wm
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Even in the factor laboratory, employes often imagine they are listening to a singer making a record while they really hear the factor. Why not hear the factor for yourself ? Any Victor dealer will gladly play any factor Records you want to hear.
There is a Victor for every parse—$10 to $100,
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THE NEWFANGLED “TALKING MACHINE”
Advertisement in the April 1908 issue of Appleton’s Magazine, two years after John Philip Sousa had contributed an article on “The Menace of Mechanical Music.”
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COCA-COLA, AN AID TO SUCCESS
This advertisement appeared in Success Magazine in September 1906 when that periodical was living up to its name and ads cost $800 a page. See p. 288.
3
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS 1
I N the summer of 1922, Edwin Thomas Meredith was forty- five years old and had retired as Secretary of Agriculture—a post that he had filled during the last year of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. His vigor, ambition, business ability, and social responsibility had made him an outstanding figure. The agricultural monthly Successful Farming , 2 which he had founded when he was a young man, was helping its readers to succeed on their farms and at the same time making a substantial financial success for its publisher. Released from his duties at Washington by the change of administrations, Meredith turned to new projects, and especially to one he had long cherished.
As early as 1913, a small advertisement of a proposed magazine for town and city home-owners had appeared in Successful Farming; but the response had not been immediately encouraging, no major promotional effort followed, and eventually such
1 Titles: (1) Fruit, Garden and Home, July 1922—July 1924; (2) Better Homes and Gardens, Aug. 1924-current [& Gardens, 1927—45].
First issue: July 1922. Current.
Periodicity: Monthly. Vol. 1 (14 numbers), July 1922—Aug. 1923; 2-28 (annual vols. Sept.-Aug.), Sept. 1923—Aug. 1950; 29, Sept. 1950—Dec. 1951; 30-current (regular annual vols.), Jan. 1952-current.
Publishers: Edwin Thomas Meredith, 1922-28; Meredith Publishing Company (Frederick O. Bohen, pres., 1929-65; Gordon Ewing, 1965-66; Darwin Tucker, 1966-current; Fred Bohen, chief executive officer, 1965-current), 1928- current. George H. Allen, publisher, 1964-66; Robert A. Burnett, 1966-current. Des Moines, Iowa.
Editors: Chesla C. Sherlock, 1922-27; Elmer T. Peterson, 1927-37; Frank Wheatley McDonough, 1938-50; Joe E. Ratner, 1950-52; Hugh Everett Curtis, Jr-, 1952-60; Berthold Dieter, 1960-67; James A. Riggs, 1967-current.
Index: Readers’ Guide since 1930.
References: Anon., This is Merediths (Des Moines, 1947; rev. 1957); Anon., Edwin T. Meredith: A Memorial Volume (Des Moines, 1931); Robert P. Crossley, “Family Men Edit Big Home Magazine,” Quill, June 1949, pp. 6-7, 20; Peter Ainsworth, “The Meredith Publications,” Palimpsest, v. 11, June 1930, pp. 256-65; F. L. Mott, “Iowa Magazines for Women and the Home,” Palimpsest, v. 44, Aug. 1963, pp. 361-63; [Mitchell V. Charnley and Blair Converse, Magazine Writing and Editing (New York, 1938).]
2 F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, v. 4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 340.
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
37
money as had been received for advance subscriptions was returned. 3 Now Meredith again took up the idea, and in July 1922, a trial number of Fruit, Garden and Home was issued from his printing and publishing plant in Des Moines, Iowa. It was a fifty-two-page quarto, well printed and illustrated, with full-color cover. Nearly half its space was filled with advertising of good quality. Publisher Meredith had a folksy letter on the first page; this he continued in subsequent issues except when he was absent from the office on one of his advertising-selling tours, when the editor filled in for him.
The first editor was Chesla C. Sherlock, whom Meredith lured from the Iowa Homestead, a farm journal. 4 He was then twenty-seven years old; he was a graduate of Drake University’s law school, an indefatigable writer, and a man of wide interests. He served as editor during the magazine’s initial and formative lustrum, later joining the staff of the Ladies' Home Journal . His most notable printed contribution to Better Homes and Gardens was a series of articles on “Homes of Famous Americans,” begun in January, 1923, and eventually collected and published in two volumes.
