Thought you may want to see this article.

Sort of, like, a political ad -don't you think ??  Most people today have no idea how bad the Great Depression era was.  My son's father-in-law,  a retired Army Colonel, now deceased  would go through the neighborhood begging at the back door for food. Until he passed he never left food on his plate.

I am a little confused. I am not certain what the original poster means by commentary. The link seems to me to be an article about one of the companies that produced postcards. I only skimmed the article, but it seems interesting, and I intend to go back later and read it.

The whole website looks interesting too. Anybody belong to it?

Original poster here some know me by my name in which is easily read at the top of my post. It is Erik...

And why do you assume it is a negative? I asked a simple question and thought a simple answer would suffice. Your reply is now past my interest however I have a reply for you "replier"..

Today's youth are reading this in an authorative news feed published on mobile phones.

Below in quotes from the article..some of the opinions and commentary.

"For people who did not live in the United States during the 1930s and ’40s, the most familiar depictions of those decades come from two notoriously unreliable sources.."

"The second unreliable sources are linen postcards, which were published in the hundreds of millions from 1931 to 1950 and offer an even more revealing glimpse of the United States during those yearS.."

I asked what you, replier thinks about the authors comments in regard to this history many of the participants of this forum may be able to remember first hand living in this "forgotten era"  in the minds of the millennial. 

My comment in regard to the authors comments are.. why is this any different than today's CGI enhanced advertising used now?

original poster here collects these fine artifacts. I enjoy them and see them as a part of our culture. Not a negative.

It is a nice site and yes I am a subscriber. 

Thank you for the reply, replier.  

Quite interesting, Erik.  When I was a little boy (around 1953) I talked my father into buying me the very Santa Fe Super Chief postcard shown at the beginning of your thread.  At that early age, I thought of the Fourth District through the orange groves of Anaheim, Orange, and Santa Ana, with which I was familiar.  It was a single track main line, but there were sidings adjacent to orange groves, and you could see Mount Baldy on a good day.  As I grew older, I realized that it was a contrived photo, because

• the Super Chief used the Second District via Pasadena;
• although there were orange groves along the Second District, they were on straight track;
• and the photo bore a strong resemblance to the Company photo I saw hanging in some depots (and which was taken in Illinois).

Therefore, it was an obvious retouching job, but I did not realize until reading the essay attached to your post, that it was so complex.  I had thought that they simply reversed the printing of the photo, hand lettered the nose emblem, and hired an artist to paint the orange trees and Mount Baldy, finally tinting the whole product where it was monochrome.

Thanks for posting this.

Your welcome Tom

The U.S. government hired photographers to go out and record the reality of the Depression.   I have seen a few of those photos, but many more are somewhere....Library of Congress?  I don't know...I think I remember some being posted here on the forum, some train related.  Some lady in Iowa was selling off a huge collection (maybe reproductions) of railroad station postcards.  She did not have the ones I was interested in (that I should have had sense enough in my teens to get out and photo),  so I sure wish it had been a govt. economy boosting project to photograph every station in the U.S.  I was taught to clean my plate, and I still do......although many in my family, with farms, and working for railroads, managed to get through the Depression, but not regally, by any means.

This is a fascinating post.

When I read the page Erik linked to, I was absolutely amazed at how the march of progress has changed how we process imagery. Today, using Photoshop, we can do in seconds what it took an accomplished retouch artist hours, if not days to do! My use of the word "artist" in the previous sentence is on purpose. Those people were artists, in the best sense of the word.

I am no artist. I can't draw good stick figures. But technology has allowed me to "pretend" to be an artist by giving me the tools in Photoshop to retouch and prepare the beautiful images which end up in O Gauge Railroading magazine. I cannot imagine how we would handle images in the magazine and on our web sites if it were not for digital cameras and Adobe Photoshop.

As for the political overtones in the first couple paragraphs, I don't necessarily agree that the movies and the linen postcards were "...notoriously unreliable sources..." for portraying America during the depression. I think both entities were doing what they could to lift the spirits of a country that was going through some very hard times. Were they accurate portrayals of America in the 30's? No, of course not. But they served a purpose at the time.

When looking at historical things like this, we have to be careful that we don't color them too much with our 21st century prism.

Rich,

  You are so correct, hit the nail on the head... on the right track.....   Too many times, too many people make the mistake of wanting to apply contemporary ideas, values, frame of mind, on items and issues of historical significance.  Same as with model railroads.  With Pre/Post War, scale or semi-scale, high rail or tinplate, all must be taken and valued for their varied contribution to our hobby.  They are all in best value and impact when viewed in proper context, same as anything of historical value.

Jesse

MOKATX and the Harty Beatris Railroad 

And why do you assume it is a negative?

I didn't assume anything related to this thread or the article was negative. Sorry if you took my reply that way.
I thought the article's author used his commentary about movies and postcards not being historically accurate primarily as a hook to get people to look at his article.  To me, the article is more about postcard manufacturing processes over time, with focus on a particular company.

I have heard my father and grandfather talk about the depression, although rarely.  It sounded extremely unpleasant.  Probably just bad times that they would prefer to remain in the past and not talk about.  I have seen some documentaries that closely aligned with their comments.  I'm not sure people were protesting and blogging about what they deserve and are entitled to like we see today.  I know at our house I couldn't leave the table until my plate was clean.  Probably an influence from the depression.  The movie Grapes Of Wrath captured some of that era, but still in a glamorous hollywood way.  Rarely heard my grand dad or dad talk about the wars they were in, but what they saw was fairly graphic and unpleasant. 

It is good to remember and learn about the past especially if it is factual.  You can't learn about it without seeing, reading, or hearing about it.  Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.  I am thankful everyday that I live in this great country with freedoms unheard of in other parts of the world.  And don't forget clean water, plentiful food, good health care, good judicial system, relatively low corruption, etc.  Oh I forgot, also O Gauge trains, Legacy, DCS, #chuffs per revolution, TMCC, ERR, adjustable smoke, and well,    what more could you ask for?