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As journalists from around the world descended on the South during the civil rights movement, the local southern press served largely as an ally to segregationists and the campaign for massive resistance to integration. Despite the best efforts of pro-segregation propagandists, the visiting press often presented perspectives and realities deemed a threat to the “southern way of life.” In response, outside journalists and news organizations became the targets of segregationist backlash, including sustained editorial attacks from within the southern press aimed at their alleged integrationist anti-southern agendas, affiliations, and motives. As outside journalists repeatedly experienced intimidation, ridicule, and even violence while covering the movement, southern editorials cultivated and fanned the flames of this already hostile environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interracial marriage and relationships were illegal in much of the United States in the early twentieth century. The black press devoted a great deal of attention to this topic, often connecting it to African Americans 'encounters with racism and their struggle for civil rights. Part of this coverage in the national black weekly newspaper the Baltimore Afro-American included short and serial fictional stories on interracial romance. These stories, however, were often a contested medium among readers. Thus, a public debate occurred over the question of interracial romance stories and their place in the Baltimore Afro-American over the course of four months in 1934. This article examines this debate. Ultimately, interracial romance stories brought readers into conversation with each other and the Baltimore Afro-American to create a discourse that tied interracial romance to the African American battle for equality in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most historians writing about America's 1919 Red Scare have claimed that the press, by exaggerating and sensationalizing the threat from radical leftists, helped foment a national hysteria. This article, focusing primarily on New York City's top three morning newspapers, argues that the press in 1919 did not irresponsibly stoke public fear. While most papers supported the government's crackdown on suspected radicals and took management's side in labor disputes, the overall sense they conveyed was that the radicals were ineffectual and the authorities firmly in control. Some newspapers, moreover, such as the New York American (the flagship of William Randolph Hearst's powerful chain), covered strikes fairly and downplayed the unrest roiling the country. Examining the circumstances and pressures under which each newspaper operated, this article explores what shaped their coverage and argues that their greatest impact was not on the public, but on politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As American newspapers came under various forms of financial strain in the 1940s, arguably the most significant threat facing the industry during this period was an onslaught of media criticism in conjunction with a series of attempted state interventions. This paper fleshes out recurring themes of 1940s media criticism and shows how they coincided with moves toward regulating the press, which had begun in the late 1930s. Using historical methods, including close readings of newspaper, trade press, and activist literature and other materials that shed light on debates around press reform, this critical revisionist history brings into focus a formative period in the American press system's development. The history that emerges from this archival evidence does not simply bring previously under-researched areas into focus; it also questions the presumed natural laissez-faire arrangement between the American government and the press—an assumption that largely remains intact to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Chicago Defender is one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers in the U.S. Some called it radical and dangerous. That's because as early as 1920 it demanded racial equality, particularly in the South, in jobs, housing and transportation and preached black empowerment and black self-reliance. The paper published incendiary editorials with messages such as, "When the white fiends come to the door to kill you, shoot them down. When the white mob comes, take at least one with you." But did the Defender maintain this aggressive stance some forty years later, in 1968, for instance, at a time when the civil rights movement was spreading across the country? To gain a true sense of history one must study the lion in winter as well as in spring. Thus this research examines what editorial positions the Defender took in 1968 and how readers responded through letters to the editor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Richard H. Rovere's "Letter from Washington" helped the New Yorker become a prominent voice on U.S. politics in the years following World War II. He combined the style of a literary critic with a detached approach to politics to create a style that distinguished the New Yorker's Washington reports from those of its competitors and helped shape the magazine's reputation as a powerful player in the postwar political culture. His consistent support of the anti-Communist foreign policy that was pursued by the Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower administrations reinforced the Cold War consensus in the early 1950s. This article draws on archival materials, including the Rovere and the New Yorker