women" of the Y.W.C.A.: "They may be good girls when they enter; but whether they win or lose the coveted prizes, they have deteriorated after judgement has been passed. They have learned to mistake notoriety for fame, their estimate of relative values has been utterly distorted, and of true modesty they can have but traces left."

According to the Times, Miss Helen Gwynne, retired president of the National Industrial Assembly of the YWCA, took "issue with the college girls of the National Student Assembly" who "hold that the model girl should be gentle of mien and inconspicuous of dress."

Miss Helen Gwynne begged to differ:

"if girls expect to get anywhere they had better wear flashy clothes and make a striking a showing as possible."

According to the Litery Digest Helen Gwynne suggested that the

"demure, submissive working-girl . . . doesn't get far in factories or matrimonially. NO matter if they want to get married or seek promotion where they are employed, working girls must fight to protect their rights."

"Miss Gwynne, herself a factory worker, points out that college girls can well heed their advice because of the effect of contrasts. A girl of wealthy family, she says, would be set off to better advantage by her surroundings by dressing simply. A working-girl, however, she added, would appear too coarse and plain in simple dress in poor surroundings, whereas the contrast she would make in her environment would bring her attention. After a tour of New York factories, Miss Gwynne found no restrictions upon pretty clothes or bobbed hair, and said: "The old prejudice against bobbed hair has been completely overcome. There is now no feeling that the girl with shorn locks or who is dressed prettily is less efficient or less reliable."

The Brooklyn Eagle commented:

"But the mere yearning to look pretty is wholesome and stimulating to care of skin, of hair, of teeth, to cleanliness and sensible living. It does not deserve discouragement. As for "demureness" and "submissiveness," factory girls who are labor unionists have as many doubts as employers have as to the prevalence of such a tendency in feminine industry."

["Beauty and the Devil," Literary Digest, May 31, 1924, p.35.]

"No Room at the Movies"

National board of the Y.W.C.A. has established a program in Hollywood to “return film-smitten girls to their homes.” Will Hays and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America will donate $120,000 to the project:

“girls without professional experience have almost no chance of getting into a studio to-day, tho hundreds are reported to be so obsessed with their own possibilities as to be quitting work and school and starting for Hollywood, seeking fame and a million a year.” [ . . . ]

The Presbyterian commented that instead of helping those already in Hollywood others across the nation should be warned.

“Let every girl be sent home as soon as possible, and warning be sent out that no more are wanted. When a life of useful industry is this supplanted by a life of artificiality, imitation and indulgence, we can hope for nothing but breakdown and disaster for the rising generation. These well-meaning agencies must beware lest they sow the seeds of a nation-wide and generation-long misery and shame.”

[“No Room in the Movies,” Literary Digest, August 25, 1923, p.32]

"Strike a Match to the Moral Code and Dance around the Bonfire"

After the end of World War I, perplexing problems arose:

"Tearooms lighted only by candles--which were a blessing in that they saved patrons from having to look at the bad art on the walls--opened up in basements all over Greenwich Village, Chemistry students worked out formulas for homemade gin; Dr. Freud became, temporarily a patron saint; and youth prepared to strike a match to the moral code and dance around the bonfire." [. . . ]

"The revolt of youth was something I refused to take very seriously. There have always been delinquent girls in New York . . . the jazz age did not add appreciably to their numbers."

"When people talked about the wildness of current youth, I thought of those prewar debutantes who used to go to black-and-tan dives in Harlem and dance with men across the color-line. The daring young women of the twenties were less original then they thought."

"I also refused to be appalled by the bohemian tearooms that had invaded conservative Greenwich Village. A few tearooms run by women with a fondness for college girl patronage really were a menace, but most of these arty, batik-hung dives did little harm except to their patrons digestions. That people did a good deal of unnecessary worrying is shown by the fact that the jazz age girls have grown up into mothers, clubwomen and serious careerists who can hardly be distinguished from the products of an earlier date."

[Mary Sullivan, My Double Life; The Story of a New York City Policewoman, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938. pp.138-130.]

“Civilization in Danger, Odd Fellows Are Told”

Representative George Huddlston of Alabama speaking before Odd Fellows at the City Club in Washington D.C.:

“Present age is in danger of destruction by its opulence and devotion to worldly things.” Last year’s increase in the prison population was due to the declining amount of “old fashioned virtue in men and less of the old-fashioned modesty in women than ever before." It was not a result of the war he said, characterizing the world conflict as only "a rash that broke out on civilization showing the inner fever.”

“Something is the matter with our ideals, the representative declared. “The World reeks with an atmosphere charged with selfishness and greed. Never before has the world needed the principles of Odd Fellowship so badly. People should realize that the spiritual life is the only permanent thing and that the doctrine of love and fellowship is the great need today.”

[Washington Post, March 25,1924, p.11.]

