Morning Paper Serialized Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here in 1936

Back in 1936, through the fall the morning paper serialized Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here.

September 9th, 1936

September 13th, 1936

In an editorial they wrote:

The Statesman starts publishing today as a serial, one of the important novels of our time, "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. It fictionizes "America under dictatorship." We publish it not to exorcise a bogeyman; but to educate the people in the technique of politicians without scruple, and even of those who may have good purposes but endanger political security by short-cut political methods. The translation from parliamentary government to a dictatorship may be catastrophic as in Italy with the "march on Rome"; or it may be gradual as in Germany where Hitler edged into power by degrees. In this country the course would be to make the congress subservient to the executive, a mere rubber stamp for his will; to strip the supreme court of its power to invalidate laws; to weaken and then to ignore the constitutional guarantees; and finally to abolish the congress and govern by decree.

The hazard they feared was stripping the Supreme Court of its power to invalidate laws, a weakened Court, but didn't account for an activist Court with too much power.

It's hard to imagine the paper today doing anything similarly principled.

A decade earlier, it was interesting to see a furniture ad with imagery from the most recent war, and not any invocation of 1776 and the Revolutionary War.

July 3rd, 1924

They also went hard again on flag veneration and religious rhetoric.

Let the hand that would strike our emblem of Freedom be palsied, the assailing tongue be dumb and the serpent-like heart that would augment strife and discord beneath it protecting aegis be stilled by its own venom.

July 4th, 1924

This morning's paper has a piece on excessive and careless veneration.

In today's paper