cries for deep cuts to the nondefense budget would find an echo in most presidential
campaigns from that time and in legions of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor. 20
*
These new levels of economic activity and income would require manpower and
womanpower. A Long Island City, New York, instrument company was advertising
for automatic screw operators at $1.20 per hour and milling machine, engine lathe,
and grinder operators all at $1.00 per hour. An intriguing ad by the Civilian Techni-
cal Corps offered auto and aircraft mechanics the “chance of a lifetime” to go abroad,
work in a noncombatant capacity, and see England, all with free board, lodging,
clothes, medical care, and a good salary. “Help the RAF,” was the final challenge.
The classified employment ads contained strictures that sound odd to us today.
“Auditor (travel), Protestant,” with industrial audit experience and younger than
forty would earn $2,600 a year. Another advertiser sought a “neat” boy to deliver
artwork and help in a retouching studio, “a wonderful chance for an energetic boy
with good personality, character; state religion.”
An old established import/export company was seeking a merchant apprentice
who would start at the bottom and advance in accordance with performance. “Must
have strong character and intensive pride in his own endeavor and determination
continually to improve himself. . . . State age, religion and what you can contribute.”
Apparently, religion was not the only limiting factor. The Terminal Agency
was seeking “TYPISTS” who were tall as well as Christian, for an excellent future
in publishing. Job opportunities included: purchasing, sales, clerks, IBM operators,
lettering artists, mimeograph operators, musicians and music teachers, stenogra-
phers, and a “YOUNG MAN, educated, to demonstrate dance steps at social func-
tions, excellent opportunity. . . . ” 21
The impact of defense spending was further evident in the call for a hundred
plumbers and steamfitters for a U.S. Army airfield project at Tyndall Field in
Panama City, Florida. 22
Liberty and Justice for All: Equal Rights for Women?
One consequence of wars abroad may have been renewed consideration of the
Equal Rights Amendment. It had first been introduced in 1913 and was to be the
28 Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941
subject of a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The new proposal was
introduced by Senator O’Mahoney of Wyoming. The western states had always
been pioneers in the matter of women’s suffrage and the rights of women gener-
ally. The proposed legislation read:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall discriminate between
the rights of men and women and no law making such discrimination shall
be enacted by the Congress.
One of the problems of passing this amendment was the vigorous opposition
of the National Women’s Party. It was dedicated to legislation protecting women
in the labor market. Its alternate proposal was:
Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and
every place subject to its jurisdiction.
It did not seem that the proposed amendment would gain much traction so
long as women’s organizations and women themselves were sharply divided on
appropriate concepts and language. 23
*
That last peaceful Sunday, much of what occupied Americans—their social
interests and concerns, how they conducted their daily lives and thought about
each other, what amused or entertained them, went on as usual.
Notes
1. Konoye: a frequent spelling in 1941, now commonly Konoe.
2.
Denver Post , November 30, 1941, 4
3.
Atlanta Constitution , November 30, 1941, 1
4.
New York Times , November 30, 1941, 1
5.
New York Times , November 30, 1941, 24
7.
New York Times , November 30, 1941, 16
8.
New York Times , November 30, 1941, 16
9.
New York Times , November 30, 1941, 11
10. Denver Post , November 30, 1941, 1
11. New York Times , November 30, 1941, SM21
12. New York Times , November 30, 1941, 55
13. Los Angeles Times , November 30, 1941, 13
14. Chicago Tribune , November 30, 1941, 3
15. New York Times , November 30, 1941, B7
16. Atlanta Constitution , November 30, 1941, 2A
17. New York Times , November 30, 1941, B7
18. New York Times , November 30, 1941, 3
19. Los Angeles Times , November 30, 1941, 4
20. Houston Chronicle , November 30, 1941, 4
21. New York Times , November 30, 1941, 18
22. Houston Chronicle , November 30, 1941, 4C
23. New York Times , November 30, 1941, 55
4
AS WE WERE
FIGURE 4.1 Joe DiMaggio advertising Camel cigarettes (see color plate section).
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Stanford School of Medicine.
30 Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941
The Social Spectrum: “Who Killed Society?”
Cleveland Amory, chronicler of The Proper Bostonians and of The Last Resorts , concluded his study of life in the upper reaches of America by propounding,
in another work, the pregnant question: Who Killed Society? Whatever answers
he or other students of social phenomena may have given, it is clear that Soci-
ety was alive and well in New York on November 30, 1941. Departing from its
usual sobriety, the good gray Times was practically giddy in announcing that the debutantes of the season were eagerly awaiting the Junior Assemblies to be held
Friday night at the Ritz-Carlton. It further reported that the “Juniors” were the
most exclusive dances in New York and ranked in importance with the St. Ceci-
lia’s Society Ball of Charleston, South Carolina, the Philadelphia Assemblies, and
Baltimore’s Bachelors Cotillions, the last of which would be attended by a large
number of New York girls with Maryland affiliations. Four of the stars of the
season were shown in formal portraits, three of them by celebrated glamour pho-
tographer Murray Korman.