Americana: "a money-mad, pleasure-crazed race"

NEW YORK
Lububrious conclusions of the Rev. John Roach Straton, D.D. the Baptist Pope of New York, as reported by the world famous Times:

"Vice and crime are increasing day by day. Sensualism rules supreme on stage and screen. Many magazines and best sellers are putrid with moral inequity. The popular dance has descended to the lowest depths of degradation. Churches on every side are lukewarm and spiritually paralyzed, and blatant infidelity is proclaiiming its untruths in college halls and even from many pulpits of the land. The marriage vow is becoming a scrap of paper. The foundations of the home have all been destroyed by commercialized amusements and a money-mad, pleasure-crazed race is rushing on toward the precipice."

[“Americana,” American Mercury, March, 1925, p.302.]

Democracy Defined . . .

“Democracy: Government of the people, by the people, for the oil speculators.”

[“Life Lines.” Life April 24, 1924, p.3.]

“The present day criminal is a ‘sheik’"

[George S. Daugherty, head of one of the largest private detective agencies, speaking before a convention of Chiefs of Police in Montreal.]

On the "pistol menace":

"It is all wrong to blame the crime wave on the returned soldier. My study shows that the modern criminal is usually a youth between 17 and 24, who was in short trousers when the boys were fighting in France."

"The present day criminal is a 'sheik,' with his hair plastered down with glue. He is a dancing bug with a flask on his hip, and he begins his criminal career by stealing autos to take his girl riding."

"Eighty-five percent of murders are committed with pistols. Why? It is the desire for a thrill--just criminal vanity."

["Chiefs Denounce Deadly Pistol," Police Magazine, August 1924 p.20.]

Voice of the People: "Male Modernism"

HE’S NO SPENDTHRIFT

New York City: Here’s the difference between the modern girl and the modern man. I kept company with a modern man. He owned his own business, his own car and had no dependents. He took me to one show, an occasional movie, on a few auto rides, lots of walks and to dinner a few times. He gave me three boxes of candy and lots of Life Savers; a remembrance at Christmas. I never had any birthdays. But the money he spent on poker and bottles of happiness would buy Christmas dinners for all the poor families in New York. That’s male modernism.

ELLA F.

[“Voice of the People,” New York Daily News, December 14,1923, p.13]

"Merciless Modern Criticism of Idols"

“Present Age Like Children Who Dissect Dolls That Make Them Happy.”

[Former Senator Chauncey Depew speaking at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn on his 90th birthday. Born in 1834, Depew was unhappy with the critical spirit of 1924]

“Steam is followed by electricity, by radio and radium, and discovery reveals the secrets of nature and overcomes the handicaps on health and longevity until the brain becomes fatigued to understand it all, but the soul starves. The foundations of faith are shaken, and readers of the creed who deny its teachings, and preachers who want their independence and weaken reverence by denying the divinity of Christ, fill the newspapers and empty the churches. The numbness caused by the appalling tragedies of the great war and of political revolutions among historic peoples do not require assaults on faith to wake up and interest people, but a revival of the simpler life and comforting belief of normal times.

Criticism Goes Too Far.

We carry criticism too far, and the analytic spirit is rampant. We are like children who dissect that with which they are happy until the sawdust pours out of the doll, or it fails to work when the machinery is wrecked. The age is merciless with its idols and with the revered notables of the past. I was far happier with the authors of the eighteenth century biographies who idealized their heroes. We were very well satisfied and felt an elevation, unusual now, in the lives and achievements of the great characters of our revolution and the framers of our Constitution. Our blood circulated with delightful rapidity as we read of Washington at the battle of Monmouth, raging at Lee for his treason and cowardice, or at Valley Forge, keeping alive the spirit of his suffering army.”

[“Merciless Modern Criticism of Idols Depresses Depew,” Washington Post, March 27, 1924, p.10.]

“Is Our Life Artificial?"

“The picture on this page of the singing bird and the jazz-playing radio is intended to remind us that we should have everything new, up-to-date, interesting and instructive WITHOUT becoming too artificial.

Many of us in big cities keep as far away from nature as the prisoner in his Sing Sing cell.

The sun rises and sets and we don’t SEE it.

If we happen to look up through the tall buildings and see something bright in the sky, we take it for granted that it is an electric light, although it may be the moon.

We know birds only after they have been picked and with their heads cut off are put on the table to be eaten. Many of us know no bird at all except a roasted, broiled or fried chicken.

Have your radio. Encourage the children to understand and delight in it. Tune in on whatever interests you. but always remember that the really big thing is the gigantic earth under our feet with its clouds, mountains, lakes, oceans, rivers, birds, trees, flowers and sunshine.

Get out of the city and into the country whenever you can. Get as far into the country as you can.

Get your mind thinking in new directions by change of scene and change of interest.

KEEP OUT OF MENTAL RUTS. Even with radio, talking machine, telephone, running water, porcelain baths, swift elevators and all the rest, one MAY be in a rut absolutely.

One small bird singing, to tell the world that it is happy, may do more to stir up useful thought than a crowd of 10,000 roaring in honor of a home run."

[Daily Mirror, July 25, 1924, editorial. “Motto: Short, Accurate, Amusing.”]

“Why Should We Slam the Flapper?”

What is the opposite of “Flapper”?

What is just the right word to describe the “serious-minded girl”?

Etta Spivak of South Second Street in Brooklyn wanted to know.