papers, as well as the political pieces that he contributed to the magazine between 1948 and 1954, when he established his reputation as a Washington correspondent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the historical formation of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in the United States and argues that programme emergence depended on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to link the economic concerns of agricultural production with the ideational concern of national security. Using a historical institutionalist framework this paper stresses the critical juncture of the Second World War and the positive feedback loop created between agricultural industries and schools to understand the emergence of the NSLP. In addition, it stresses the role of frames in policy-making and focuses on the use by policy entrepreneurs of a security frame whereby child malnutrition was cast as a national security issue. The policy window of war gave policy entrepreneurs the chance to use the politically and culturally resonant frame of security, in the contexts of agricultural subsidies, to push for the creation of this programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes a critical historical review of the role of anthropomorphism in marketing and advertising in American consumer culture from the 1940s onwards. We review the art of the acclaimed illustrator Boris Artzybasheff who among other artistic achievements created images that regularly featured on the covers ofLife,Fortune, andTime. As well as working in media, Artzybasheff also produced advertising images, and imagery for propaganda. One of the characteristic features of Artzybasheff’s commercial art is the use of anthropomorphism, especially with technology industries and products. His art spans the periods prior to, during and after World War II, as well as the Cold War era and the onset of modern consumer culture in America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This case study documents the news reporting of Edward J. Meeman (1889–1966), who was among the first reporters from the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain to visit Germany after the Nazis consolidated their power in the summer of 1933. The completeness of the record surrounding Meeman's month-long visit makes his reporting from Germany an excellent way to examine the issues that visiting US journalists faced in the earliest days of the Nazi dictatorship and the quality of information they could obtain about the regime. This paper, in particular, contributes to our understanding of how much of Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic foundations were evident to visiting American journalists in 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The early years of the American Newspaper Guild were filled with intense internal conflict as well as determined resistance from publishers. Starting in 1933, Guild members engaged in a vigorous debate about whether the organization should be a professional society or a trade union wielding the threat of a strike. Faced with publisher opposition and frustrated by government labor-management mechanisms, the Guild affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1936 and a year later joined the more militant Congress of Industrial Organizations, launching a campaign to organize commercial employees. Many journalists who opposed the Guild were alienated by leftist leadership in national offices during the late 1930s and in prominent local offices until the late 1940s. This article uses archival records and contemporary accounts to examine the growth of the Guild, a pioneering white-collar union that faced numerous obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study and historical textual analysis, this article explores how small-city newspapers offer a window into urbanism and identity formation in the early twentieth century. These newspapers pursued a content and circulation strategy that combined publishing characteristics associated with the mass circulation dailies and industrial journalism of major metropolitan areas with more community-oriented elements, such as booster content and hyperlocal news items. These newspapers operated as an important part of the early twentieth century American media system and represented a distinct type of publication that embraced the aspirational urbanism of local business interests and civic boosters. Despite flourishing literature on newspapers in twentieth century American society, large, urban areas tend to dominate scholarly analysis, while leaving out the sorts of communities that had a self-conscious experience of industrial modernity. By focusing analysis on the 1920s, this article explores how the Superior (Wisconsin) Telegram embraced this aspirational urbanism. It shows how the Telegram operated as a platform for its readers to navigate the tensions of the decade, articulate the city's urban ambitions, and serve as a symbol of the city's modern and progressive ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Cold War, Italy was one of the most steadfast NATO allies in hosting American nuclear weapons on its territory. Such a policy could easily be construed as an example of almost automatic confidence in the US nuclear umbrella, yet only on the surface did extended deterrence appease Italian anxieties about the uncertainties of the American nuclear guarantee. The Italian rationale for accepting a large array of US nuclear weapons did as a matter of fact involve a complex mix of reasons, ranging from trying to ensure that the Italian government would be consulted