Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age 2020048678, 2020048679, 9780197527788, 9780197527801, 9780197527818, 0197527787

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Newspaper Confessions

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Newspaper Confessions A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-​Internet Age

JULIE GOLIA

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Golia, Julie, author. Title: Newspaper confessions : a history of advice columns in a pre-internet age / Julie Golia. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048678 (print) | LCCN 2020048679 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197527788 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197527801 (epub) | ISBN 9780197527818 Subjects: LCSH: Advice columns—United States. | American newspapers—History. | Newspapers—United States—Sections, columns, etc. Classification: LCC PN4888.A38 G65 2021 (print) | LCC PN4888.A38 (ebook) | DDC 070.4/44—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048678 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048679 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197527788.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

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For Christian who provided patience, encouragement, laughter, and good advice

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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1. Making Advice Modern: The Birth of the Newspaper Advice Column

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2. America’s Confessional: Advice Columns and Their Readers

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3. Queen of Heartaches: The Advice Columnist as Icon and Journalist

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4. Advising the Race: Princess Mysteria and the Black Feminist Advice Tradition

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5. The Modern “Experience”: Loneliness, Anonymity, and the Virtual Community

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Conclusion

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

This book is a result of over fifteen years of discovery, research, writing, brainstorming, rethinking, rewriting, editing, and ultimately, letting go. It is a long time to work on one project, and I am humbled by the generosity of so many along the way. The research for this book would not have been possible if not for the financial support I  received from various institutions, including Columbia University, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, and the American Association of University Women. I  have spent more time in a dark room staring at microfilm than a healthy person should, and I am indebted to the librarians and archivists who provided access, guidance, and support, particularly those at the Library of Congress’s Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, the Austin Peay State University Special Collections, the Tulane University Archives, the Mount Holyoke College Archives, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, the Newberry Library, the Detroit News Archives, and the Historic New Orleans Collection. I became a historian because of remarkable teachers. At Hopkins School, Karl Crawford instilled a love of geography and historical method. Lynn Lyerly’s rigorous and empowering approach to gender history has remained with me since my time at Boston College. At Columbia and beyond, Eric Foner has taught me so much about what it means to be a public scholar and a committed teacher. Alice Kessler-​Harris has provided decades of guidance and mentorship; her remarkable intellectual legacy has profoundly shaped my scholarship and professional work. Thank you also to Cathy Hannabach of Ideas on Fire and Susan Ferber of Oxford University Press, whose keen editorial skills have improved the book immensely. I’m lucky to count many dear friends among my history colleagues; thanks in particular to Elizabeth Pillsbury, Jenna Alden, Valerie Paley, Niki Hemmer, April Holm, Rachel Van, Jennifer Brier, and Zaheer Ali for your intellectual

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partnership on this project and others. I  am grateful for my colleagues at New-​York Historical Society, The New  York Public Library, and especially Brooklyn Historical Society for doing groundbreaking public history work with me. Particular thanks to Deborah Schwartz and the Board of Trustees at BHS for granting me a sabbatical in order to complete the book manuscript. Over the years that Newspaper Confessions took shape, my life changed a lot, but my family remained an anchor. I want to thank my stepfather Chuck Spatz, my stepmother Alyssa Esposito, Roger and Judy Vardeleon, and all of my sisters-​in-​law, brothers-​in-​law, stepsisters, and stepbrothers for their patience, generosity, and for our big boisterous families. I am grateful that my brothers, Matthew and Geoffrey Golia, are also two of my best friends and biggest cheerleaders. My father, Robert Golia, has never flagged in his encouragement and his belief in me. My mother, Marian Montano, has always been there to listen to me, encourage me, love me, and occasionally, give me a kick in the pants. My delightful children, Samuel and Cora, may have distracted me from finishing the book, but they were also my biggest motivation. Finally, for making me laugh no matter what, for his razor-​sharp advice, and for his abiding faith in me and in this project, I dedicate this book to Christian Vardeleon.