So she offered the girls of a Maine summer camp a prize of $50 for the camper who could come up with the right word to describe a proper young lady.

The New York American found this contest quite amusing “The paper for people who think” weighed in on this matter by gallantly riding to the defense of the maligned flapper:

"Having; somewhat of a weakness for flappers we hesitate to try for the prize ourselves lest it seem that we are casting reflections upon the species. We have known flappers to be intensely serious-minded. The business of dressing and lip-sticking and powdering a shiny nose and dancing and conversing with vapid young men is not to be taken too lightly. And on the other hand we have known serious minded college graduates who looked upon bobbed hair with horror and who could bore you to death in a half an hour."

Flappers were in fact, editorially speaking, not as bad as the “serious-minded” species of womanhood. The flapper’s lack of gravitas was actually to be applauded:

"Serious-mindedness, however, is not the outstanding trait of the flapper. And to be perfectly frank, we are rather glad of it. The moment girls become serious-minded they form organizations and try to reform the world. They do much better at dancing and holding hands.

The flapper’s mission in life is to be young and pretty and gay and pleasure-loving—the butterfly of the sex. To become absorbed in politics or the Einstein theory would not only crimp her style but would rub some of the dainty bloom from her wings.

Upon careful consideration, we positively refuse to coin a word or select an epithet for the opposite of this type. We are too gallant. And we like the type so much that we are afraid we might get rough or sarcastic in our selection.

Keep your $50, Etta. We may be foolish but our heart is true to the flapper. Your gold cannot buy us."

[New York American, May 5, 1924, editorial page.]

"Americana"

SOUTH CAROLINA

"The moral equivalent of the Monday Opera Club in the Baptist reaches of rural South Carolina, as described by a Blackville dispatch to the Columbia papers:

One of the most unique, unusual and important events of the season occurred here Tuesday evening, when Miss Martha Abigail Sanders and Mr. Ulysses Sill were united in marriage in the Baptist church. The symbols and color scheme of the Ku Klux Klan made beautiful decorations. The lights of the church were turned out, and the fiery cross, illuminated by many tiny electric lights, threw a lovely glow over the scene. It is estimated that there were 1,100 people present; 300 could not be seated. Promptly at 8 o'clock the wedding march began. Preceding the bridal party Klansmen began to march down both aisles, single file, turning near the rostrum and lining themselves against both walls of the large auditorium, the lines almost filling both walls of the building. Next came the bridal party, consisting of eight Klansmen and eight bridesmaids. The bride, who was never more lovely than in the robe of the order, carrying a beautiful bouquet of bride roses, entered with the dame of honor. They met on the rostrum by the groom and the officiating minister, a Klansman. All who too part in the wedding were robed, and all were masked except the bride and groom and dame of honor."

["Americana," American Mercury, March, 1925, p.303]

"Exalting the 'Cave Man"

“In our luxurious, enervated age we are exalting the “cave man.” By way of the motion pictures and hack-written fiction, our oversoft young people are glorifying brute strength, unconventional manners and gorilla conduct. Of course it is all an absurd pose of a period imperiled by effeminacy . . ."

[From William T. Ellis, “A Man for Changing Times,”:Washington Post, March 1, 1924, p.11]

“Quincy Todd on Cavemen”

By Roy K. Moulton

. . . "A man was arrested for wife-beating. They put it right into the paper,” says Elias Q. Higginbotham.

“How did he beat her—playing bridge?”

“No, with his fist. And she stood for it, too.”

“Wonders will never cease.”

“The guy was a Jugo-Skihoovian,” says Elias Q Higginbotham, “Some kind of foreigner.”

“It’s a cinch she wasn’t an American woman, either,” says Quincy. “If she was there would be a lot of people walking slow after that guy by this time and please-omitting-flowers.

“I haven’t seen a good case of cave-man stuff pulled off in this country in a good while. If it wasn’t for the movies we would have forgotten them and the Indians twenty years ago.”

“Not that some guys don’t still try it, for they do. Yes, indeed. Quite a lot of them try the rough stuff on the other half of their sketch. Any time you are walking along and see some feller flying out of a third-story window pursued by a cook-stove you will know that he is one of these modern cave-men. Or he is liable to drop suddenly down the dumb-waiter shaft. Most of them are not particular how they get out, but they are darned particular to get out.

“Drop in at any hospital and you can see three or four of the boys who are willing to try anything, even to cave-man stuff, once—but not twice.” [. . .]

Quincy: “The cave-man stuff began to fade out as soon as the country jazzed up a bit. As soon as men began stepping out hither and yon and playing a little poker around and about an such like, the ladies began getting the upper hand and they have been getting it ever since. Just the other day I am reading where a woman professor in the University of California says how this is the wonderful age for woman, and it is growing more wonderful all the time. She is right, and what is worrying me is how we are going to stop them.”