in the event of a major crisis, to willingness to enhance the country’s profile inside any Western multilateral fora. The paper will investigate this policy by looking at how the Italian government behaved at the height of the NATO nuclear sharing debate, between 1957 and 1962, arguably one of the historical moments in the Cold War when the concept of extended deterrence was most intensely discussed. Drawing up on hitherto classified archival sources as well as on some less-known public ones, the paper will show how Italian diplomats, military leaders and policymakers understood the dangers and political implications of US nuclear policies. It will, hopefully, demonstrate that Italy’s persistent search for a multilateral solution to the nuclearisation of NATO strategy shows that Italy never saw extended deterrence as a solution per se, but only as a temporary means to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the rise of programs in television instruction in the USA during broadcasting’s postwar expansion period. Beginning in professional schools, television training entered the university first through extension school courses, then in full degree programs. This transition to institutions of higher learning entailed key shifts in demographics, pedagogical orientation, and legitimation strategies, while embroiling television in larger struggles over the shifting boundaries of the postwar humanities. Studying the education of early television workers, I argue, raises key questions about processes of worker professionalization vital for developing research on media industries and media labor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Edwin Howard Armstrong is commonly remembered as the inventor of frequency modulation (FM). There are those, however, who dispute this claim and assert that Armstrong's legacy is a work of fiction rather than history. This study examines the extensive public relations campaign on behalf of both FM and Armstrong from 1940 until after his death. This thesis is a case study of this campaign for the purpose of understanding the narrative presented to the American public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the strategies of the French fashion business to authenticate its designs and brands under the challenge of mass-produced ready-to-wear clothing by US manufacturers. It focuses on the 1950s as a pivotal moment in fashion history, as the older model of elite fashion ‘trickling down’ to the lower strata of garment production made way for a multiplicity of trendsetters and a democratisation of fashion. Starting from a situation in which New York-based manufacturers produced low-price copies of Parisian designs, the paper analyses the various strategies of French fashion producers to get control over the exploitation of their designs. As attempts to secure international copyright for fashion designs failed, Parisian designers brought out tie-in products and boutique lines and managed to shift the authenticity of their work from the design to the brand. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers African-American student protests in secondary schools during the 1960s and early 1970s. Taking a national perspective, it charts a growing sense of independence and militancy among black students as they made the schools a focal point of activism. Activist students challenged established civil rights organisations on a variety of questions. They also engaged in an escalating series of protest activities to make schools change. Much of this focused on curricular change, particularly adding black history courses and hiring African-American teachers and principals. Generally, these protests proved quite successful. Black students also protested against conditions encountered in integrated schools, where they often met hostility from whites. Distinct regional patterns characterised such activities, with more protest over school issues in the North and greater conflict regarding desegregation in the South. By the mid-1970s the era of black secondary student protest concluded, although its legacy continues to live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ‘Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A.’ campaign, a high-profile effort to encourage American consumers to buy domestically made textiles and apparel. Using a wide range of sources, this study examines an important campaign that has received little scholarly attention. Launched in 1984, the initial seven-year operation cost $100 million, and the funds were used to sponsor Miss America and to purchase national advertising on network television, including commercials that featured celebrities such as Ted Danson, Linda Evans, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Hall, and Bob Hope. Funding was provided by both textile and apparel companies and by labor unions, who put aside their historic differences, because they recognized the seriousness of the import threat. Roger Milliken – a powerful executive with considerable political influence – also bankrolled the campaign. Overall, the Crafted With Pride effort did succeed in uniting the industry and in winning some important backers, most notably, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. Overtime, however – and especially after Walton's death in 1992 – both Wal-Mart and some textile and apparel producers began to embrace off-shore production, and the campaign also struggled to change consumer behavior. Ultimately, importers and retailers prevailed, paving the way for the domestic industry's decline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study of