Haughtline Dweethly - Special Feature

Looking Back, Finding the Present

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

-- French proverb

We live in unsettled times. Americans worry about jobs, the economy, struggling industries, national security, broken families, wayward youth, general instability – you name it. We long for a golden age of peace and prosperity, as promised by politicians that we are reluctant to trust.

The reality is that each generation has had similar concerns and somehow lived through times that were as hard, or harder, than those that challenge us today.

The truth of this statement is revealed by a copy of the December 1939 Reader’s Digest, a veritable time capsule of life in this country since the early 1920’s. The articles in this issue deal with many of the same subjects that we find being discussed in print and on the air almost daily.

For example, an essay condensed from Time magazine titled “Since 1929” traces the 10-year period following the collapse of the stock market on October 24, 1929.

“As the Great Depression sank in,” the article says, “many saw ahead a gloomy decade of widespread distress, revolution, and crisis. On schedule the tests of U.S. strength arrived: unemployment increased, banks failed …”

Wendell L. Willkie, a noted business leader who ran for president the following year, bylined a lead article in which he spoke of “the grave domestic questions confronting America” such as unemployment, the need to reassure investors and the role of industry in promoting economic recovery.

In 1939 the greatest threat to America’s homeland security was the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Europe. But echoes of the war against terrorism can be found in the writings of Brig. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson addressing the question, “Could Hitler Invade America?”

On the domestic scene, a New York University education professor, Harvey Zorbaugh, bemoaned the fact that, “The conditions of modern life have placed upon marriage a greater burden than it has ever before had to bear.” And J. P. McEvoy, in excerpts from The Kiwanis Magazine, described how community coordinating councils were dealing with problems of young people “dancing in roadhouses Saturday nights” and juvenile gangs roaming the streets of large cities.

The editors of Time concluded that Americans survived the Great Depression because, “The spirit of the nation was exploratory, adventurous, inventive; it was ready for struggle and hazard …” and that “the U.S. had no reason, ten years after the crash, to be conscious of anything but a sense of strength.”

General Johnson expressed confidence that, “if we make reasonable preparations, there isn’t a power or combination of powers on earth that could threaten the Americas against our armed forces.”

As for instability, a condensed New York Times editorial stated: “At no time has there been stability. For more than 300 years the westward movement kept the country in a turmoil and reflected a widespread restlessness and discontent.” The editorial continued:

“Legends of golden ages, of simpler times and ways, of years when faithful toil never went unrewarded, when the domestic and public virtues flourished unimpaired, and universal contentment was expressed on every face – such legends have a particular appeal in times like these.

“The truth is that there probably never was a golden age. The hour of trial and decision has never been far away in America.

“It is not the contentment of our ancestors that we should imitate – for assuredly they had it at intervals as rare as our own. It is their courage and resolution that we need.

“They lived, worked, had their glowing and happy moments, and passed on a heritage compounded of achievement and unfinished business – as we shall doubtless do, too. The golden age was not born with them and I did not die with them. It is ours as much as theirs – and never wholly any generation’s or any people’s.”

In a further attempt to make its readers feel better about the times they were living in, the Digest quoted William Pitt, the British Prime Minister who said in 1783: “There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair.”

A glimpse of the gentle humor that characterized this highly successful publication throughout its decades-long history was contained in this quip by radio personality Walter Winchell: “If we could only sleep as soundly at night as we do when it is time to get up.”

The Reader’s Digest hasn’t been quite the same since the Pleasantville, N.Y. company went public in 1990 and its founders, faced with dwindling circulation and advertising revenues, sold to a private equity firm in a 2007 leveraged buyout.

But changes in ownership and publishing policies cannot erase the rich legacy of nostalgia left by this phenomenal periodical that the New York Times called “a parable of Life in These United States.”

-- Robert L. Haught