“That don’t worry me,” says Elias Q. Higginbotham. “I stopped worrying about that ten or fifteen years ago. I stopped worrying about that the day my wife went down to the bank and had my bank account changed over into her name.”
[New York American, "A Paper for People Who Think," March 2, 1924, p.6-E]

“Can’t Control Parents, Says Unhappy Daughter"

[A letter to Prudence Penny, “famous household economist” and advice columnist for the New York American from an unhappy 19 year old American born girl with strict immigrant parents]

“Sunday Her Day of Tears Because Folks Won’t Let Her Go Out—Disapprove of Friends, So She Must Give Them Up.”

“My folks are of foreign birth, I being born here, and they are very strict. I am different and have American ideas, so you just about guess how I get along with them.”

“Everyone else is going out for a good time and here I am working harder than any other day in the week, with the exception of Sunday afternoon. I can go to a movie show and must be back at six. So you see if I wish to come to New York and see the latest shows, I cannot go, for I have not time. I’ve tried it and what did they tell me when I got home, I arrived at eight o’clock. My daddy’s words were: “Listen here miss, you have enough liberties, and if you don’t wish to forget the way to the movies on Sunday try it once more and I will show you.”

“How I cried. Here I am a big girl and they will not trust me. But, oh, they trusted me in the morning everyday to work. Daddy says, “That’s different. If you want to break your neck, you may, for people can’t say anything to me, for I have tried my best.” [. . .]

“Now, Mother Prudence, what girl would wish to do harm to her own self? Then again there is no fear, for my boy friends are boys that are honored and highly thought of. I have often had plain talks with my parents saying “He that pulls the string too much is bound to break it,” and this is the reply:

“If you are not satisfied with this life get married and I have washed my hands of you, then you can do as you please, for it is then your husband’s lookout.”
“Many times I think, how much longer can I stand this?
[. . .]

“I have tried every way to make my parents see that they are doing wrong in being so strict and that they will feel sorry. Instead, they say that if there is anyone to feel sorry it will be me, but I doubt it.
BROKEN HEART

[From Prudence Penny’s Response to BROKEN HEART:]

“Your parents are people with deeply ingrained ideas and customs, entirely foreign to ours. It is pretty hard to change people, and well nigh impossible when they are middle aged. According to his lights, your father is doing what he thinks is right, in protecting you. I think he throws a rather deep reflection on his country and his own youth, when he see danger for you in these trifles. But those are his firmly rooted ideas, and you have found that you can’t talk him out of them so you must either submit , or declare yourself. [. . .]

But I think all your threats are just a little hysteria and dramatics, and you actually are trustworthy. So here is my advice: You are of age, and self-supporting. I presume you pay something at home, at least I hope so, for that will make it easier. You have have no desire to disgrace yourself or your family, you merely want to have the normal good times that are your due. Just tell your father that you are going to New York to a matinee when you wish, and that you are going out in the evenings with your friends now and then. You intend to behave yourself, and are certainly as concerned with your welfare as he is—in fact his chief concern seems what people think, and to protect your reputation so that you will be a good marriage risk.

“You are fond of your parents, and don’t want to hurt them, but they must realize that this another country and another generation. As a self-supporting free citizen, you are going to get some pleasure and freedom out of life, and they can do as they see fit about it.”

[New York American, February 7, 1924, p.13.]

Our Bootleg Aristocracy

“Opposite the park on Fifth avenue he was walking in pearl-gray clothes perfectly fitting, an overcoat folded over his arm, a great black pearl in his cravat—a resplendent vision of masculine fashion noticeable in these days of careless dress among men. He stopped with a wide smile and held out his hand to a man approaching. “Dontcher remember me? I’m -----, dontcher know?—bartender at ------ Club in the Adirondacks back in the good old days. Doin' fine since prohibition, soaking it away for fair; cleaned up a couple of million already. Say, don’t you want something? Just tip me the word and I kin get you any kind of booze you like.”

“This is not an isolated case; his kind are many. Big fortunes are easily won in a short time in the bootlegging business and the bootlegger is the type of man who stops at nothing he is ready to commit any kind of violence even murder.
“It is a new aristocracy of wealth that is being built up since prohibition and the money is being made with the direct help of men and women who think of themselves as the better element in the community.

“This is another serious side to the lack of enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment and one little considered. Wealth means power and prestige in the United States as everywhere else. Can we tolerate a new aristocracy of the class which is now engaged in the bootlegging business?”

[Woman Citizen, April 19, 1924, p.18]

"The Whip Hand"

By "Bugs" Baer

“Teachers are no longer allowed to slap lessons into children. Yet every man over thirty years old was well rattaned when he went to school. When that branch of study was discontinued and reading, writing, and rattaning ceased to be our three R’s children started to dish up back talk.”

“Now butter, eggs and childish answers are all fresh in America.”

“Law calls itself justice, but is really punishment. And oldtime fathers knew their law. There wouldn’t be any juvenile delinquents, bob-haired bandits and infantile burglars if police carried whips instead of whistles”

“There are societies to prevent cruelty to children but none to prevent cruelty to parents. And when you took papa’s whip away from him it was like asking a baker to raise bread without yeast.”

“Give father back his cat-o-nine-tails and see our next generation wipe its feet on doormats instead of old folks.”

