Intro
I recently bought this 1929 Saturday Evening Post advertisement for Franklin Automobiles because of its design. The illustration shows a woman stepping out of a red Franklin with the tagline: “Air-cooled motoring, the only different performance makes Franklin the road champion.”
When I examined this further at home, I took it out of its folder, turned it over, and found a surprise. The back carried a continuation of a feature article titled “Peace by Sense and Science,” published on July 20, 1929, only a few months before the stock market crash.
With all the discussion around the economy in 2025 and the frequent comparisons people draw between today’s uncertainty and the 1920s and 1930s, I was intrigued to read this piece. It offers an interesting window into how people viewed progress, peace, and responsibility during another time of transformation.
Frontside
Backside
What the Page Says
This section of the article focuses on how peace and prosperity depend on reason, education, and cooperation rather than emotion or power. It argues that:
- Industrial and scientific progress must serve moral and social responsibility.
- Trade should promote collaboration, not rivalry, especially between Britain and America.
- Education and rational thinking are the foundations for long-term peace.
It is a practical view of progress that reflects confidence in logic and shared purpose to prevent future wars.
What the Full Article Was About
The full essay, “Peace by Sense and Science,” describes a vision of peace built through intellect and fair economic relations rather than politics or emotion. It presents “sense” as reason and fairness, and “science” as technological and social progress. Together, they form a framework for stability.
The author believed that Britain and the United States had a special role in setting this example. That optimism would soon be tested by the Great Depression and the global instability that followed.
I see a parallel between the long-term impact of the industrial revolution on early 20th-century society and the influence of the internet and artificial intelligence on ours today. Just as the industrial revolution redefined work, communication, and power, the digital revolution is reshaping how we live and think. The internet, now around 30–40 years old, occupies a similar historical position to where industrialization stood in the early 1900s — transformative, but still evolving.
Historical Significance
Published in mid-1929, this article reflects a moment of optimism just months before the world changed. It represents the mindset of an era that placed its faith in science, rational governance, and industrial progress. The tone is confident and forward-looking, capturing the late 1920s belief that humanity could solve its problems through intellect and technology.
In hindsight, it reads as a snapshot of pre-Depression idealism. Within months, that confidence in progress and prosperity would give way to economic collapse and growing political extremism worldwide. The article’s focus on cooperation, responsibility, and moral use of progress feels particularly significant knowing what came next.
About The Saturday Evening Post in the 1920's
When I first stumbled across this vintage Franklin Automobiles advertisement, I didn’t know much about The Saturday Evening Post. I had seen the magazine’s name before while digging through antique store collections, but this was the first time I had ever walked home with something from its pages. Once I discovered the article on the back, I became curious about the publication’s historical context. I started researching the magazine to understand the kind of audience this article was written for. What I found added an entirely new layer of context to the page I discovered.
In 1929, The Saturday Evening Post was one of the most widely read magazines in America and a powerful voice for middle-class values. Politically, it leaned conservative and pro-business, promoting faith in capitalism, science, and moral order as paths to national stability. The magazine often published essays that blended optimism about progress with caution about social responsibility. Articles like “Peace by Sense and Science” fit within this worldview, reflecting their belief that rational thought and industry could secure peace and prosperity for the modern world.
About The Author
Richard Washburn Child (1881–1935) was an American diplomat, novelist, and journalist. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 1921 to 1924 and contributed frequently to The Saturday Evening Post. In the 1920s, he became known for promoting rationalism and order as guiding principles for international stability.
Child later became an outspoken supporter of Italian Fascism (☹️), which at the time many Western observers viewed as a modernizing and anti-communist reform movement rather than it’s true form, a dictatorship. From a modern perspective, we understand that early “admiration” for Mussolini’s system profoundly ignored the violence, censorship, and loss of individual freedom that soon followed.
It is also striking that today’s political climate contains echoes of those same debates. Some modern political figures push for the adoption of nationalist or authoritarian policies while distancing themselves from investments in science, education, and global cooperation — the very values Child’s article publicly celebrated in 1929. That tension between progress and control remains a defining political question still, 100 years later.
Historical Context Then and Now
Reading Child’s work today requires separating his optimism about science and order from the ideology he later endorsed. In the 1920s, fascism was often presented in the U.S. press as an efficient, technocratic movement that restored discipline and productivity after World War I. Technocratic simply means governance led by technical experts rather than politicians or the public.
It’s worth noting that the modern version of “technocratic influence” often shows up in the dominance of Big Tech (companies like Meta, Google, and X) which now control major parts of global communication, information visibility, and public discourse. The concentration of that much control in so few hands raises similar concerns about power, access, and accountability, just under a new name.
Many American intellectuals at the time equated fascism with modernization and national unity, not oppression. By contrast, today the term rightly carries the full historical weight of authoritarianism, control, and the denial of freedom.
Seeing that distinction helps explain how Child could write persuasively about “sense and science” as tools for peace while later supporting a system that rejected both intellectual freedom and moral accountability.
Nearly a century later, we are again navigating the tension between technological progress and ethical responsibility, between the promise of order and the cost of control. The lesson in revisiting his article is clear to me: progress without humanity repeats the same mistakes history already recorded.
Final Remarks
Both sides of this 1929 magazine page tell the same story in different forms. The Franklin Automobiles ad celebrates innovation and engineering. The article on the back celebrates rational thought and human cooperation. Together, they capture a world confident in its own progress, unaware of how fragile (and perhaps false) that optimism was.
Nearly a century later, we are still confronting the same questions: how do we balance innovation with responsibility, and intellect with empathy? The forces that shaped 1929 (rapid technological change, economic uncertainty, and competing ideas of governance) continue to shape our world today.
This single magazine page, preserved by chance, reminds us that progress and stability do not always mean the same thing. Technological and intellectual advancement mean little without accountability, empathy, and shared purpose. As we enter a new age defined by artificial intelligence, climate change, and information control, the lessons from 1929 still apply. The challenge is not just to move forward, but to ensure that progress benefits everyone, not just those who control it.
For those who want to read the full piece, the original article (and FULL magazine) is available through the Internet Archives here: Peace by Sense and Science – The Saturday Evening Post, July 20, 1929
Warm regards,
Lexi
Resources
- Peace by Sense and Science – The Saturday Evening Post, July 20, 1929
- http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/k02/k02669.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Washburn_Child
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/210100662/richard-washburn-child
- https://www.wolfgangs.com/vintage-magazines/the-saturday-evening-post/vintage-magazine/OMS08681.html
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/saturday-evening-post
- https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/132492102.pdf
- https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/38468
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