Early numbers of Fruit, Garden and Home contained many short articles of a practical nature on the subjects indicated by its title. Leading off the first issue was one telling of the Delicious Apple and its origins; it was supported by a cover-page advertisement placed by the promoters of the new fruit. This happened to be an Iowa theme, though the magazine was fully national in scope and never emphasized its home state. In the first issue, too, was a piece entitled, “What $50 Will Do in The Backyard”—the forerunner of many articles in the early volumes dealing with the use of that area for fruit and flower gardens, chicken-raising, apiaries, and so on. Two pages of fashions, furnished by New York designers, appeared in early numbers of the magazine; but this feature was soon dropped, and fashion articles never again formed any part of the magazine’s offering. “Mrs. Bohen’s Shopping Suggestions,” presenting articles available from Chicago stores, was another trial run that was of short duration, though a similar mail-order project
38
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
lound favor ten years later. In fact, the first thirty monthly issues of the magazine were devoted to careful experimentation; reactions were checked constantly, and letters from readers were solicited. The magazine, declared Meredith in its first number, was to be a “forum” for exchanges of “experiences,” “ideas,” “practical information”; 5 and such close reader-relationship at once became the policy—and eventually the tradition—of the periodical.
The experimental nature of its first two or three years is emphasized by the early price of the magazine. The first two numbers—excellent though they were—came free to the subscriber, whose term of subscription (at thirty-five cents a year or three years for one dollar) began with the September issue. This low annual rate continued through 1924, when it was raised to sixty cents, or two years for a dollar. This, with the change of title, marked the end of the experimental period. In August, 1924, the original name disappeared and the magazine was titled Better Homes and Gardens. By this time it was a handsome periodical of fifty pages or more, with larger illustrations, carrying liberal advertising, and boasting a circulation of about half a million. 6
The increase in the subscription rate did not halt circulation growth. The magazine was well worth any householder’s money, with its monthly treasury of practical suggestions for house and home, garden and kitchen. Its landscape planning service, initiated in 1924; its money-back guarantee of articles advertised, first printed in the magazine in 1923; and its test kitchen for food recipes, set up in 1928, were notable advances that followed shortly upon the changes in name and price. It took an active part in the movement which led to the formation of the American Homes Congress, sponsored by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. When Meredith died in 1928, Better Homes and Gardens was a prosperous looking monthly, with some issues of more than 150 pages, and it had reached the one million mark in circulation—the first magazine in history to achieve that goal without the aid of fiction or fashions. 7
FRUIT , GARDEN AND HOME , 1924
Bright colors enhanced this pleasant cover. In August of this same year the title was changed to Better Homes & Gardens, marking the end of the initial experimental period.
BETTER HOMES & GARDENS, JANUARY 1928
This was the year of E. T. Meredith’s death. In only six years he brought the magazine to a million circulation.
40
TEN COLORFUL PAGES OF WINTER HOBBIES AND CRAFTS!
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CAR INSURANCE COVERS?
20-MINUTE EXERCISE PLAN FOR THE FAMILY
PICTURE FRAMES TO MAKE IN MINUTES
FAST NEW IDEAS FOR FURNITURE RESTYLING
HOW YOU CAN BE A SLICK DRIVER
MAGIC
MIDWINTER
FRUITS
GOLDEN CROWN COFFEE BREAD SWEDISH HOLIDAY BRAID SNOW CAP ROLLS
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS, JANUARY 1965
By this time the circulation was 6,500,000. The reduction of the words “and Gardens” to a smaller size had taken place in November 1945.
42 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
Immediately after Meredith’s death, his son-in-law, Fred Bohen, who had been appointed general manager in 1927, became publisher also, and in 1929 he was named president of Meredith Publishing Company. E. T. Meredith, Jr., joined the company shortly after his father’s death, becoming vice-president in 1937, and serving as vice-president and general manager from 1938 to 1957.* Bohen had a newspaper background and had joined Meredith’s the year before Fruit, Garden and Home was founded. His drive, foresight, and versatility were admirably suited to responsibilities with which he was already familiar. The first years of the Depression Thirties were difficult, but in 1937 Better Homes and Gardens put out an April issue of 186 pages. By 1940 circulation had passed the two million mark, and a decade later it was averaging nearly three and a half million a month.
Bohen recruited new staff members as needed through an efficient personnel department, and he showed good judgment in his selection of men for top positions. Shortly before Meredith’s death, Sherlock had been succeeded as editor by Elmer T. Peterson, a writer of ability and a hard-working and imaginative staff member, who served the magazine for a full decade.