novelist James Boyd and the Pilot of Southern Pines, North Carolina, during the World War II years widens the notion of what a country weekly editor can be or can do. In the shadow of Pinehurst, the renowned and tradition-bound golf resort, Boyd rescued his failing hometown weekly newspaper, editorializing in favor of an early entry into the war, civil rights for blacks, and equal rights for women. He also called for adherence to free speech and the Bill of Rights amid a national climate increasingly intolerant of dissent. Contrary to previous scholarship on the southern country weekly, this article about the Pilot shows that not all were conservative and anti-New Deal. It also shows that noteworthy journalism and commentary were not the exclusive province of the nation's major metropolitan dailies. Boyd's newspaper work during the pivotal pre-Pearl Harbor period in 1941 through his death in 1944 at age 55 is illuminating, demonstrating how an editor might negotiate the proper role between journalism and the government and readers in wartime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a cultural history of how the mirror was invoked as a metaphor for newspapers and journalism during parts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States. This study examines how journalists' own discourse invoked the mirror as a metaphor and how this discourse related to the broader cultural understanding about the nature of mirrors. Three main meanings emerged-the mirror as means for self-reflection and moral judgment, the mirror as reliable reflection of events, and the mirror as reflection of the nature of a newspaper's readership or market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conservative newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler was notorious for his enmity towards Eleanor Roosevelt, but according to previous scholarship she dismissed his criticism as insignificant. Scholars have depicted Roosevelt as a staunch champion of free speech rights and a strident critic of the FBI's intrusion into domestic politics. In late 1942, however, she asked the FBI to launch a wartime sedition investigation that aimed to link Pegler to the fascist enemy. This was six months after she had contemplated proposing a joint conference with him to consider the problem of union abuses. These overlooked episodes contradict the standard depiction of Roosevelt's response to Pegler and are a reminder of the news media's central role during World War II in efforts to support or attack the growing power of organized labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between consumption and technological development to understand the character of Europe’s 20th-century trajectory, i.e. the hidden integration of Europe long before the formal process of unification started. Within the rich historiography, the paper focuses on the intersection between production and consumption, where a range of social actors and institutions sought to represent consumers and mediate consumption. It is at this juncture of mediation that social actors and institutions negotiated the mediated design and the appropriation of new products and technologies. The paper further historicizes the juncture of mediation by introducing the European politics of the state, marketplace, and civil society within the context of economic crises, world wars, revolutionary changes, post-war reconstruction, and cold war. By looking at the mediation junction, a conceptual frame is offered to understand the connection, the disconnection, or the reconfiguration of technologies and consumer identities in 20th-century Europe. In a final section, the article suggests new avenues for research to examine the hidden integration of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frank I. Cobb, chief editorial writer of the New York World from 1904 to 1923, was a transitional figure in the changing meaning of liberalism, both as a concept of government policy and as a measurement of journalistic independence. Although he recognized that some government involvement in the economy was needed to control the actions of malefactors of wealth, Cobb militated against an enlargement of federal power over economic affairs. He established a unique identity tied to the forcefulness of his rhetoric, the persistence of his causes, and the connections he made to public men. As a result, the World's editorial page attracted the attention of presidents, diplomats, business magnates, and academics, all of whom had a stake in the positions the newspaper took on domestic and foreign affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines representations of urban domestic sphere and communication technologies in Playboy during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that Playboy carved out a space for a seamless relationship between work (production) and leisure/free time (reproduction) in the domestic sphere, specifically the bachelor pad, which contributed to current notions of the live–work lifestyle. Combining work, consumption, and leisure through technology within the home permits the erosion of boundaries between work and free time. Consequently, advances in communication and entertainment technologies, consumerism and Playboy's celebration of the urban bachelor pad contributed to current definitions of the good life and reflected the paradigm shift to the post-industrial economy and the subsequent emergence of the knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines popular representations of Japan and China before and during the war, assesses the ideas of key figures from the press, and