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Newspaper Confessions

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Introduction

On any given day, one can open a browser window, type in Reddit.com, and witness a distinctly modern incarnation of the advice column—​the Am I  The Asshole (AITA) forum. There, contributors with personal or ethical quandaries ask the site’s users, colloquially called Redditers, to weigh in with a chosen abbreviation: YTA (You’re the Asshole), NTA (Not the Asshole), NAH (No Assholes Here), and so on. Threads address mundane and even comical topics (“AITA for being furious with my husband for getting the Sublime sun tattooed on his arm?”), as well as problems that reflect the defining social and cultural issues of our time—​among them drug addiction, blended families, racial micro-​aggressions at work, and conflicting expectations about marriage and gender roles. In January 2020, one Redditer sought counsel from the forum about his failing marriage, drawing comments from over 1,200 fellow users who overwhelmingly declared that he was NTA. Once a successful business owner, the contributor had recently entered a period of financial hardship, requiring his wife, who had previously stayed home raising their now-​grown children, to take employment. Deeply resentful, the man’s wife became withdrawn and even cruel, insisting that he had failed as a husband, father, and provider. At the end of his post, the Redditer shared a sense of relief at having told his story, even before receiving a single piece of advice. “I am grateful for this forum and the opportunity to vent if nothing else,” he concluded. “It felt good to get this all out finally. Thank you.”1 Almost a century earlier, on February 2, 1927, a popular Detroit News advice column called “Experience” ran several letters from readers seeking counsel about a range of emotional and interpersonal topics, from courtship and marriage to etiquette and comportment. That day, the column featured correspondence from Just Betty, who shared her troubles with advice columnist Nancy Brown, along with the other anonymous readers who regularly wrote

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into “Experience”: contributors with pen names like Blossom, Rag Carpet, Firefly, and Another Mac. A girl of twenty, Just Betty left home when she was a teenager, after her mother’s untimely death drove her father to alcoholism, violence, and indolence. She found a job and bounced from boarding house to boarding house, often fending off the advances of aggressive housemates. Recently, Just Betty met a kind young man and fell in love; at the same time, she tearfully reunited with her brother, who begged her to come home and tend house for him and their father—​though the father had not reformed his ways. Just Betty missed her family, but she also valued her independence, her job, her new sweetheart, and her sanity. At the start of her letter, Just Betty declared that “my whole person is in an uproar, and I can’t get my mind on my work in the day time or sleep at night.” By the time she concluded, however, it was clear that the process of confession had soothed her. “I don’t know whether you’ll answer this or not,” Just Betty shared, “but I feel better now that I’ve told someone.”2 Just as Redditers would later do, Just Betty and other Detroit News advice column participants built an anonymous community in a mass-​media form to ask for guidance, but also to be heard and valued. These correspondents shared compelling personal narratives, drew enthusiastic responses from their virtual communities, and employed a remarkably similar language of therapeutic empathy. Both forums, moreover, played a key role in growing the economic and cultural value of their respective publications. Without realizing it, twenty-​first-​century Redditers—​along with millions of other digital participants—​engage in a form of virtual communication established in newspaper advice columns a century earlier. Over the first half of the twentieth century, American newspapers came to feature hundreds of advice columns, covering topics as diverse as courtship and marriage, childrearing, fashion and beauty, politics, music, art, and literature. Advice columns became unprecedented forums where readers could debate the most resonant cultural crises of the day; in doing so, the columns transformed not only the American newspaper and media landscape, but also the very nature of democratic discourse. Emerging in the 1890s, advice columns helped newspaper publishers to diversify content, raise circulation, draw advertisers, and attract loyal female readers. They gave rise to the newspaper advice columnist, a new type of female journalist who drew on Progressive Era reform traditions and celebrity culture alike to craft the profession. Advice columns also transformed the way that Americans gave and received interpersonal counsel, as readers increasingly turned to public, anonymous, and interactive sites for help with their most intimate problems, rather

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than to their family members or friends. Some columnists even encouraged their readers to correspond regularly with each other within the pages of the column, fostering virtual communities of confession, debate, and empathy. In this sense, advice columns served as important and overlooked precursors to many forms of popular therapy—​from group counseling to pop psychology—​ and to participatory communities that flourished online in the late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries.

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Advice columns emerged when they did because of revolutionary changes in the content, style, and business of newspapers taking place at the turn of the twentieth century. By 1900, American news had commercialized, evolving from a partisan organ into a commodity in and of itself valued for its ability to generate profit, especially advertising profit.3 At the same time, advertising firms focused on tapping the “female market” based on the widespread assumption that women were the primary family purchasers. To reach the demographic that their advertisers so coveted, publishers established robust woman’s pages, developed content geared toward “feminine audiences,” and experimented with new feature genres like advice columns. During the 1890s, only about half of American newspapers featured any content for women, and those that did reserved less than a column of material. By 1925, virtually all featured extensive woman’s sections with a bevy of interactive features, including one or more advice columns. This expansion and diversification of women’s content constituted nothing less than the feminization of the American newspaper, elevating women readers as essential consumers of daily mass-​circulation papers.4 Publishers and female readers alike loved advice columns because of their interactivity. Newspaper executives recognized that the serial nature of the columns could help them build loyal, long-​term customers who turned to the woman’s page each day to follow ongoing conversations, look for updates from regular correspondents, and write in themselves. Reader letters, moreover, allowed publishers to quantify their female readership and provide concrete evidence of a column’s popularity to potential advertisers, thus growing their profits. By contrast, women readers seized on the interactivity of advice columns to transform woman’s pages into communities where their voices could be heard. The participatory nature of the columns also drew unexpected readers to the woman’s page—​a significant number of men, who crossed the newspaper’s gendered boundaries to take part in ongoing debates. Newspaper advice columns served as an essential—​and rarely acknowledged—​foundation