The hardships of the 1930’s seem to have stimulated the management to enterprise in developing new projects. Cookery had been important in the magazine from the first, but the publication of My Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book in 1930 gave Meredith’s a new distinction in that field. Cookbooks have always ranked high among non-literary best sellers in the United States; but it is safe to say that the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, with its various revisions, has attained a greater sales figure at this date (about ten million in 1964) than any other American hard-cover book; among top longterm best sellers in the United States, it has been exceeded only by the Bible. 8 It has been kept up-to-date, and since 1937
*E.T. Meredith, Jr., remained an important officer of the company until his death in June, 1966.
8 It has been said that Webster’s dictionary occupies second place in such a list; but many publishers have issued dictionaries under the Webster name, and since they are different books, their sales cannot be combined for comparison with individual works. They are not revisions of the Merriam-Webster or of each other. The only individual dictionary that could be considered as
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
43
punched pages of recipes (with illustrations) have been included in the monthly issues of the magazine, suitable for removal and insertion in the Cook Book.
It was also in 1930 that the magazine campaigned for a comprehensive national home-building plan, including the establishment of standards, long-time amortization of costs, and a national association to determine loan risks for such projects. These editorials were an important factor in forming the policies of the National Conference on Building set up by President Hoover, which led eventually to the enactment of the National Housing Act. By 1930 the Junior Garden Clubs, which had been promoted by Better Homes and Gardens the preceding year, were flourishing; they later reached a membership of half a million. In 1930 the magazine’s “More Beautiful America” contests, with awards to communities that could show special accomplishments in eliminating ugly features, were initiated. Two years later came a contest on home-remodeling, conducted on the basis of cash prizes for articles (with before-and-after pictures); in five years this contest drew 150,000 entries. Still another project of the early 1930’s was the “Bildcost Home Plan,” by which lists of materials available for building the homes described and pictured monthly in the magazine were furnished to readers on request, and plans and specifications supplied at nominal prices. By the middle 1950’s Better Homes and Gardens’ promotion department was estimating that 65,000 homes had been built with such aids. * * * * * 9
Among regular features in the 193Q’s were Harry R. O’Brien’s pleasant and helpful “Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener” and Harlan Miller’s “The Man Next Door,” a relaxed paragraphic commentary on manners and living in home and community. Miller’s page began in 1935, and he continued it until 1949, when he transferred his notes to the Ladies’ Home Journal. Later the page carried the signature of “Burton
44
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
Hillis.” Articles on child care were a regular feature, most of them written by Gladys Denny Schultz, the magazine’s Child Care and Training Editor until 1945.
In 1938 Peterson was succeeded as editor by Frank W. McDonough, who held the position through the 1940’s. 10 The years of World War II brought shortages of paper and also a reduction in advertising caused by the use for the armed services of materials commonly employed in the manufacture of goods offered to the public. Better Homes and Gardens became a leader in the Victory Gardens movement. In 1943 it helped to meet the “war baby” surge and the shortage of doctors by issuing its Baby Book, which was to sell a million and a half copies within the next decade.
But advertising revenue dropped off about a million dollars in the first year of America’s participation in the war, which meant a 25 percent loss. It came back in the next year or two, largely with the aid of liberal food-advertising—a field in which Better Homes and Gardens had always done well. And then, immediately after the war, through vigorous efforts largely centered upon techniques of cooperation with dealers in construction materials, department stores, and house furnishing retailers (most of them originated in earlier years but now pursued with increased energy), Better Homes and Gardens recovered from its slump and thereupon proceeded to overtake the Woman’s Home Companion, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and finally the Ladies’ Home Journal in total advertising receipts by the beginning of the 1950’s. Though it kept this primacy for a few years, it lost it eventually in the shifts and hurly- burly of competition; but it continued to retain a position near the top of the magazines published for women and the home in both circulation and advertising. 11
When McDonough died in 1950, he was succeeded for two years by J. E. Ratner, a specialist in business research. When Ratner resigned to go into advertising agency work, Hugh Curtis took over. Curtis had come to Meredith’s in 1931 di-
10 For a period from September 1937 to July 1938, no editor was listed, Peterson having moved to the West Coast.
11 See annual reports of Publishers Information Bureau, Inc., for statistics on advertising revenue of the various magazines.
rectly from college, and he had worked on both of the company’s periodicals. He was editor of Better Homes and Gardens until 1960, and his constructive ideas and industry were important in the magazine’s continuing growth. In 1960 Curtis went to the Webb Publishing Company of St. Paul as director of their Service Division and two years later became dean of the School of Journalism at Drake University. He was succeeded as editor by Bert Dieter, who had come to the magazine twenty- six years before as a graphic designer. He had become art editor in 1940, and art and content editor in 1953.