[“Bugs” Baer, “The Whip Hand,” New York American, February 25, 1924, p.20]

Von Stroheim: "A Synonym for Piffle"

Director Erich Von Stroheim on the need for realism in motion pictures:

“I concede that there must always be entertainment in a screen venture. Some exhibitors have misused the word until it has become a synonym for piffle. There will always be a demand for the production the merely gratifies and soothes the tired business man, the blasé society woman and the weary working girl. Just as there always will be magazines with stupid stories and far-fetched detective yarns; they are cheap word narcotics.

“I want to bring to the screen some great characters. The screen must be life’s mirror, part of the time, anyway. It is possible to tell a great story in motion pictures in such a way that the spectator forgets he is looking at beauteous little Gertie Gefelta, the producer’s pet, and discovers himself intensely interested, just as if he were looking out a window at life itself. He will come to believe that what he is gazing at is real—a camera man was present in the household and nobody knew it. They went on with their daily life with their joys, fun and tragedies, and the camera stole it all . . ."

["Screen Needs Realism," New York Times, August 5, 1923, p.X2]

Voice of the People: H.C. of L. and Love

H.C. of L. and Love
New York city: What inducement is there nowadays for a couple to get married? The apartments now being erected are so small one can barely turn around in them, and besides they cost a small fortune. Children are barred--they might spoil the house, and besides it isn't fashionable to have children. Can it be that agents and landlords were never kids? I am engaged, but am actually afraid to get married despite my dreams of wedded bliss and a life with the best man in the world. Pray tell me, what's to become of the young people today who don't even dare to think of marriage on $40 a week?
APPREHENSIVE

["Voice of the People," New York Daily News, May 21, 1924, p.15]

["H.C. of L." stood for the "High Cost of Living" which caused so much complaining that it was shortened to a more thrifty abbreviation, saving several letters if not much money.]

The Voice of the People: "The Modern Girl"

The Modern Girl
New York city: During three years of experimenting with the modern girl I have met them all, from blondes with sun-kissed hair and man-kissed lips to brunettes both pretty and dumb. Have met Susie, the show-hound; Doris, the dance-fiend, and Fanny the old-fashioned girl, who raved about herself. Here's my finding: Common sense among modern girls is rare. They are neither intelligent nor clever--just so-so, enough to keep them alive.
AL RAPPAPORT

["Voice of the People," New York Daily News, May 21, 1924, p.15]

Scenes Showing How to Commit Crimes Are the Greatest Evil

From the Annual Report of The New York State Motion Picture Commission:

"The greatest evil is the exhibition of pictures showing the method of committing crimes and escaping punishment. Other pictures that are objectionable are intended to appeal to sex instincts. It has been said that motion pictures give a false idea of life. People living in immoral relationships are shown to be surrounded with the luxuries which girls and boys who have worked for a living cannot afford. In this manner the life of the American people is misrepresented."

In 1923 the State Motion Picture Commission

"cut out 2260 scenes and 621 titles from 585 films.Thehe following reasons are given: indecency, 105; inhumanity, 223; inciting to crime, 882; tendency corrupt morals, 126 sacrilegious, 29; obscene, 26."[. . .]

"It said that in the undeleted pictures the tendency is to glorify vice, while 'virtue, sobriety and observance of the law, the fundamental basic attributes of life , are made unattractive.'"

["Film Board Calls Censor Essential,"New York Herald, January 19, 1924, p.2]

What Makes Young Criminals?

“Light On Psychology Of The Young Thief”

According to New York City Police Commissioner Richard Enright:

“The type of young men who commit these petty crimes are those who do not want to work.”

“They have come to the conclusion that the world owes them a living, and they are going to collect it.”

“Of course the war has had a great deal to do with bringing this type forward. Before the war they were ne’er-do-wells existing after their own haphazard fashion. They were pickpockets or sneak thieves and did not carry arms. They were incapable of big crimes because they did not have the physical courage to commit such crimes. They were cowards.”

“The draft swept all of these types into the army and gave them weapons. Once they were discharged some of them became bold and resourceful crooks with the knowledge of how to use a gun. Such men have no possible conception of the magnitude of the crimes they commit or the results if they are caught. The war has made cowardly crooks and sneakthieves courageous because it has taught them how to use a gun.”

“It seems to me that a great deal of this petty crime could be prevented by home and religious training. Where there is no respect for the Supreme Being there can be no value placed on human life and property by those who lack religious feeling. Lots of these young men who commit these crimes have never heard the voices of any uplifting agency. they have been brought up in idleness, have never learned an honest dollar and do not intend to begin. This is a false and criminal psychology and leads to a life of crime.”

“The spread of the idea that wealth should be distributed also helps to make criminals of these young men. Sovietism and Red propaganda have a great appeal for young men lacking in the ability to discriminate between the false and the true. They get the crude appeal of the ‘soap-boxers’ and understand only the violent part.”

[New York Times, February 18, 1923, p.XX10]

Will Bar Silk Dresses

Michigan School to Stop Competition in Clothes Among Students
Special to The New York Times.