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on which future media genres would build. Almost a century before the creation of fan websites and social media communities aimed at niche groups such as sports aficionados, television enthusiasts, and gamers, these columns demonstrated how enthralling interactive media could be.5 In their woman’s page content and in their pitches to advertisers, publishers articulated an idealized vision of their female readership:  white, middle-​ class women with enough disposable income to prioritize regular consumer spending. The mass-​circulation publications that dominated the newspaper business during the early twentieth century were essentially white papers, printed by white publishers, capitalized largely by white advertisers, run by a white staff, and geared toward a white readership. Advice columns of this era carefully avoided topics of racism, poverty, and class strife, and columnists almost never featured letters from black Americans. Yet during the early twentieth century, mass-​ circulation newspaper readers were more diverse than they had ever been, especially in urban centers. Publishers like E. W. Scripps and Joseph Pulitzer recognized that the tens of millions of immigrants arriving in the United States between the 1880s and 1920s were potential customers. They established afternoon editions aimed at working-​class readers who tended to purchase papers after their early shifts and employed simplified headlines and more illustrations for a growing multilingual readership. Publishers and editors made a much smaller effort to draw black readers, despite the fact that the number of African Americans migrating to northern cities from the South rose steadily in the early twentieth century. Black men and women were stalwart customers of the newspapers that comprised a small but growing national African American press, but they also read mainstream daily papers, in part because most black newspapers were weeklies.6 Readers of color, poor readers, and immigrants interacted with the messages of the mainstream woman’s page in complex ways, sometimes endorsing or internalizing the cultural messages embedded in advice columns and other special features, and sometimes rejecting others. For some—​particularly European immigrants—​the woman’s page seemed to offer a blueprint for assimilation, acceptance, and social and financial success. Black Americans, who had to grapple with the often explicitly white supremacist values that many newspapers articulated, likely felt more alienated from mass-​circulation newspaper content. Publishers of African American newspapers took similar steps to diversify their content and draw advertisers, allowing pioneering black columnists to craft an alternative dialogue of advice that addressed the multiple struggles of their target audience, black urban women. In many ways,

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newspapers captured the paradox of American culture in the early twentieth century, as evolving media forms widened the net of what it meant to be American, even while espousing virulently racist and classist ideas.

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Advice columns gave columnists and participants a new kind of public forum to critique what they saw as the fractured and isolated nature of modern life. When examined over several decades, readers’ questions reveal consistent topics and themes that came to define a collective vision of modernity.7 Letters to advice columns reflected Americans’ concerns about the impact of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and the nationalization of businesses, communities, and ideas on their lives. City life, increasingly the norm for Americans by the early twentieth century, meant different living arrangements, changing work patterns for both men and women, and the existence of new and previously unimaginable leisure opportunities. Massive movements of people—​waves of immigrants settling in the United States, the migration of millions of black Americans to northern urban centers—​laid the groundwork for an unprecedentedly pluralistic society. Of course, many of these processes had begun during the nineteenth century, well before advice columns took off. Yet it was during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s that newspaper readers revealed an almost unquenchable desire to discuss and quantify these changes—​and found the space to do so in mass-​circulation newspapers.8 Urbanization, nationalization, and industrialization were broad, abstract processes that had material effects on the most personal and intimate aspects of Americans’ lives. Correspondents in the Boston Globe’s interactive “Confidential Chat” sought solace and advice from each other as their children rejected parental authority and spent more time among peers in movie theaters, dance halls, and amusement parks. During the 1910s and 1920s, syndicated advice columnist Dorothy Dix received regular letters from husbands frustrated with their wives’ insistent demands that they be taken dancing or to the movies. Novelist-​turned-​columnist Laura Jean Libbey held a 1912 forum in which her reader-​contributors debated the income levels necessary for young working-​class couples to set up household in the city. During the 1930s, Beatrice Fairfax received a spate of letters from teenagers expressing frustration with newer, more casual dating practices and the mixed messages they received about sexual behavior. And countless correspondents wrote into “Experience,” the Detroit News’s local advice column that printed Just Betty’s letter, expressing feelings of hopelessness and isolation as residents of an industrialized city in the 1920s and 1930s, and seeking a cure for the loneliness