In 1951 the magazine began the presentation of its advertising guarantee in a characteristic graphic form recognizable as a symbol. Though later changed somewhat in shape, it has continued to carry virtually the same wording as when printed in 1926. In 1963 the symbol was made available to Better Homes and Gardens’ advertisers for use in general promotion and advertising. It was prominently displayed by this time in connection with the magazine’s mail order advertising—an attractive department of small illustrated “ads” begun in 1933 under the heading “It’s News to Me” and later entitled “Gift Shopping by Mail.”
The emphasis given by Better Homes and Gardens to various topics has shifted somewhat. As the magazine increased in size—with occasional issues over four hundred pages in the late 1950’s—the number of building, remodeling, and home furnishing articles increased, while the space given to gardening seems to have remained the same. As early as 1945 the words in the cover title and Gardens began to appear in smaller type. This directly reflected the proportionately smaller advertising support for gardening articles. Yet the cultivation of flowers (if not that of vegetables, now so available in supermarkets) remained a characteristic topic. “Home Management” grew in importance as a department, and by the early 1960’s “Family Money Management” was listed first in the table of contents. Budgets, accounting, taxes, and insurance received much attention.
But foods and their preparation were perennial interests. As color came to illumine the magazine more and more, the food sections, under Myrna Johnston’s skillful direction, became in-
46 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
creasingly attractive. The cookery suggestions were accompanied by pictures luscious enough to tempt any gourmet or any ambitious cook. Also, articles were published that were ingeniously designed to lure men into the kitchen. This was in line with the magazine’s established and frequently stated policy to appeal to men as much as to women; it has always been classified not as a “woman’s magazine” but as a “home magazine.”
Articles were always practical. Hints for the “handyman” appeared along with those for easier housecleaning. Advice on such subjects as “How to Get Dinner in 30 Minutes,” with each of the nine simple operations fully illustrated, and “How to Be a Great Hostess!” with recipes and color pictures, 12 were combined with house and room designs in monthly “ Better Homes Project Plans” for which blueprints were procurable, and with down-to-earth home and family management suggestions. Better Homes and Gardens did not deal much with generalities, but chiefly with facts and figures, materials and measurements. Moreover, it did not spare expense in acquiring and testing its data. 13
The great distinguishing characteristic of this magazine was this precise practicality, this usable service for house, home, and family. Of course, this was not a new concept for home magazines, but Better Homes and Gardens worked harder at it than had any of the others. Men leaving the staff of the Des Moines magazine carried this policy and its techniques to other publications, and thus Meredith’s exerted a special influence on the entire field of home magazines at the mid-century. 14
Members of Better Homes and Gardens’ staff have always felt at home with the matters with which they have dealt. The magazine has sometimes boasted that most of its editorial staff “live pretty much like their average reader—in Tingle-family detached dwellings.’ ” 15 That mutuality helps to explain the magazine.
12 Better Homes and Gardens, v. 28, Feb. 1950, pp. 72-73; v. 43, Feb. 1964, pp. 74-77.
13 Time, v. 53, April 4, 1949, p. 53.
14 See Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century , revised ed. (Urbana, Ill., 1964), p. 383.
15 Crossley, “Family Men,” p. 6.
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS 47
When mass-circulation periodicals generally adopted the split- run technique in the latter 1950’s, in order to meet the needs of advertisers who did not require total coverage, Better Homes and Gardens began publishing regional editions. In 1963 it refined the system of standard editions by issuing what it called “custom regionals,” designed to help advertisers “to tailor campaigns to match their distribution and sales patterns.” This quickly brought to 22 the number of custom and standard regional editions of the magazine. 16
By this time Meredith’s was issuing six Better Homes and Gardens “idea annuals.” The oldest were Home Building Ideas (1937), Garden Ideas (1940), and Home Furnishings Ideas (1941); begun in the 1950’s were Christmas Ideas, Kitchen Ideas, and Home Improvement Ideas. In the aggregate, these books had a circulation each year of over a million and a half copies.