MENOMINEE, Mich., Sept. 21--The Menominee County Agricultural School opens Monday, Sept. 29, and all girl students will be encouraged to wear plain "middy" and skirt as a school costume. Students will be allowed to wear dresses made from inexpensive materials, but silk dresses for every day school wear will be forbidden.

Several girls have dropped out of school because their parents could not afford to purchase the quality of clothing worn by others," says superintendent Kepler. "Each year the girls go a little further in trying to outclass each other in this respect. While we do not wish to destroy the individuality on the part of the girls, we do believe that the school is a place of work and not a dress affair."

[New York Times September 22, 1924, p.17]

The Glories of Real Hundred-Per-Cent Civilization

“Uplifting the White Indians,”

By Gardner Rea,

Several samples of the “White Indian” have recently been imported for our edification. And as it seems no more than fair that they should be permitted a comprehensive return look at us—at the glories of real hundred-per-cent civilization—the following program is suggested for their entertainment:

Welcoming shot of wood alcohol, followed by short trip up
Avenue A; amusement to be limited—if possible—to three gang murders.

Ku Klux demonstration for the Honor of a Free America and the Nordic Race; consisting of the meritorious flogging of a Negro who has seditiously beaten a Klansmen out of a bootlegging contract.

Grand parade of flappers, cake-eaters, finale-hoppers, dancing-men, and co-respondents—in short, a representative selection of high society; said selection being left to the rotogravure-section editors. [. . .]

Mail-truck robbery and running fight with the Law—in which the latter, however is not overtaken. (Note.— At this point, to make our visitors feel perfectly at home, one of them should—in his rôle of innocent bystander—be shot.)

Impassioned Republican speeches to prove the Republican Party alone capable of upholding the People. Impassioned Democratic speeches to prove the Democratic Party alone capable of upholding the People. Final dual demonstration in which the people are held up to the satisfaction of both parties.

Parting salvo of pre-war stuff, followed almost immediately by burial with military honors.

[Life September 4, 1924, p.5]

“Furs for Any Purse"

“Substitutes for expensive furs have become so popular that in many instances they have shed their inferiority complex. “Hudson seal,” for example, which everyone knows is just dyed muskrat and which none shrinks from at all, has ceased to feel shy and is accepted for its own sake in excellent society.”

“Whenever a fur becomes fashionable,” said a fur expert, “the trade hunts for a substitute, because the girl in Sixth Avenue wants to look like the fashionable women in Fifth, and we must help her find the way. That is not so often true in foreign countries. There the lines of class distinction are too closely drawn for pretense to be worthwhile.” [. . .]

“Common Furs in Masquerade”

“Yes, there are plenty of substitutes for rich furs. Ever get on a crowded train on a warm and rainy day? You smell a lot of things—all the cheap fur coats, collars and chokers do their bit; cat, dog, dyed goat, rabbit, coney, masquerading under various names. Cat and dog furs dressed up to look like seal—they call it sealine, near seal, French seal, a dozen other names. Dyed goat answers for monkey fur, rabbit and coney for ermine and moleskin, Chinese kid for caracul. People who haven’t the money to buy good furs have to buy something in their place.”

[New York Times, February 17, 1924, p.xx2]

Singing the Old Songs

“Ah for the old days!" sighed the old-fashioned young man.

“The girls of to-day are not at all like their mothers used to be! Why, I’ll bet you don’t know what the needles are for?” He glanced with scorn at the modern girl.

“I do, too!” she flashed. “They’re for phonographs!”

[Brooklyn Standard Union, February 7, 1924, p.16.]

“Scanty Meals Are Forced on Working Girls"

Excerpts from a speech by Miss Martha C. Sears,
head of woman’s department of the Bank of United States:

[. . .] "Not long since a girl who was getting $23 a week came in to see me. I found that she was eating at cheap self-serve restaurants and spent only $2 a week on lunch and carfare, but she wasn’t saving anything to speak of, and she wanted me to tell her how she could. I asked her how much she paid for the hat she was wearing. Ten dollars, she said. I was shocked. No girl who is earning only $23 a week and saving next to nothing should spend that much for a hat. There are plenty of shops where becoming millinery can be bought for $3. But she said she had seen that hat and had liked it so she took it.”

“The average wage for a woman in New York is $20 a week, and of that seven or eight dollars must be spent for a room. If she spends six or seven more each week, on an average, for clothes and attempts to save anything out of the balance, she cuts down on her food allowance until she impairs her efficiency and can hardly hope for better pay in the future. One serious effect of high rentals is that they make wage-earning women hopeless and get them into a rut, so that they do their work mechanically and indifferently.”


“This country spends $200,000,000 a year for sweets, more than half as much for soda and ice cream cones, and $13,000,000 for chewing gum. How much is spent for lipsticks and rouge I don’t know. But it is safe to say that working women contribute a large share to these items of extravagance.”

“American women are gamblers; that’s the truth of it. They gamble on cosmetics and Hudson seal. They gamble on flashy, shoddy garments. Their extravagances are mainly a gamble. All extravagance is a refusal to face the facts, and the gambling instinct is an attempt to escape reality.”