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of urban life in the pages of the column. These ongoing conversations between columnists, contributors, and readers became an indispensable tool for recalibrating what it meant to be a parent, a spouse, a teenager, a worker, and a man or a woman in modern American society. When readers wrote into advice columns with marriage troubles, etiquette questions, or housekeeping queries, they sought not just counsel, but the sympathy of the columnist and her readers. Over time, this process of confession and catharsis became central to advice exchange. As Nancy Brown, who helmed the Detroit News column “Experience,” observed in 1921, “The principal appeal of the [advice] column is the love that we all have to talk about ourselves and the human desire to unburden our troubles.” For readers and correspondents struggling with feelings of loneliness, depression, and ennui, the columns provided proof that they were not alone in their isolation. In some columns, including “Experience,” participants even maintained close and ongoing virtual relationships in the pages of their newspaper. “You will never know,” wrote contributor Another Kim to the Detroit News column in 1930, “how much belonging to the [Column] Family has had to do with saving my reason.” Many decades later, participants in some of the Internet’s earliest chat rooms expressed similarly personal sentiments. On the WELL, a subscription-​based online community founded in 1985, one longtime member, Tom Mandel, wrote to the group shortly before his death from cancer, “I cannot tell you how sad and griefstriken [sic] I am that I cannot stay to play and argue with you much longer.” Both the structures and the intimate language of online virtual relationships, seen so poignantly in Mandel’s final post on the WELL, were established decades earlier in columns like “Experience.”9 Yet the enthusiastic reader participation that marked early twentieth-​ century advice columns could sometimes obscure the powerful editorial influence that columnists exerted over the tone and message of their columns. Chameleon-​like, advice columnists recognized the benefits of reader debates, but also stood ready to confidently assert their worldviews to readers across the country. “If a preacher has a congregation of a couple of hundred people on Sunday he thinks he has a good audience,” wrote syndicated columnist Dorothy Dix in the late 1920s. “If he preaches to a thousand people on Sunday, we consider him a popular preacher, and speak of his great influence. Without vanity, I may say that every day I talk to millions of men and women who read the daily papers.” As confidantes and advisors to millions of readers, columnists like Dix represented an important gendered transformation of cultural authority in the early twentieth century. Millions of Americans no

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longer directed questions face-​to-​face to family, priests, or other often-​male figures of authority; instead, they turned to a female columnist and to a mass of virtual correspondents. Via their columns and the popular press, the most successful columnists carefully crafted and nurtured their public personas, drawing followers over years and sometimes decades. The contours of the modern celebrity journalist that we know today took shape in the pages of newspaper advice columns.10

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Newspaper Confessions offers the first cultural history of early twentieth-​century advice columns. It reveals that the genre’s heyday began decades before Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren launched their now-​iconic careers in the 1950s. Most studies of advice columns have focused on analyzing the content and messages of advice columns—​a valid approach, but one that sees the columns only as texts and not as a genre worthy of study in and of itself.11 By contrast, this book contends that the content of advice columns is just one of many important aspects of the genre that reveals its impact on the modern newspaper and on American culture. It analyzes not only what the columns say, but also the social context in which they emerged and the editorial and business decisions that allowed them to flourish. Newspaper Confessions is based on an examination of thirty-​one mass-​ circulation newspapers between the years of 1895 and 1940. This long span of time enabled an analysis that charted content and style changes, chronicled the growth of woman’s sections, and located advice columns for further in-​ depth study.12 To understand the complex web of topics and messages in advice columns, this book draws on detailed, multi-​decade case studies of seven columns featured in newspapers across the country.13 Trade journals, newspaper business records, advice columnists’ personal papers, and contemporary press coverage of columns shed light on the motivations of columnists, editors, publishers, and advertisers. One of the most challenging research hurdles was the lack of existing newspaper business records dating back to the early twentieth century. Before the digital age, many newspaper companies disposed of their institutional records each decade. Anecdotal business and editorial records exist from some publications, including the Boston Globe and the Chicago Daily News, but there was not enough extant source material to support industry-​wide conclusions about publishers’ handling of advice columns.14 As such, the book relies on trade journals like Printers’ Ink and Editor and Publisher to piece together the motivations and perspectives of newspaper publishers and their relationship with advertisers.

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What resulted is a study that reveals as much about modern American culture and the making of the current media environment as it does about the history of advice. An influential, long-​lasting, and vibrant genre of cultural expression, advice columns gave rise to a new form of interpersonal communication, one that paved the way for the forums, chat rooms, and social media groups that would flourish on the Internet many decades later. In the early twentieth century, technological advances—​improved printing apparatuses, new delivery and transport abilities, and the rise of marketing strategies—​ were able to bring readers together in the public space of the newspaper in ways heretofore impossible. By the end of the 1900s, another technological leap—​the development of the Internet—​allowed for these seeds of virtual community to grow again. Newspapers, like the Internet, offered readers the anonymity to make candid revelations about remarkably personal details of their lives: sexual indiscretions, failed marriages, struggles between children and parents, and fears about aging and death. The columns created a new kind of virtual kinship, at once intimate and anonymous, available for voyeuristic observation by a paper’s many readers. In doing so, they continue to shape the way we communicate, interact, and connect today, on the Internet and beyond.