In 1957-1961 Meredith’s undertook a physical expansion program that cost over $10,000,000. The publishing plant in Des Moines had been extended and remodeled from time to time in preceding years. Now a new printing plant was built, covering about ten acres and equipped with modern high-speed six-color presses. Its facilities enabled the company to publish not only Better Homes and Gardens and Successful Farming but other magazines on a contract printing basis. ^
Like other publishing concerns of its times, Meredith’s entered competing communications fields in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Beginning in 1948, it erected or purchased several radio and television stations scattered over the country from Syracuse, New York, to Phoenix, Arizona. In 1960 and 1961 respectively, it purchased the well-known New York book publishing houses of Appleton-Century-Crofts and Duell, Sloan & Pearce. The textbook firm of Lyons & Carnahan, Chicago, was also acquired in 1961. This book-publishing expansion was not unnatural for a company that had been producing for many years such popular manuals as the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, Baby Book, Handyman’s Book, Diet Book, Junior Cook Book, the “idea annuals,” and so on. In
16 Memorandum in files of Better Homes and Gardens, Sept. 27, 1963. [With the May 1967 issue there were 78 regional editions.]
48
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
the early 1960’s Meredith’s published a dozen or more new Better Homes and Gardens books, ranging in subject matter from a First Aid Book to a Money Management Book.
On the second anniversary of its birth the editor of the magazine wrote: “When Better Homes and Gardens was launched, we had in mind that it must be a magazine that would attract and be helpful to at least one million American homes— 1,000,000 subscribers.” 17 In 1964 it numbered over six million circulation at thirty-five cents a copy, or three dollars a year (with approximately half-price introductory offers by mail); and it was receiving about $25,000,000 annually in advertising revenue.* This success over a term of little more than forty years had been due to resourceful business management, as well as to the fact that the magazine had been consistently faithful editorially to its original ideals of practical service and emphasis on quality for the middle-class American home and family.f
17 Better Homes and Gardens, v. 3, Sept. 1924, p. 3.
* The guaranteed circulation of Better Homes and Gardens reached seven million with the February, 1967, issue. Advertising revenues totaled $33.9 million in 1966.
f This sketch was written in 1964. In May 1967, Dieter became editorial director of the magazine and James A. Riggs was made editor. He had joined the Meredith Company in 1950, was made managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens in 1955, and five years later became its executive editor. See n. 1 for other post-1964 staff changes.
4
CURRENT HISTORY 1
C URRENT HISTORY was begun as a kind of supplement to the New York Times. It was intended to provide, in a form better adapted to leisurely reading and study than that of the newspaper, some extensive articles and public documents, as well as matter somewhat obliquely related to the news of the day. Here was news as history, to be considered and remembered. Here were the footnotes and commentaries on the news. And the news was the news of the great European War of 1914, for it was the overflow from material produced by that great event, or series of events, that called forth the new magazine.
It was at first a big square octavo of more than two hundred double-column pages. The first number, issued in December
1 Titles: (1) The New York Times Current History of the European War, Dec. 1914—Jan. 1915; (2) The New York Times Current History: A Monthly Magazine: The European War, Feb. 1915—Jan. 1916; (3) Current History: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, Feb 1916—Sept. 1923; (4) Current History: A Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1923—June 1940; (5) Current History and Forum, July 1940—June 1941; (6) Current History, 1941-current.
First issue: Dec. 1914. Current.
Periodicity: Semimonthly, Dec. 1914—Jan. 1915; monthly thereafter except Nov. 1940—Jan. 1941, when it was issued twice a month at irregular intervals. Vol. 1, Dec. 1914—March 1915; 2-46, April 1915—Sept. 1937, semiannual vols. April-Sept. and Oct.-March; 47, Oct.-Dec. 1937; 48, Jan.-June 1938 (July- Aug. 1938 omitted); 49, Sept. 1938—Feb. 1939; 50, March-Aug. 1939; 51, Sept. 1939—Aug. 1940; 52, Sept. 1940—May 1941; 53, June 1941 (July-Aug. 1941 omitted). [New Series] 1-4, Sept. 1941—Aug. 1943, semiannual vols. Sept.-Feb. and March-Aug.; 5, Sept.-Dee. 1943; 6-current, Jan. 1944-current, regular semiannual volumes.
