A Sign of the Time(s)

I’m not exactly a big fan of reading magazines. The only time I ever do is when I am in a long line at the grocery store, stuck in a waiting room, or for some light bathroom reading. I usually reach for the latest issue of Sports Illustrated or ESPN magazine or occasionally Highlights for the corny jokes but sometimes I’m drawn in by Time. When I think of Time magazine, I automatically see the red-bordered cover with a close up of some important politician, celebrity, or scientist. The captions are always about some recent discovery, hot-topic debate, or international issue that grabs my interest immediately. When flipping through an issue, it seems that 50% of the pages are dedicated to ads. Those hard hitting, provocative articles are broken up haphazardly by images and captions trying to sell me cologne or a Lexus.

When I opened up the issue from November 4^th, 1929, it was like a completely different magazine. It felt like flipping through a newspaper rather than a magazine. All of the images were in black and white and the headlines, subheadings and text were all formatted the same and organized in uniform columns. The larger images that caught my eye first were all advertisements. I chose this issue because I thought it would be interesting to read one of the first issues to come out after the Stock Market crash of October 1929. Surprisingly, not much was written about the event in the National Affairs section. The only things remotely related to it were an article about a $100,000,000 loan for the National Farmers’ Grain Corporation and an argument about tariffs on things such as industrial Calcium Carbide, Casein (skim milk), and other industrial chemicals. A larger portion of this section was dedicated to issues pertaining to President Hoover and his rain-soaked tour through the Midwest. It also talked about his appointment of Assistant Secretary Walter Hope. This was obviously a controversial move because the rest of the article was about opposition he faced from different party officials and interest groups. He retaliated by saying it was his responsibility to make appointments and not the responsibility of anyone else. He alluded to a statement he wrote regarding the issue that he characterized as “no idle gesture.” This was very interesting to read because it reminded me of politics today. There is always one group of people that is going to be unhappy with the decisions made by people in power. I thought President Hoover’s response was a little more aggressive than what many politicians could get away with today. It seems today, politicians always try to justify their decisions and if it causes too much of a fuss, they simply undo them to please their followers and ultimately gain support. Hoover basically said, “That’s great you disagree, too bad it’s not your job to worry about it. The success of the party rests in good government, not patronage.”

Another article I found interesting was an article about two men that were arrested by secret service agents in an incident involving President Hoover. The two men had parked their car on railroad tracks in hopes of collecting damages from the rail company. Unfortunately for them, the train was transporting the President of the United States that day and came to a stop before hitting the vehicle. This article dated the issue for many reasons. First, the president would never travel on any form of public transportation today, let alone a train. You will never see Obama jump on a Frontier Airlines red eye while touring the country. Secondly, the two men who were arrested happened to be Black, but the article used the term “negroes.” That vernacular has not been accepted since the Civil Rights movement and any news article today with that term in it would be attacked for being racist the minute it was printed.

One article did address the Stock Market crash in the business and finance section. The Article was entitled Bankers v. Panic. The article started out by explaining where two or three Wall Street big wigs were the day of the crash, citing one that was honeymooning in Honolulu. In narrative fashion, the article set the scene of the New York Stock Exchange on that day saying, “For so many months so many people had saved money and borrowed money and borrowed on their borrowings to possess themselves of the little pieces of paper by virtue of which they became partners in U.S. Industry. Now they were trying to get rid of them even more frantically than they had tried to get them.” It then talked about specific companies whose stocks dropped from 190 points to around 50 in two days. Some companies went up however, and sounded familiar because they are still around today. These included General Electric, Montgomery Ward, and AT&T. It mentioned also that it was so frantic because even with a large amount of shares for sale, you still have to have someone to buy them but confidence was so low, no one wanted to. This all sounded strangely familiar to the recession that began in 2008. Irresponsible borrowing, companies not managing money well, and a sudden lack in confidence on both a domestic and international scale led to a sharp drop in our nation’s economy. A select few companies survived because they were “bailed out” but even more failed. The scale of money lost was very indicative of the time period in which this issue was written. It mentioned losses on the scale of tens of millions of dollars, in the recession of 2008, billions of dollars were lost in some instances. And the national debt spiked by trillions.

The ads were very interesting in this issue as well. Today’s magazine ads usually consist of a well designed image of either a product or a person and it is always picture perfect. The cars in adds are always shiny and new (even the trucks driving through mud hauling two tons of rock) and the people are always attractive models or celebrities that do not accurately represent the target audience at all. The ads in this issue almost looked like articles to me. I am used to the majority of the ad consisting of a visually striking image and a few words then a company logo or slogan. These ads were made up of a smaller picture and then a lot of words, almost a half page in some cases. The words were almost like a complete product description and even talked about the cost of the product and why it was better than certain competitors.

One of the funnier ads I found was an ad for Listerine shaving cream. The headline said “Your beard equals one hair 5/8 inch thick.” It then proceeded to give you the math. It explained how thick an individual whisker is, and how many square inches of hair are on your face which is why dermatologists recommend “before you scrape, lubricate!” It then broke down the cost by dividing the cost of one bottle by the number of uses you get out of it and how long it will last you. The majority of the ads were obviously targeting men. There were several ads for shaving cream which were very different from today’s in which some good looking guy with his shirt off is shaving. These showed average, everyday, balding men using the shaving cream. There were several ads about industrial advances and energy and gas companies. Investment companies also advertised a lot too, which I thought was interesting in light of the stock market crash. All of the pictures, whether it was a picture in an ad or featured in an article, were of men. The only pictures of women were in the “Movies” and “Theater” section, probably to cater to a largely male audience. Some things never change. In the back there were several pages of classified ads for everything from cruise trips to dental cream. These were fun to read because some of the science behind new products that at that time were state of the art is now outdated.

Overall, the issue was very interesting to read. Time lived up to its name in capturing the events going on in that era. It depicted a world that to me was remarkably similar to ours today, just a few decades behind. Some central themes I saw were progress in industry, political conflicts, and personal entitlement. As a national magazine written in a time when national pride was relatively high, many pages were dedicated to pointing out just how much our society was advancing in every industry. Also, on the heels of WWI and during prohibition, the political arena was pretty heated. This is really similar to today except that we face different issues such as War, rising fuel costs, and a whole bunch of social issues. All the ads also carried the undertone that said, “but this, because you owe it to yourself.” That’s also a fairly ubiquitous message in today’s ads. To me the differences in this issue and one you might find today were all superficial; format, technology, advertising techniques, etc. Although these things are a sign of the times”  it showed me that some things are timeless.