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Making Advice Modern The Birth of the Newspaper Advice Column

The newspaper advice column was by no means the first print genre to experiment with the dissemination of advice. For centuries, public advice giving has been a popular and potent tradition, one with deeply conservative roots. Publishers, religious leaders, authors, and other self-​styled counselors began creating and selling advice via conduct books and periodicals as early as the seventeenth century. These figures—​almost always men—​used advice in a number of ways: as a commodity, as a form of social control, as a platform to endorse traditional gender roles to wide audiences, and as an outlet for male readers and writers to express their fears about cultural change. In each of these early genres, advice giving was seen as a one-​way transmission of information from expert to audience. Transformations in media and in American society and culture at the end of the nineteenth century paved the way for a new and modern paradigm of advice—​one that was interactive, public, flexible in topic and form, and woman-​centered. The newspaper industry’s growing reliance on advertising revenue prompted publishers to re-​envision their targeted customers as female. Newspapers courted women readers by establishing separate woman’s pages, hiring women writers and editors to helm “soft news” sections, and creating innovative gendered features. Advice columns proved a particularly popular genre for publishers because the constant influx of reader letters enabled them to quantify their female audience to potential advertisers. Readers, too, were drawn to advice columns, albeit for very different reasons. The columns established a virtual forum that allowed female columnists and readers to transform advice from a one-​way lecture into an ongoing conversation. Unlike conduct books, newspaper advice columns

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proved adaptable and evolving; many subgenres of advice columns emerged, allowing for diverse conversations about dozens of issues. The columns made popular the strikingly modern notion that Americans could seek comfort and support not from family, but from a community of anonymous comrades. In this way, they not only set a precedent for a new genre, but redefined the very meaning of advice as an ongoing and subjective dialogue.

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Primitive question-​ and-​ answer columns served as one of the first feature forms in early newspaper history. In 1690s London, for example, John Dunton, editor of the bawdy and innovative Athenian Mercury, began answering questions about everything from practical botany to premarital sex. While most readers made inquiries about history or current events, other letter writers introduced issues such as marriage, public comportment, and class divisions, expanding the topics discussed in newspapers well beyond the traditional purview of politics and economics. Yet Dunton’s question-​ and-​answer column differed from twentieth-​century advice columns in important ways. While the Mercury did feature some letters from women and many letters concerning women’s roles, Dunton proved critical of British women’s growing participation in the public sphere and intended his column to address his male readers’ anxieties about changing gender roles. Few letter writers, moreover, wrote in repeatedly enough to foster an ongoing dialogue with the editor or the audience.1 The interactive newspaper feature made its way across the Atlantic and bore fruit in eighteenth-​century America in the form of newspaper letters to the editor. In early America, as in Britain, most newspapers eschewed the cultural topics of the Athenian Mercury, which as a publication remained something of an outlier. Periodicals typically focused their content on politics, foreign affairs, and business. To accommodate their often vocal, opinionated readership, many American publications carved out letters-​to-​ the-​editor sections to engage their presumed male audience in debates about party politics. In the years before newspapers adopted modern standards of objectivity, readers’ letters could be almost indistinguishable from reportage. The letter format served as a didactic device that editors could use to educate—​or indoctrinate—​their readers on particular political issues during the nineteenth-​century heyday of partisan newspapers. Their position on the editorial page, rather than on a feature page, placed them firmly within the realm of political news and debate. Although letters-​to-​the-​editor sections demonstrated some potential for community building and activism,

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rarely did the forums foster the intimate and long-​lasting conversations that twentieth-​century advice columns would.2 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, conduct literature became a popular and influential medium for disseminating behavioral and etiquette advice. In books and pamphlets, authoritative advice givers laid out hard-​and-​fast rules on comportment that left little room for debate. Authors directed conduct literature toward one sex or another—​and one race or another—​and usually assumed a middle-​class or elite audience. In eighteenth-​century America, etiquette and marriage manuals for upper-​class white women invoked religious stricture, counseled obedience and submission, and emphasized women’s essential mental and physical inferiority. As with the Athenian Mercury, the advice givers in these conduct books were male—​usually well-​known British laymen and clergy—​in stark contrast with female-​edited advice columns of the twentieth century. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, some white women began to claim the conduct book genre for themselves, penning their own novels and prescriptive advice books for young women. Conduct books helped to spur rising literacy and authorship rates for women, especially in the South; yet the message and tone of advice literature did not change significantly when women took up the pen.3 By the early nineteenth century, American prescriptive literature became less explicitly misogynistic and focused instead on defining and disseminating emerging middle-​ class values. Advice literature remained sex-​ segregated during the nineteenth century, and it was just as central in the shaping of men as of women. Conduct book authors helped readers bridge Victorian ideals with a more modern focus on appearance and consumption emerging in the late 1800s. Though race was rarely mentioned in nineteenth-​century conduct literature, whiteness was at the center of these visions of ideal masculinity and femininity. While white women were the largest audience for manuals from this period, by the end of the nineteenth century there emerged a thriving market of African American conduct literature, which defined appropriate behavior for black women in the context of the racism of the Jim Crow era. African American conduct book authors also envisioned a middle-​class and elite audience and emphasized themes of propriety, morality, and modest behavior. The guidelines laid out in these manuals reinforced conservative gender roles and imbued their strictures with additional import: women were to adhere to these standards for the good not only of themselves and their families, but also of their race.4 In some ways, nineteenth-​century conduct books anticipated key characteristics of newspaper advice columns. The genre established advice as a