Publishers: New York Times, Dec. 1914—April 1936; Current History, Inc. (M. E. Tracy, publisher), May 1936—Feb. 1939; Current History Publishing Corporation, March 1939—June 1941 (Joseph Hilton Smyth, publisher, March- Nov. 1939, and E. Trevor Hill, pres., Dec. 1939—June 1941) ; Events Publishing Company, July 1941-59 (Spencer Brodney, president, 1941-43; Daniel G. Redmond, 1943-55; D. G. Redmond, Jr., 1955-59); Current History, Inc., 1959- current (D. G. Redmond, Jr., publisher, 1959-current).
Editors: George Washington Ochs-Oakes, 1915-31; Spencer Brodney, 1931— 36, 1941-43; Merle Elliott Tracy, 1936-39; E. Trevor Hill and John T. Hackett, 1939-41; Daniel George Redmond, 1943-55; Carol L. Thompson, 1955-current. Index: Readers’ Guide.
1914, was captioned The New York Times Current History of the European War; but its main title was “What Men of Letters Say/’ and it was filled with contributions of famous authors to the controversy over the great conflict—a paper war begun by Bernard Shaw’s comments and replies to them. In this number we have not only English but European (including a few German) utterances, all illustrated by full-page portraits in roto. That was a good beginning, and later that month there was a second issue titled “Who Began the War and Why?” This gave both sides, but an anti-German element came in when the number was filled out with some accounts of reported “atrocities” in Belgium.
There were two issues in the next month also, but the supplement was becoming more magazinish. That is, although the numbers had special titles indicating emphasis in content, they were much more varied and miscellaneous than their predecessors. They contained many shorter pieces, including a few poems; and a section reproducing current cartoons was introduced.
In the issue for February 1915, Current History had for a subtitle the words, A Monthly Magazine. It carried forty-eight pages of war pictures produced by rotogravure, as well as maps, an enlarged section of cartoons, and a continuation of the day- by-day chronicle of the war begun the preceding month. These became fixtures in the magazine, except for the war pictures, which were soon reduced to a minimum by the founding of another Times auxiliary, the Mid-Week Pictorial. Some of the most brilliant of the Times correspondents abroad were represented by articles reprinted from the newspaper or written especially for the magazine; and the by-lines of Philip Gibbs, Perceval Gibbon, and Cyril Brown were common. J. B. W. Gardiner was the leading armchair military analyst.
Current History’s chief competitors in the news-magazine field were the monthly Current Opinion and the weekly Literary Digest , both of them devoted mainly to extracts from the newspapers, and the well-edited Review of Reviews and World’s Work. But by mid-1915 the new magazine had created a modest following of its own among newsstand purchasers and subscribers; and on July 1, 1915, Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of
the Times, appointed his brother George W. Ochs editor of both Current History and the Mid-Week Pictorial . 2 George Washington Ochs-Oakes, as he was soon to call himself, 3 had recently returned from a thirteen-year term as publisher of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, then owned by his elder brother, and was glad to take on the somewhat different job of managing a monthly magazine.
As the war developed, the magazine continued to be highly eclectic, reprinting much from English and continental newspapers and reviews, analytical accounts of military actions by Times staffmen, public addresses, and documents. At first, there was much exposition of the German point of view; but this declined rapidly, especially after the sinking of the “Lusitania.” Current History continued, however, to quote pro- German pieces from the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung until after the United States entered the war, and after that it offered translations from German periodicals occasionally.
In November 1915, Current History initiated a front-of-the- book department of chronicle and comment entitled “World Affairs of the Month,” soon to be followed by a second department called “Interpretations of World Events.” These were combined in 1917-1918, then abandoned for a time, and later reinstated in a different form. This initial department of commentary was of the same type as “The Progress of the World” in the Review of Reviews and “The March of Events” in World’s Work. Also a section of reviews of “Important War Books” was carried for a time.
In addition to the eclectic content of the magazine, there were some important contributed articles, such as “The Peace of the World,” by H. G. Wells (April 1915), Gilbert Parker’s “The War to Date” (September 1915), a debate between Hugo Muensterberg and Albert Bushnell Hart on the position of German-Americans in the United States (November 1915), and Rudyard Kipling’s stories of submarine adventure entitled “Tales of The Trade’ ” (August 1916). Norman Angell wrote
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The articles by Galsworthy, Conan Doyle, and others were on subjects related to World War I.
FEBRUARY 1 967