He’s a Rat Farmer
A strange little livestock ranch in the attic gave Norton McKinney a new life and a $10,000 crop.
By William Gilman
“FUNNY kind of a business for a fellow to get into,” the villagers shake their heads as they glance up at the old mansion Norton McKinney bought in quiet little Middletown Springs, Vermont.
And it is a funny setup, all right. The attic in his antiquated home swarms with rats—mice, too. Last time he took a census there were 1500 adult rats and mice, with new litters running up the rodent population practically every day. You’d think his wife Georgia would raise the roof about that ratty situation up in the attic—but, no, she only wants to hear more rats racing around over their heads. She even helps him nurse and coddle new-born rats with germ-free water and purify the air they breathe with ultra-violet lamps. No wonder their place is called Funny Farms!
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I’m not exactly sure how that works, but it doesn’t look painless to me.
THE SABO PAINLESS HAIR REMOVER
An instrument that removes superfluous hair painlessly and satisfactorily. No drugs. No chemicals. Not a needle. Entirely automatic. $3.00 brings it parcel post with money back guarantee. Descriptive literature free. THE EDAM MFG. CO., 3123 Scrant on Road, Cleveland, O.
Handy Aids for the Household
HANDY BASKET FOR LAUNDRY
A new canvas bag hangs on the washer to catch the clothes, and can be carried easily or hung on the line
EGG OPENER
Squeezed together and pressed down over the top of a soft-boiled egg, the blades of the odd accessory at left shear off the upper shell
ROLLER STRAINER
In the strainer shown below, an egg-shaped roller presses the food against the mesh, and a rotating scraper prevents clogging
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This is an example of the cigarette industry brilliantly portraying their own propaganda as conventional wisdom.
In the 1920’s it was considered inappropriate for women to smoke. Realizing that they could double their market the American Tobacco company hired a man named Edward Bernays to change that perception. Bernays, who is considered the father of the public relations industry, decided it would be effective to associate smoking with freedom and womens suffrage. He payed models to march in women’s rights parades smoking cigarettes and referring to them as “Torches of Freedom”. Then he made sure all of the major papers and magazines noted this fact and prominently featured pictures of them. An easy task since he worked for their biggest advertisers.
The cigarette industry spent a lot of money to associate women getting the vote with smoking and apparently it was still paying off handsomely a decade later.
If you want to learn more about this and a host of other topics relating to marketing, propaganda, public relations and the rise of consumer society you should check out the amazing BBC documentary series “The Century of Self” by Adam Curtis (available at the Internet Archive and Google Video). I found it be a very eye opening experience.
I really don’t know if I should smoke…
… but my brothers and my sweetheart smoke, and it does give me a lot of pleasure.
Women began to smoke, so they tell me, just about the time they began to vote, but that’s hardly a reason for women smoking. I guess I just like to smoke, that’s all.
It so happens that I smoke CHESTERFIELD. They seem to be milder and they have a very pleasing taste.
the Cigarette that’s Milder
the Cigarette that Tastes Better
Is the Iron Horse Doomed?
Electrification of Pennsylvania R.R. on Gigantic Scale May Presage End of the Steam Locomotive
By Kenneth M. Swezey
FROM the Pennsylvania Railroad route between New York and Washington, D. C, the snorting monsters which for more than fifty years have hauled some of the heaviest freight and passenger traffic in America are soon to disappear. By the middle of 1933, at least 150 electric-powered giants, and several hundred multiple-unit cars, will be handling the entire traffic on this section of the line with a speed, smoothness, and economy never before achieved. This greatest steam railroad electrification project, involving 325 miles of route and 1,300 miles of track and costing a hundred million dollars, marks the beginning of a new era in railroad transportation. For almost half a century, the Iron Horse has roared across the continents of the world, snorting defiance at the threat of electricity. Without undue humiliation it let its sleek rival do the quiet and smokeless auxiliary work at terminals, in long tunnels, and on suburban and inter-urban passenger lines.
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This is a really weird ad and nowadays it would probably be considered child porn. The message I got was: “Feed your kids Cocomalt so you don’t have to send them to visit pervy sunlamp guy.” And what is going on with the long line of half naked kids in dragging sleds through the snow? They look like they’re from a Siberian version of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Now Your Child Can “Drink Sunshine” 3 times a day
ONE OF SUNSHINE’S GREAT BENEFITS in this Vitamin D food
WE HAVE been called “a nation of sun-worshippers.” By sunlamps, by exposure, by every means possible we try to obtain as much sunshine as possible.
Here is one of the important reasons why: In the rays of the sun there exists a force which, acting upon the body, produces that precious element—Vitamin D. This Vitamin D enables the body to utilize efficiently the food-calcium and food-phosphorus in the development of sound, even teeth — straight, strong bones— well-formed, husky bodies. Of all the many great benefits of sunshine, this is perhaps one of the most significant.
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What the heck is a flooglehorn?
You Play it Sweet, Side Man Gives the Beat
SOME oscillating tubes, housed in a cabinet sitting next to your piano, guitar or flooglehorn, can turn you into a one-man orchestra.
The cabinet, actually a new electronic instrument called Side Man, produces a variety of instrumental sounds—from bass drum, torn torn and wood block to maracas, brush and cymbal.
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“Perhaps its greatest contribution has been the elimination of empty phrases. A speaker with a vivid personality can say nothing, and say it attractively, but the man who tries to deliver the same speech to the radio, where only words count, is doomed to failure.”
I’m not sure that was ever really true, just look at Rush Limbaugh. Then TV came along and well…. you know the rest.
Political Spellbinding by Radio
ONE hundred and ten million Americans will have the opportunity next March of listening to the inauguration of the first ruler of any nation to be chosen after a radio campaign. While thousands heard the three presidential candidates in person, millions more at some time or other during the campaign heard their voices over the radio, and that same opportunity will be extended when the inaugural address is delivered. The old - fashioned spellbinder climbed down off the stump in this campaign of 1924 and settled himself in front of a microphone, and incidentally some of the political speakers had to fit themselves to an entirely new form of public speaking. Picturesque and vivid personalities are lost on the radio audience. The speaker’s individuality counts for nothing, and what he says for everything when the listener is sitting a hundred or a thousand miles away. Words have displaced gestures as vote getters.
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Does anyone know how this works or what the match was made of?
Update: A reader sent in this possibility: an “Ignitable Stick” from the Google patent database. Thanks!
MATCH CAN BE LIGHTED 100 TIMES
If you borrow a match from the gentleman pictured at the right, he is likely to want it back! He is one of the users of a new repeating match recently produced in England. The match may be struck and relighted more than a hundred times. A small box, coated with a special composition used as the striking surface, serves as a holder for the repeating match when it is not in use. The device is much thicker than an ordinary parlor match and gives a correspondingly larger flame
There are a lot of jokes to be made here about the cycles he left out, but I think I’ll leave those to the comments.
Do Cycles Rule Your Life?
If science manages to chart the rhythms of the universe, the world may be able to predict its own wars, depressions and epidemics.
By Lester David
THE stock market will hit the crest of a rising wave in the mid-1950s.
There will be extra good salmon fishing in eastern Canada in 1953.
Diphtheria and influenza will strike hard in the U. S. in 1953.
These predictions, and many others, are based on an amazing yet little known science—cycle research. A group of some 3,000 scientists, delving deep into history, is charting the occurrence of wars, business activities, disease, weather, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions—even your own emotions.
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