considers the ways in which media and policy interacted through the influence of opinion leaders. These prepared the way for the ‘soft’ peace relying on Japanese cooperation that would become the basis for a new alliance between America and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Editor's Note: This paper was found in galley proof form from the journal Mind in the C.I. Lewis Archives in the Special Collections Department of the Stanford University Libraries, call number M174, Box 18, Folder 1. There are two copies of the proofs in this folder, one includes Lewis's corrections. The version that appears here incorporates all of Lewis's corrections. Where these corrections are substantive, the original wording is give in a footnote. The paper was withdrawn from publication by Lewis early in 1935. The proofs were found with Lewis's other papers in his house in Menlo Park after his death in 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The birth of formal citizenship education in the United States emerged in the context of mass immigration, the Progressive Movement, and the First World War. Wartime citizenship education has been chastised for its emphasis on patriotism and loyalty, and while this is a trend, historians have minimised the ways in which the democratic goals of the Progressive Movement at large also shaped citizenship education in its infancy. The paper situates citizenship education within the larger and broader aims of the Progressive Movement, and then looks at two federal agencies, the Bureau of Education and the Bureau of Naturalization, which produced and distributed the first citizenship curricula to the nation’s teachers. Ultimately, analysis of their citizenship textbook and teachers’ manual show that, even during war, it was assumed that through education any person, regardless of nationality or gender, could access citizenship, this being a very democratic mission in a paranoid moment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the career of Irving Brant as editorial page director and writer for the St. Louis Star and its successor in 1932, the Star-Times. Brant's career as a journalist occupied most of the first half of the twentieth century, during which time he sought to revive interest in the newspaper editorial page, from what he and others perceived as the public's growing preference for news and features. Brant found encouragement during the 1930s as Americans, in the wake of the Great Depression, turned to their newspaper for interpretation as well as news. His greatest influence occurred during the constitutional crisis of 1936–37, when he challenged the United States Supreme Court's decisions overturning major parts of the New Deal economic recovery program. In doing so, Brant harnessed the Star-Times’ editorial page in support of a new and robust liberal ideology of national authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gifford Pinchot was the chief promoter of a new plan to shepherd the United States' natural resources for future generations. But when his primary supporter, President Theodore Roosevelt, left office, Pinchot found himself embroiled in a fight with the new Taft administration. Battles included clandestine meetings on a rolling yacht off the coast of California, charges of treachery from both sides, and a vitriolic U.S. Senate investigation. The result would decide not just Pinchot's future but also the fate of the nascent environmental movement. E.W. Scripps stepped into the fray to shield Pinchot, putting his massive news empire-at the time the largest in the nation with access to as many as 24 million readers-at Pinchot's disposal, including the efforts of his most prominent reporter, Gilson Gardner. This study, which used microfilm versions of newspapers of the period, the E.W. Scripps Archive Collection, and existing scholarship, addresses this episode where journalism intersected with American environmental history. Further, this study examines Scripps' willingness (at times insistence) on using his empire to advance his personal agenda, years before World War I, the era most previous scholarship has addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most film histories of the twentieth century Hollywood's dominance has been indisputable. Apparently, European filmmakers were always facing one choice: either imitating the American style or finding a niche in the Hollywood system. This dominance is often referred to as evidence for an ‘Americanisation’ of popular culture in Europe. This article shows that this narrative leaves out a central development between 1927 and 1968: the nationalisation of popular European cinema. The paper asks which conditions facilitated and shaped national film cultures and shows how the political regulation of production in European countries, the momentum of the market, technology and the national industries contributed to the nationalisation of European film. Ultimately, however, the productions of these national cinemas resonated with audiences who sustained them for years following the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historians have labelled the development of modern mass-consumer societies in Europe as a process of ‘Americanisation’. Until today, the consumption of immaterial goods like vacations has been rather neglected by historiography. The purpose of this article is to verify the hypothesis that the United States served as a role model for European vacationing patterns and the evolution of the European travel industry. The paper demonstrates that a simple model of ‘Americanisation’ does not adequately represent