By Stephen DeAngelis
One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is to walk through a used, rare bookstore near my home and peruse the new “used” books they purchased from estate libraries. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of a 1941 Fortune Magazine that is in excellent condition given its age.
On the cover of the magazine (pictured below), is a reproduction of Fernand Leger’s art lithograph. It has maintained its vibrant colors (amazing for being over 83 years old). Leger was best known for being an avant-garde cubist painter and a forerunner of the pop art movement. Fortune described Leger as a member of a group of artists who were in U.S. exile from Europe. The artists included in this edition were Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Amedee Ozenfant, Marc Chagall, Andre Masson, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali, Eugene Berman, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligman, and George Grosz.
Fortune Magazine December 1941
The section of the magazine seen below discusses “The Great Flight of Culture” from Europe to the United States. In this section, Fortune observed, “The U.S. has had three waves of immigration. There was that which souled the country, propounded its democracy, set up its government, and defined its culture. There followed the immigration of labor which developed the economic backbone of the country. And there is now this greatest migration of intellectuals since the Byzantine.” These waves of immigration, which formed the great melting pot of the United States, were a core strength of the country, according to the magazine.
In this sense, Fortune reflects St. Augustine’s definition of a nation, where he states that “… a people (read nation) is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love.”
Fortune Magazine, December 1941, pages 102 and 103
The rest of the magazine updated the reader on the state of the War in Europe and U.S. efforts to gear up its industrial base to manufacture wartime material to support the war effort. The magazine is a time capsule describing the east-west alignment between the United States and the free people of Europe. Included are patriotic articles describing how the U.S. engaged in WWII that dominated the rest of the edition.
Fortune was, and is, a well-respected business magazine that strongly supports capitalism, business, and the American community. In fact, as it states on its website, “Fortune’s mission is to change the world by making business better. We achieve that by providing trusted information, telling stories, and building world-class communities. We measure performance by rigorous benchmarks, and we hold companies accountable. Our goal is to make Fortune a force for good through its second century and beyond.” Trusted information is a key lifeblood of society’s fabric.
The lessons learned over eighty years ago seem like great lessons for today. More to come….
1 Fortune Magazine, December 1941 edition
2 St Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, Book 19, Chapter 24, January 1, 426