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middle-​class endeavor, helping to popularize a set of morals and manners that came to define a bourgeois ideal—​for middle-​class Americans as well as for generations of immigrants seeking to assimilate and amass economic and cultural capital. Advice was also a segregated experience. As with earlier conduct books, twentieth-​century advice columns were modeled around a presumed white audience, with black papers like the Chicago Defender offering their own counsel that explicitly addressed the burdens of racism. In the late nineteenth century, middle-​class advice givers increasingly focused on appearance and personality, extolling the importance of material success and consumption—​themes that would figure prominently in the ideology of early twentieth-​century newspaper advice columns. In the nineteenth century, women’s magazines like Godey’s Ladies Book and, a generation later, the Ladies’ Home Journal began to blend the traditions of conduct literature and the serialized, interactive nature of newspaper question-​and-​answer features. Longtime Godey’s editor Sarah Josepha Hale endorsed some progressive notions of womanhood—​educational advancement and female financial aptitude—​while still embracing women’s essential rootedness in the home. During Hale’s tenure, Godey’s ran advice in various forms, including fashion and housekeeping tips, but the one-​way nature of that advice more closely resembled the conduct literature of the period than the more interactive dialogues of later advice columns.5 Launched in 1883, the Ladies’ Home Journal further advanced the notion that the white middle-​class American woman was inherently defined by her consumer impulses. Household and fashion advice abounded, often informed by the desires of the magazine’s advertisers. Like conduct books, etiquette columns in magazines like the Journal offered strict guidelines on appropriate behavior for young women. But they also addressed issues like marriage and divorce that would become central to the “lovelorn” advice columns in early twentieth-​century newspapers. The Journal developed more interactive, serialized forms of advice, experimenting with some of the rhetorical conventions that would later define newspaper advice columns—​reader letters, expert counselors, and appeals for readers to return to the columns in the following issue. Because the Journal was a national monthly periodical, however, and because its editorial staff largely took content cues from their advertisers, the magazine rarely fostered ongoing dialogue with its readers.6 Early question-​ and-​ answer columns, conduct books, and especially women’s magazines set important precedents for modern advice columns. But the newspaper advice columns of the early twentieth century largely departed from these forerunners. Instead, they created a new, interactive genre

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that nimbly responded to Americans’ evolving values, anxieties, and desires. They were able to do so because of changes in the American newspaper’s form and business model that turned the newspaper into a commodity for women.

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At the end of the nineteenth century, American newspapers moved away from a model of journalism centered on partisan politics and began to emerge as the profit-​driven businesses that we recognize today. A glance back at the newspaper business a century earlier shows how drastic this shift was. In the early 1800s, the political party system defined and funded American newspapers. Decades before journalistic standards of objectivity dominated the field, most editors used their publications to loudly endorse local, state, and federal party platforms and candidates. If, from the publisher’s perspective, the nineteenth-​century newspaper reader was a voter, then that reader was necessarily male. Women did read and even write into newspapers, but publishers and editors were often critical or dismissive of these “women politicians.” Between the end of the Civil War and the 1890s, newspaper publishers shifted their focus away from politics and toward profit. By the dawn of the twentieth century, news had become a commodity, its form and content shaped toward the bottom line. Advertising revenue served as the major source of profits, which meant that the ideal newspaper reader was no longer a voter, but a potential purchaser. This transformation marked the birth of the modern American newspaper—​and a feminized vision of its readership.7 Broader forces, including nationalization, industrialization, transportation and technological innovations, and the growth of corporations, spurred the commercialization of newspapers. The steady growth of American cities, the emergence of a culturally and financially influential middle class, and the expansion of market capitalism created a need for newspapers offering more diverse content, from crime reportage to coverage of leisure pursuits. The establishment of telegraph lines across the country and the founding of the Associated Press in 1846 made possible the fast delivery of news from faraway places. With technological innovation, expanding circulation, and growing newsroom staffs, the amount of capital needed to start and maintain a newspaper rose significantly by the end of the nineteenth century. One historian has estimated that during the early 1830s, a printer could establish a small weekly paper with about $500. In the decade after the Civil War, newspaper startup costs would jump to $1 million. As the advertising industry grew and matured, ad revenue became a more attractive source of capital for publishers