The highly prized membership in the “Juniors” could be attained only after a
“rigid inspection” by the organizing committee before their mothers or guard-
ians were invited to subscribe. At the strictly formal dances, each debutante
and her two escorts were required to wear white gloves and pass along the
receiving line. The debutantes of the current season would attend the first
dance, and the debutantes of the season past the second. Dinner parties in
advance of each dance could serve as the coming-out party for the honored
debutante. The list of 122 new members represented established dynasties, the
Morgan, Vanderbilt, Benjamin, and Rogers families. It included two grand-
daughters of President Theodore Roosevelt, Miss Judith Q. Derby and Miss
Nancy D. Roosevelt, and a granddaughter of J. P. Morgan, Miss Ann Morgan,
who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Junius S. Morgan; Mrs. Morgan was a
member of the committee.
For those not yet of an age to qualify for the “Ju
niors,” subscriptions were being
organized by Mrs. Evelyn King Robinson for the Senior Dinner Dance for debu-
tantes of the next season at the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria.
Such gaieties were not confined to the Big City. In the collegiate purlieus of
Princeton, New Jersey, debutantes were very much in evidence if on a slightly
more modest scale. Mr. and Mrs. Karl Dravo Pettit hosted an afternoon reception
with dancing at their Cherry Hill Farm home on Friday to introduce their daugh-
ter, Miss Mary Estelle Pettit, to society. It was all done with style: the debutante
was presented in a bower of smilax and rhododendron in a setting further deco-
rated with white single and pompom chrysanthemums. A bevy of contemporaries
assisted at the receiving line for Miss Pettit, who wore a bouffant gown of white
net with a fitted bodice trimmed with gold. Her white tulle muff was decorated
with pale pink camellias. The proud mother wore pale blue crepe and a corsage of
pink spray orchids. Festivities carried on into the evening at a large dinner given
by the debutante’s parents and Mrs. Paul Runyan at the President Day Club for
As We Were 31
out-of-town guests. Nor was this the end. The entire party moved on to a dance
given for Miss Isabel Runyan. And the next day Mrs. Bevis Longstreth and her
daughter Mary were to give a luncheon honoring Miss Pettit and her houseguests.
On the same day of frenetic social activity, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Douglas
Russell hosted a small supper dance in their Princeton home to present their
daughter Miss Isabel Doolittle Russell. Her sister, Miss Louise Rivington Russell,
assisted in the receiving line. To be in Society required energy and endurance. The
supper dance was preceded by a dinner given by the Russells for their daughter
and out-of-town guests. The debutante, who had graduated in June from the
Foxcroft School, was now a student at Barnard College. 1 Such gaieties testified to the aspirations to elegance in the upper-class precincts of suburban New Jersey.
More informal and more mirthful was the masquerade in Atlanta at the annual
Thanksgiving celebration of the Nine O’Clocks, where the gratin of Atlanta disported themselves in costume. A couple in blackface was pictured clad in bib over-
alls, plaid shirts, and ragged straw hats. Two chicken legs could be clearly discerned
depending from the man’s left hand. “You’d never believe it, unless you were told,
but the two plantation hands, caught by the photographer in the surreptitious act
of ‘swipin’ a chicken at the Nine O’Clock’s annual Thanksgiving celebration, are
Mr. and Mrs. John Raine.” This in a newspaper whose editor, Ralph McGill, was
surely among the most broad-minded of all Southern journalists in matters of race,
and a leader in the dawning of consciousness of the injustice of it all. 2
*
The Times reporting of weddings was straightforward. Miss Hennita Blackfan Jan-
ney, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Allison Janney of New Jersey, was married
in Trinity Episcopal Church, Elizabeth, New Jersey, to William Sayen III, son of
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Sayen of Hamilton Square, New Jersey, by the Rev-
erend Robert Lee Bull, Jr., the rector, assisted by the Right Reverend Wallace J.
Gardener, the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey. The bride was given in marriage
by her father and was attended by Mrs. Gouverneur Morris Nichols of Princeton as
matron of honor. A careful listing of her nine other attendants completed the story.
When Cynthia Barrett, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Barrett of East
Orange, New Jersey, married Ensign Raymond Emile Salman in our Lady of Sor-
rows Church in South Orange, the ceremony was performed by Monsignor James
F. Kelly, the president of Seton Hall College. The bride, escorted by her brother
Leonard Rutledge Barrett, wore her mother’s wedding gown of Brussels lace over
ivory satin. Her lace veil was conformed into a cap. She carried a bouquet of
bouvardia. The matron of honor, the maid of honor, the flower girl, and the best
man were serially listed. 3
The protocol of wedding reportage will be noticed. The principals are listed
first with their parents and then the eminent divine who performed the ceremony.