[The reporter concludes that working girls ] "have dressed at the expense of their stomachs. Heightened efficiency would come from spending less on clothes and more on food.”

[New York Times, 1924]

"Sales Resistance Stiffens"

By J.R. Sprague

The United States is a very rich country, but there are signs that the saturation point may be approaching. Already the most extreme efforts are necessary to force merchandise on an apathetic public. A few months ago a Texas manufacturer decided to find out how his employés were getting on in their family affairs and took the modern method of employing a corps of welfare workers to investigate. Being welfare workers of considerable tact, they managed to unearth a great deal of information without receiving violence at the hands of the families into whose domiciles they insinuated themselves. The star exhibit was a young mechanic whose family consisted of a wife and two small children. This young mechanic was receiving wages of six dollars a day. It was a very fair remuneration, considering the conditions of the community, but he was constantly in hot water. The investigation developed the following facts: The young man had engaged himself to pay thirty dollars a month in installments on a second-hand automobile. To one of the local furniture dealers he was obligated for a like amount each month in payment of a set of parlor furniture of plush and fumed oak. Beside these obligations he had taken it on himself to buy from other installment houses a piano, a gold watch, a baby carriage, a diamond ring for his wife, and various other articles. Had he met all of his installments, which he manifestly could not, his monthly payments would have amounted to more than his wages. When he haled to his employer’s private office and questioned, the young man defended himself by the surprising statement the he could not help himself.

“Everywhere I go,” he said, “someone gets after me to buy something. If I tell them I haven’t any money they say that makes no difference. I have to buy thing to keep them from worrying me!”

In the language of modern American business the young mechanic’s sales resistance yielded to efficient sales methods. [. . .]

Twenty years ago the average householder with no resources other than his salary or wages was limited in the things he could buy on installments mainly to what was sold by the furniture dealer of his home town. Today there is scarcely any luxury that he may not buy in that way, if he has an infinitesimal part of the purchase price to lay down. Even Henry Ford, our leading authority on thrift and the simple God-fearing life, is out with a million printed announcements begging school teachers, office boys and department store clerks of the land to make their savings count and buy Fords at five dollars a week. Not long ago I heard a conversation between a manufacturer in New York and a young business man who was thinking of locating a retail shop in a nearby city.

“It is a good live town all right,” said the manufacturer, “but you need a lot of capital. Competition is so keen that anybody with thirty cents can buy thirty dollars worth on credit in almost any shop in the place!”

That statement was not an exaggeration I myself had proof a week or so later, when I had occasion to visit the place of about fifty thousand inhabitants, with a number of manufacturing plants and in the center of a good farming community. The main street was ablaze with bright looking shops, among which I counted more than forty establishments that advertised installment payments Everywhere were the familiar printed slogans, “We trust the Public,” “Wear our clothes while you pay for them,” “Pick out what you want; we’ll arrange terms to suit,” “No money down.” It would be a strong minded person indeed who could walk down that main street and not be tempted to take home some article on such ridiculously easy terms. Perhaps the most striking exhibit was that of a sumptuously fitted jewelry establishment near the principal corner, where trolley cars unloaded their passengers from the suburbs and nearby towns. One of the spacious windows of this jewelry store was entirely filled with wedding rings of the latest styles, the display made gay with imitation orange blossoms and card-board figures of attractive girl brides. Marriage was made easy by this prominently shown sign: “Wedding rings, $2 down, $1 dollar a week!”

[American Mercury, February 1925]

Bobbed-Haired Girl Bandits in Berlin

(Special Cable Dispatch)
Berlin, Feb. 16.—Bobbed-haired girl bandits—not one but six of them—have risen to plague the Berlin police and their exploits are putting those of New York’s bobbed-haired bandit to shame.
     In one instance the police heard pitiful cries coming from a dark street.  Rushing there they found some of the six husky German flappers beating a man into unconsciousness while the others rifled his pockets.  The girls escaped.  The man, seriously wounded, had to be carried to a hospital.
(copyright, 1924, by the New York Herald.)

[Washington Post, February, 17, 1924, p.EA17.]

"We have decided to become a 100 percent American book critic"

“We have decided to become a 100 percent American book critic during the coming year.

We shall cry down every work which shows any novelty or freshness of viewpoint or style, and cry up all the old, second-rate pussy-footers. We shall object to to every book which might be interpreted as not strictly moral, according to the creeds of the Clean Book League and other worthy organizations of the determinedly tender-minded. . . . We shall consider it an insult to our flag when any teacher or purveyor of history intimates that any of our national heroes was not as immaculate in personality as the Rev. John Roach Stratton, that Washington ever ate a cherry, that Grant was ever overheard to go as far as saying ‘Darn!’, that Lincoln’s anecdotes could not have been repeated before any gathering of old maids, or that Dewey was not outnumbered six to one at the Battle of Manila. We shall refuse, with Bryan, to believe that the world is more than 6,000 years old, or that our ancestors were any but Hebrews. We shall insist that the civilization and literature of these States are the greatest, the most perfect creations within the memory of man, and if foreigners don’t like them they can go back where they came from. Above all we shall maintain assiduously that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, that behind the clouds is the blue, and that Eddie Guest is the apotheosis of culture.”