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and influenced their understanding of their target audience. By the turn of the twentieth century, advertisers had thoroughly internalized the notion that women were the primary purchasers in American households, gearing the majority of their ads toward female readers. Publishers, too, began to place women at the center of newspapers’ content, marketing, and business strategies.8 Newspapers like Pulitzer’s New York World and Hearst’s New York Evening Journal—​ pioneers of what many called “yellow journalism”—​ set early precedents for this gendered transformation. Yellow journalism was a turn-​of-​ the-​century style of reportage that offered narrative-​driven, sensationalized headlines and stories, and it claimed to champion the plights of the poor, anonymous, and underrepresented. Often derided for their lack of objectivity, yellow publishers nonetheless established marketing, content, and stylistic innovations that newspapers across the country would use to draw in women readers. They expanded feature and entertainment content. They employed new visual and graphic innovations like banner headlines and photographs. They relied on advertising to support their significant overhead costs. They used publicity stunts to raise circulation and to drum up interesting and scandalous stories—​stories that often involved women journalists like the famous stunt reporter Nellie Bly. It was yellow newspapers that first hired significant numbers of female journalists to work in feature departments.9 In the first three decades of the twentieth century, newspapers began implementing and refining the techniques that yellow newspapers had pioneered—​ particularly those pertaining to potential women readers. Publishers and editors established separate departments to handle women’s content, and they added more and different features aimed specifically at women. In 1895, only about half of newspapers published content for women, and when they did, it rarely extended beyond a half-​column feature. By the mid-​1920s, creative and extensive woman’s sections were standard features in most American newspapers. Almost all comprised their own autonomous section, featured in the middle or back of the newspaper, but often advertised on the front page. On Sundays, especially, they made up a large portion of a newspaper’s content. A number of woman’s page columns used eye-​catching graphics and photography, and the section itself was clearly marked with a banner headline.10 Most woman’s pages included columns offering housekeeping schedules and cooking menus, theater and movie gossip, home decoration guidance, information on political issues pertaining to women, local gossip and club news, and etiquette and fashion tips. Almost all featured at least one advice

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column; many featured several, covering topics about women’s health, love and marriage, parenting, beauty techniques, and more. The myriad column genres and topics demonstrated that newspapers were taking new liberties and experimenting with new forms in order to draw women with varied interests and at different stages of life. In the 1890s, columnists, editors, and publishers printed women’s content almost as an afterthought; only a few decades later, they competed with other newspapers to best serve female readers of their city and region, conducting careful research on which topics and genres would best attract this coveted market.11 To craft thoughtful and authentic features for a female audience, publishers sought syndicated material written by female authors, hired women journalists, and, somewhat less frequently, employed women editors. Women, one newspaper-​industry periodical told its readers, were best suited to craft the kind of wholesome content that made a newspaper a “home paper.” “The tone of their work, when left to themselves, is high. People who love clean newspapers are not slow to discover this and patronize [female reporters].” By 1936, according to newspaperwoman Ishbel Ross, there were 12,000 women working in journalism as editors, feature writers, and reporters. Yet Ross also recognized the limits women faced as journalists. “They excel in the feature field and dominate the syndicates. . . . They function in the advertising, business, art, promotion and mechanical departments, as well as in the editorial rooms. They have arrived, in a convincing way. But the fact remains that they have made surprisingly little progress on the front page.” Authors of women’s features including advice columnists, usually barred from the front page, crafted a distinctly female professional niche on the pages of the woman’s section.12 The growth of the woman’s page was not the only evidence of newspaper executives’ preoccupation with women readers. Publishers regularly placed ads for their publications in advertising-​industry trade journals like Printers’ Ink touting their unprecedented access to female consumers. By the end of the 1910s, ad after ad placed in Printers’ Ink featured women in their visual and textual appeals to advertisers and boasted of their ability to get newspapers “into the home.” All ads placed by newspapers in trade journals featured white women as their idealized readers, sometimes situating them in or adjacent to single-​family homes. “Into homes where you can SELL,” stated an Indianapolis News ad in a 1932 issue of Printers’ Ink. It featured a well-​dressed, fair-​skinned woman opening the front door of her comfortable, middle-​class home to retrieve the newspaper. A New York Sun ad in a 1936 issue of Printers’ Ink featured an image of a young woman with a stylish bob and emphasized

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Figure 1.1  Typical of woman’s pages of the period, this 1923 spread in the Indianapolis Star occupied a full page, featured various graphics and photography, and covered many topics. Indianapolis Star, March 4, 1923.