the process of partial imitation, adaptation and alteration of American travel patterns through European societies and, more particular, through European holiday providers. National traditions and cultural differences of vacationing continue to exist until today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 1964 to 1982, automotive journalist Julie Candler’s monthly column in Woman’s Day helped readers navigate the male sphere of driving with useful tips from purchasing to maintaining a car. The popular women’s magazine published the “Woman at the Wheel” column to attract auto advertising, but it never did. This paper examines the representation of the woman car driver and themes present in the “Woman at the Wheel” column and reasons for its failure to attract auto ads. Textual analysis, interviews, and archival research show that Detroit automakers’ gendered bias of the female car buyer kept them from advertising in women’s periodicals such as Woman’s Day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an oft-cited but unexamined footnote in the history of lynching photographs. In the midst of the federal government's recalcitrance to pass legislation against lynching practices, an obscure amendment to the Comstock Act was passed in 1908 prohibiting the sending of photographic postcards of lynchings through the United States mail. The law censoring these postcards, however, did no such thing. Using the examples of a few isolated cases in which lynching postcards were blocked from the mails, this article demonstrates the circuitous and inconsistent development of a national consensus against lynching and its photographic communiqués. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article traces the early career of Charles Willis Thompson, New York Times' Washington correspondent and political commentator during the first two decades of the twentieth century, a formative period in American politics, economy, and world affairs. Thompson stood out for his dogged reporting and colorful analysis, skills that were valued by Adolph Ochs, the Times' new owner, and Carr Van Anda, its new managing editor. Thompson used these talents and relationships as he navigated between his responsibility as the "people's lobby" and his obligation to those political leaders on whom he depended for information. He managed this challenge by appreciating the difficult job of public officials and conveying that understanding to readers, a formula for press and politics often wanting in today's political coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of the use of public opinion polls in U.S. government and politics in the 20th century. Polling is seen to have originated in the marketing and advertising industries before being adopted by presidents, especially Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later by Congress. The development of the technology and social science behind quantitative research is discussed, as is its effect on the institutional growth of the American state and the decreasing importance of sectional politics.

Documentary photography has always been confronted by criticisms and self-doubts about its method and purpose. Can pictures ostensibly intruding into the lives of the poor and the destitute, whether taken by academics, reformers or professional photographers, ever be legitimate? This article suggests that these concerns actually determine the way mainstream American social photography looks. Such is the case, at least, in a cliche which has run through the US documentary tradition since the 1930s, and which could be labelled 'doorstep portraits'. Examples drawn from the famous Farm Security Administration archive and from Oraien Catledge's work in Atlanta's Cabbagetown in the 1980s show individuals and families sitting for a picture on the threshold of their house. This image is a meaningful convention because it seems to encode the nature of the relationship between photographer, subject and audience. This ritual 'presentation of the self' takes place as the private lives of the sitters are being transformed into public visual discourse through the photographic image. The first part of this paper attempts to define doorstep portraits as a kind of 'metapicture' - to use W.T.J. Mitchell's term. The issue of 'access' in documentary practice is then briefly described as the methodological problem which this metapicture engages. Erving Goffman's definition of 'performance' and Edward T. Hall's proxemics provide a theoretical framework for understanding how this engagement works. Finally, the normative dimension of documentary's visual conventions in the context of liberal reform discourse is re-examined in the light of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the last notable period of working-class unrest in Britain and America, the 1968-74 'upsurge.' It questions the widespread dismissal of such workplace-based, 'economistic' forms of resistance as disconnected from more explicitly political forms of rebellion. The explosive, dynamic character of the rebellion is argued to have contained both the potential and actuality of a transformed consciousness and thus fundamental questioning of existing political and economic relations. The loss of 'what might have been' is attributed less to absence of a grand political narrative, despite the ruling-class panic of 1974, than to a simple failure to build cross-class networks which could have achieved the coordination and unity of often separate struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the formative role of medieval theology and aesthetics in the development of