. . . . “Boost, not knock (except the work of all these here literary Bolsheviks who are trying to start something new) shall be our motto.”

--John V.A. Weaver, “Personally Conducted,” Brooklyn Eagle, January 5, 1924, p.3

Matrimonial Bark Wrecked by Radio

"Pretty Maud Ericson was sitting in her White Plains living room, reading a glorious magazine story of romance, when her husband made an entrance, and remarked:

“I love you no longer.”

Came the Yule-tide, and holly was hung from the windows, and a bit of mistletoe, perhaps, at the most advantageous spot. But no hubby came, and she at her Christmas meal alone.

Later he took away her radio set.

To Mrs. Ericson the radio was a veritable barge o’ dreams.

So—Mrs. Ericson has begun suit for separation. Ericson, an interior decorator, charges his spouse wandered from home at nights when the spirit moved her, and that she failed to provide proper meals for him."

--New York American, March 27, 1924, p.3.

The Mechanical Peril

“The Mechanical Peril,” Life, 1924:

“Do you write?” “No! I use a typewriter.”
“Do you sing?” “No! I use a phonograph.”
“Do you play any musical instrument?” “No! I use a pianola.”
“Do you sew?” “No! I use a sewing machine.”
“Do you draw?” “No! I use a kodak.”
“Do you walk?” “No! I use a motor, the subway, a surface car, or the train.”
“Do you see?” “No! I wear glasses.”
“Do you digest?” “No! I use digestives.”
“Do you sleep?” “No! I use narcotics.”
“Do you breathe?” “No! I use a pulmoter.”

Alcoholic Deaths Show Sharp Rise

New York Evening Post, December 31, 1923:

"Every year since the enforcement of the Volstead act the number of "alcoholic deaths” in New York city caused by alcoholism and alcohol poisoning from “bad liquor,” rose, from 98 in 1920 to 119 in ’21, then 274 in ’22, and 363 by December of 1923. These numbers only counted alcohol as the cause of death when determined by the health department’s chemical analysis but many more died under the care of a doctor who would “hunt a long while for a possible cause of death before he would write “alcoholism” on a death certificate.” . . .

“Of the thousands who died under care of their family physician there is no record.”

"Gunmiss" or "Gunmadam"?

About the only trace left in New York of the once burning question of the moral aspects of bobbed hair is the daily appearance in the news of the young Brooklyn woman who evidently took seriously what some people said on the subject and embarked upon a career of crime befitting the cropped state of her tresses.

Women as assistants to bandits, however, appeared in history long before bobbed hair; the drama of the Restoration is filled with female lawbreakers whose hair was probably never cut in their lives, and much further back than that we find that men who lived by their wits have found women willing to share their lot.

To prove that, even among newspaper headline writers the bobbed hair phrase has become a bit vieux jeu, the elusive Brooklyn girl has been dubbed by at least one enterprising journal a “gunmiss.” But since she is married should it not be “gunmadam”?

[New York Post, February 11, 1924, p.10.]

"why worry so much about the bob?"

BANDITS- - -BOBBED.

By Ruth Brownlow.

When girls took to bobbed hair they started more trouble than any one ever dreamed could be caused by a few hairs being worn short or not so short.

As long as they kept off the front page it was not so bad. But when the young lady with the bobbed hair does something she shouldn’t she beomes variously

The Bob-Haired Bandit,
The Bobbed Hair Girl Bandit,
And the Bobbed Haired Girl Bandit.

You may see them all, most any day in the headlines of the various New York papers, and if you read into the story you may find that the bandit who in the head was was “bob-haired” becomes “bobbed-haired in the lead and “bobbed hair” in the body of the story.

It is a problem, this question of the correct spelling of the term which has been neglected as long as the term appeared only occasionally or in fashion notes. Mr. Webster seems not to have realized the importance of the bob. He says a bob is a short jerking action. The only thing in his dictionary that one could connect with the present bob of the hair is the bobtail, which is, he says, a tail cut short.

But even Webster would not have ignored the style if in his day bandits such as now bother the Police Commissioner and the headline writers of the New York papers daily had been at large.

But, after all, why worry so much about the bob? It seems to be the smallest of the bandits attractions. She has other and more taking ways by which she attracts front page space.

If one must designate her style of hair dress, why not say shingled or boyishly bobbed? That’s what the hairdressers are saying.

But with the fashion for short hair several years and more old, the surprise is not that the bandit has bobbed hair, but that the public is so surprised that she has it.

The flapper with her shorn locks has been accused of being and doing almost everything. She has gone to the dogs innumerable times. She has been hopeless over and over. She has been the despair of the mothers and fathers and reformers and future husbands. She has been denounced from pulpits; she has been preached over, prayed over, denounced and reviled.

And yet when a girl turns out in Brooklyn and robs a few stores her and there the city is astounded at the thought of her having bobbed hair, and the copy readers juggle the tiny “ed’s” to suit themselves.

[New York Telegram and Evening Mail, February 13, 1924, p.13]