The bridal garb and accoutrements might be described and perhaps that of the
mother of the bride and the bridal attendants. The careful listing of all of the
participants in the ceremony would complete this homage to the seriousness of
32 Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941
the event that was then taking place. Perhaps there could be no greater gauge of
the explosive postwar changes in American society than the contrast between the
proprieties of The Times reports of 1941 weddings and today’s marriage announcements. In 1941, those whose engagements and marriages were published in The
Times came from a well-defined social class and a recognized place in society.
Today’s announcements bespeak a level of democratization beyond imagining in
the world of The New York Times in 1941.
*
Even in a large metropolitan area—and New York was the epicenter of the larg-
est in the America of November 1941 as it is today—there was an interest in the
ebb and f low of social activity. Thus it was reported from New York that Mrs.
Charles Dana Gibson, who had been at the Plaza, had left the day before for Cin-
cinnati; and that Senator D. Worth Clark had arrived at the Ambassador from
Washington. In Connecticut, Mr. and Mrs. Gayer G. Dominick of Silvermine
had closed their home for the season and opened their town residence in New
York; while Mr. and Mrs. Ralph M. Roosevelt of New Canaan had arrived in
Coconut Grove, Florida, for the winter. 4
The Times recognized the importance of club meetings and published a weekly
schedule. On Monday, December 1, the Orange Mountain Chapter of the Daugh-
ters of the American Revolution in Orange, New Jersey, would hold its anniversary
luncheon. Dr. George H. Ramsey was scheduled to speak to the Junior Service
League of Pelham in the home of Mrs. J. Luther Cleveland. Meanwhile, the Bronx-
ville League of Women Voters would hold its meeting at the home of Mrs. George
VanSchaick, and Hadassah of Passaic, New Jersey, would celebrate its Founders Day. 5
The Social Spectrum: An Entirely Different World
While New York debutantes were eagerly awaiting the “Juniors,” two of their
contemporaries were living in an entirely different world. At the Chicago Inter-
national Livestock Exposition, Helen Althoff of Pipestone, Minnesota, slight and
simply dressed, took the blue ribbon in the Junior Feeding Contest with her
708-pound shorthorn steer, Gene.
It felt “pretty good” to win the championship, Helen modestly said, adding that
she guessed she would get a good price for the steer now.
Her mother had died when Helen was fifteen, leaving her to care for her father
and their home. The 160-acre farm needed not only a housekeeper but another
hand to the work.
She didn’t work so hard, Helen explained. She got her fun raising prize cattle.
But her schedule was indeed daunting. She rose early in the morning, milked the
cows, cooked wheat cakes and sausage for her father’s breakfast, all followed by the
housecleaning. But if she were needed, she was an experienced hand at cutting
grain and putting up hay. After preparing and serving a big dinner at noon, she
was again available to help her father in the afternoon, leaving her evening open
for laundry, ironing, and baking.
As We Were 33
Asked whether she danced or dated, Helen replied promptly: “I don’t have time
for such things. Besides I don’t like dancing. I’ve never done any.” She patted her
steer and left the ring.
Watching all of this was Irene Brown of Laledo, Mercer County, a seventeen-
year-old freshman at Monmouth College. She had been the first girl to win the
Steer Feeding Grand Championship at the Livestock Exposition of 1938. Dis-
qualified from currently competing because she lived at school, she explained that
when she was home she helped her brother Ross feed the steers and she had high
hopes of repeating her 1938 championship.
Asked her ambition, she replied that she probably would teach home eco-
nomics but her true desire was to be “an efficient farm wife.” Overhearing that
remark, Helen Althoff was quick to add, “Me, too,” and she smiled for the first
time that day.
*
These girls came from presumably prosperous farms where the science of raising
prize cattle and the art of marketing them were well known. But there was an
entirely different level of agricultural life, for one example, in Georgia. School-
teachers in the Peach State knew that every year there were thousands of children
who stayed away from school because they lacked the proper clothes. Indeed, a
recent WPA survey had shown that some 30,000 farm families in Georgia were
not able to support themselves through the winter, especially where the cotton
crop had fallen victim to drought. The Tom Richardsons, whose family had lived
for three generations in the same house, had four children to clothe, the eldest
eleven years old. Their daughter Berta, ten, was generally acknowledged to be one
of the best-dressed girls in her school. The annual budget for this display of style
combined with utility was an astonishing $7.69.
How did Mrs. Richardson do it? She did it by making almost every item of
clothing her daughter wore, as well as the clothes of the rest of the family. This