postwar American architecture by focusing on the architectural theory and practice of Mies van der Rohe and Jean Labatut, both of whom became actively interested in Neo-Thomism from the late 1940s. More specifically, a closer look at their reliance on the work of Jacques Maritain, the preeminent promotor of Neo-Thomism, sheds light on the transmission and circulation of old and new concepts within twentieth-century architectural theory. By revealing how Maritain’s ideas helped to codify the latter and thus exposed the premodern ideas at the heart of modern architecture, I argue that modernist aesthetics should be re-evaluated with regards to its definition of “the new” and its emphasis on the breakdown or mutation of premodern frames of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at U.S. third president Thomas Jefferson's views on freedom of the press in relation to the existence of a federal common law of seditious libel, particularly in the Connecticut district court case involving his federalist critics who libeled him. Topics include Jefferson's second inaugural address, in which he stressed his devotion to free speech, his criticism of a violation of freedom of the press, and denial of the national strangulation of partisan polemics.

Ben Hecht grew to personify the mix of cynicism, sentimentality and mischief of the Chicago newspaper reporter, a historical type that he immortalized in his stage comedy, The Front Page. Treating Hecht as an “ideal type,” this study looks at the antics and chicanery of Chicago crime reporters, and the extraordinary bonds that Chicago journalists forged with the city’s gangsters. It argues that the temptation of the Mephistophelean bargain, the proposition that rules are made to be broken, explains both Hecht’s Romanticist style, emblematic of Chicago journalism, and the fascination with criminals and gangsters that Hecht shared with his fellow newspapermen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Reflector of Palmyra, New York, was an important contributor to the American Freethought Movement, a philosophical viewpoint informed by science, facts, and reason. The editor and publisher, Abner Cole, used the Reflector to promote the movement and its principles of mental improvement, equality of all citizens, and moral values informed by learning and a respect for life and nature. In so doing, he also advocated free speech, freedom of the press, and civil and religious liberty. Cole and other Freethought Movement editors tested and refined the limits of free-speech theory in its earliest American stages as they enhanced their local marketplace of ideas with alternative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to recent reinterpretations of women's participation in the United States' political system in the 1920s and 1930s by arguing that the years 1924 through 1934 demonstrated an expansion of female boundaries in the Democratic Party. Eleanor Roosevelt became the first agent in this process through her involvement in both the New York State Democratic Party and in social justice feminism. Her protégée, Molly Dewson, continued the expansion as the first full-time director of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, also helping to re-establish social justice feminism's national prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The American Communist Party (CPUSA) opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), arguing that it failed to ameliorate class and racial inequality. In 1936 the CPUSA participated in the Women's Charter campaign, an alternative to the ERA crafted to protect labor legislation. This article argues that the Charter campaign and the CPUSA's opposition to the ERA demonstrate class-based visions of equality that amalgamated race and gender into the class struggle and highlights disagreements among women's rights activists about how to define women's equality. These disagreements prevented a unified single-issue women's movement after 1920. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between the U.S. media and then-U.S. Army general George S. Patton, Jr., during World War II. The article examines Patton's use of the media and the promotion of his image, the media characterization of Patton as "Old Blood and Guts," and coverage of Patton's actions during action in Europe, particularly the Allied invasion of Sicily. It also discusses the non-reporting of Patton's conduct toward U.S. Army private Charles H. Kuhl, and U.S. public opinion of Patton. It also discusses opinions of Patton among war correspondents.

This article offers a critique of President Harry Truman's contribution to twentieth-century immigration reform. It challenges the view that he presided over an era of groundbreaking and progressive changes in immigration policy, arguing instead that the liberal positions taken on key immigration and naturalisation matters by the Truman administration were mostly inherited from his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt. Moreover, by examining the important issues of anti-Asian and anti-Mexican discrimination, this study reveals the limitations of Truman's liberalism in the areas of immigration and naturalisation policy. Mirroring recent interpretations of his contribution to the African-American struggle for racial equality, this article concludes that Truman's immigration initiatives largely originated in either Cold War expediency or maneuvering for political advantage, rather than a heartfelt commitment to reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article ‘A Note on Strict Implication’ was submitted for publication by C.I. Lewis and C.H. Langford but withdrawn in proof. The paper is, according to notes and letters by both Lewis and Langford, largely by Lewis. It constitutes an early attempt by Lewis to give meanings for the modal connectives using abstract objects. To be necessary, for example, is for a statement to have the same intension as a truth-functional tautology. This theory prefigures the view of Lewis's 1946 book,Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. This introduction to the article looks at the historical background of the piece in addition to its argument and examines why it was withdrawn. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the East's premiere socialist daily newspaper in English, The New York Call represented an important if struggling slice of a rich print culture that spread the socialist creed and sustained the faithful. This article uses the prism of The Call to consider functions of social movement media that, in contrast to mainstream media, promote collective action instead of products. It raises the question of whether the notion of a successful social-movement journal in the mass media market is oxymoronic. Besides considering The Call's contributions to the socialist movement, it analyzes the challenges the socialist daily faced in the capitalist-driven mass media market; examines the relationship between he Call and the mainstream press; and probes its relationship to the socialist movement, which it not only reflected but also shaped. The article concludes he Call provided a robust challenge to hegemony and played an important role as a forum for socialist discourse and as a record of New York's labor and socialist movements. Its inability to thrive, however, reflects divisions among socialists and labor as well as financial problems and governmental repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A leading editorial columnist for the Moving Picture World, Louis Reeves Harrison is an often-cited but rarely analyzed critic in American film historiography of the 1910s. While industry outsiders such as poet Vachel Lindsay and experimental psychologist Hugo Münsterberg are frequently credited for articulating the earliest theories of film as a distinct art, trade press critics made important contributions to a contemporary understanding of film as an aesthetic and economic product. This article explores Harrison’s interest in film as a creative ‘craft,’ which was both symptomatic of the MPW’s investment in boosting the industry’s cultural status, and his interests in interpreting film production as a process that synthesized dignified labor, aesthetic innovation, and commerce. Harrison occupied a central position within a field of writing that responded to, and helped to shape, a burgeoning industry in transition. Examining Harrison’s writing for the MPW and his main treatise Screencraft (1916) reveals shared interests and major tensions between figures of various professional affiliations and disciplinary backgrounds interested in the value of film as a form of art. In criticizing motion pictures from a fine-art standpoint, I take the ground that theyare beingproduced, now and then, of high artistic quality. I have written pages upon pages of generous appreciation designed to encourage those who are taking pains and showing quality in a personal effort to raise the average of motion-picture performance. Why? Because I believe that impartial and intelligent criticism will help to raise the average quality of production to the ultimate benefit of everyone interested directly or indirectly in the business. Louis Reeves Harrison, 19101 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1913 and 1917, Colonel Edward House, President Woodrow Wilson's closest friend and advisor, undertook several missions to Europe. Serving to shape House's attitude to American neutrality, House's advice deriving from these trips was extremely influential upon Wilson's foreign policy. This analysis examines the influences on House's advice, arguing that his pro-Allied stance evolved during this time and influenced Wilson's ultimate decision to have the United States enter the war on the Allied side. The primary influence on House's attitude was his relationship with British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. Several factors drew the two men together. They meshed with House's pre-existing views on global geopolitics expressed in his novel, Philip Dru. Previous scholarship that has investigated House's trips to Europe tends to gloss over the intricacies of the House-Grey relationship. Whilst the two men shared a close friendship, examination of their correspondence and the observation of others suggests that Grey's diplomatic goal was to establish close Anglo–American relations, and that a close connexion with House furthered that aim. This connexion re-enforced House's pro-Allied attitude that, in turn, contributed to America's entrance into the war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the Yiddish-language radio station WEVD in New York City, New York, operated by the U.S. Socialist Party (SP), from 1927 through 1938. The U.S. government's Federal Radio Commission's (FRC's) regulation of radio broadcasting under the FRC general consul and attorney Louis G. Caldwell, including the role that he allegedly played in protecting WEVD's interests, is discussed. The relationship between American labor unions, including the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), and WEVD, is also discussed. An overview of the National Broadcasting Corporation's (NBC's) relationship with WEVD is provided.