Plain Talk (9 issues)
Washington, D. C. Plain Talk Magazine, Inc., 1933-37. A representative sample of Morris A. Bealle’s idiosyncratic Depression-era right-wing monthly, issued under the slogans “America First,” “Independent, But Not Neutral,” and “Spokesman of the Forgotten Man.” Revived by Bealle around 1930–31 after he acquired the name of an earlier defunct magazine, Plain Talk presented itself as an exposer of political, financial, and professional corruption. Its sensational illustrated covers and emphatic headlines resemble the contemporary newsstand exposé press, while its contents anticipate the nationalist, anti-internationalist, and conspiracy-minded journalism later associated with the American Old Right.
The 1933 issues concentrate heavily upon the banking crisis, veterans’ compensation, unemployment, monetary policy, and the opening months of the New Deal. Articles include “The Future of the Banks,” “The Case Against the ‘Bonus,’” “Double Stock Liability—Bankers’ Dilemma,” “Government Should Guarantee Bank Deposits,” “Veterans Take a Licking,” “The Bonus Army of 1933,” “Buying Power for the Masses,” and attacks upon political machines, foreign-debt agreements, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, prohibition, and government economy campaigns. Pieces promoting chiropractic and osteopathy reveal an early form of Bealle’s enduring hostility toward the organized medical profession.
The later numbers broaden this program of populist exposé. Subjects advertised on the covers include the treatment of mentally ill veterans, “Medical Racketeering in Schools,” newspaper control, the life-insurance lobby, holding companies, tax avoidance, monetary reform, the Townsend pension plan, immigration, communism, “World Regimentation,” the Rockefeller family, and the influence of corporations and professional associations upon public policy. Their tone is belligerently anti-establishment and frequently conspiratorial, mixing attacks on Roosevelt and the New Deal with criticism of banks, trusts, Republican elites, and concentrated private wealth.
An illuminating run documenting the politically fluid American right during the Depression: nationalist and isolationist, hostile to communism and immigration, but also aggressively anti-bank, pro-veteran, suspicious of corporate monopoly, and receptive to radical monetary and social-welfare proposals. The school-library stamps on several issues provide additional evidence that this polemical material circulated beyond explicitly political organizations and reached readers in a small North Dakota community.
Nine assorted issues, including Vol. 9, nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8 (January, February, April, May, August, 1933); Vol. 10, Nos. 10-11 (October and November 1934); Vol. 11, No. 9 (September 1935); and Vol. 15, No. 2 (August 1937). Stapled color wrappers, some pictorial; all issues 48 pp. except the latter two, which are 32 pp. and 64 pp.; illustrated with photographs, cartoons, caricatures, and diagrams. Moderate edgewear and occasional short tears, creasing, chipping, or separation at spines; several later issues bearing contemporary ownership stamps of Reeder Public School District No. 3, Reeder, North Dakota. Generally very good. Item #15208
Price: $350.00