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the “floodgate of new wants” prompted by her recent engagement. Newspaper ads in trade journals provide a candid look at publishers’ understanding of the ideal female reader: a white, middle-​class homemaker with access to disposable income. By contrast, publishers rarely, if ever, touted their access to audiences of color, working-​class, or immigrant readers.13 In fact, the only representations of African American women in trade journal newspaper advertisements were cartoons depicting racist stereotypes. A Baltimore News ad in a 1919 issue of Printers’ Ink, for example, featured a cartoon depicting a white woman appealing to an African American woman in head wrap and apron, the latter holding up her hand in protest. “ ‘I’m looking for a laundress,’ ” announced the white woman. “ ‘Would YOU like to do my washing?’ ” The black woman, whom the ad dubbed “Aunt Jemima,”

Figure 1.2 This Chicago American advertisement in Printer’s Ink promised advertisers exclusive access to consumer-​focused brides. “We Furnish the Bride,” Chicago American advertisement, Printer’s Ink, November 30, 1933. Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

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responded, “ ‘No, but I’ll gib you de name ob de lady what does mine.’ ” The News pronounced Baltimore “a fine field for home labor saving devices,” implying that white Baltimore women sought housekeeping alternatives to replace the labor of black female domestic workers.14 Given the growing successes of foreign-​language newspapers, especially Yiddish and Jewish publications, publishers and advertisers proved more open to acknowledging foreign-​born readers, though rarely without a veiled racism that was prevalent at the time. In 1904 the newspaper-​industry periodical Editor and Publisher noted the “constantly increasing . . . territory of Jewish papers in New  York,” though they lamented the “grotesque appearance . . . of their big headlines in the curious Hebrew characters.” This attitude did not necessarily reflect newspapers’ disinterest in drawing a wide readership; in fact, as the population of foreign-​born residents swelled in cities across the country, along with the numbers of African Americans moving from the South to urban centers, publishers certainly understood the racial, ethnic, and class diversity of their readership and the economic potential of new markets. Rather, trade journal articles and advertisements reflected the idealized readers that publishers believed their advertisers wanted to reach.15 By the first decades of the twentieth century, women readers had become publishers’ most prized demographic, and the woman’s page one of the most culturally and economically significant sections of the daily paper. “From any point of view,” observed veteran newspaper editor Harland F. Manchester in 1932, “the contents of the woman’s page is now probably the most important non-​news reading matter in the newspaper, and wields the greatest power.”16 The commercialization of the newspaper, publishers’ growing focus on advertising revenue, the idealization of the woman reader-​consumer, and the expansion of the woman’s page—​each of these phenomena constituted the gendered modernization of the American mass-​circulation newspaper. The rise of the woman’s page and newspapers’ interest in female readers reframed the paper as a space where readers could tune into debates on the most intimate, personal, and pressing issues facing Americans.

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In 1898, a young newspaperwoman named Marie Manning found herself with a new assignment. Manning wrote for the woman’s department of Hearst’s New  York Evening Journal—​sometimes dubbed the “Hen’s Coop”—​covering club and society news, fashion, housekeeping, and other domestic topics. Recently, she had noticed, the newspaper’s letters-​to-​the-​editor department had been receiving more and more queries from women requesting

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counsel on issues like adultery, childcare, and courtship. Manning jumped at the opportunity to answer them, proposing “a department where people could write about their personal troubles—​love and domestic—​and receive unbiased opinions.” Manning envisioned a column that had “a touch of the maternal in it, as well as of the sibyl.” That July, she adopted the pen name “Beatrice Fairfax” and commenced her “Advice to the Lovelorn” column in the pages of the Journal. Under the Fairfax name, Manning became one of the earliest and most influential advice columnists of the period.17 Over the next several decades, American newspapers and syndicates followed the example of the Journal, producing hundreds of different advice columns covering dozens of topics. The columns drew on the advice

Figure 1.3  Marie Manning, far left, sitting with other female journalists who worked in the New York Evening Journal’s women’s department, circa 1898. Marie Manning Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts).

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traditions of the past like conduct manuals, but the public and interactive nature of newspaper columns transformed both the content and the process of advice giving. Ultimately, the modern column’s flexibility and its potential for democratic interaction marked a new approach to the way that advice was dispensed and received.18 Newspaper advice columns of the early twentieth century shared a number of key traits. First, they addressed a bewildering number of issues affecting the daily lives of American readers. Advice columnists and letter writers covered housekeeping, beauty, marriage and courtship, politics, money and employment, childrearing, politics, mental health, and many other topics. Editors and publishers took cues from the interests and demands of readers and tested out different topical focuses and rhetorical styles, creating a heterogeneous market of advice to accommodate the genre’s many purposes and wide audience. Second, the interactive nature of advice columns made the market highly competitive and potentially very lucrative. Reader letters provided quantifiable evidence of the responsiveness of a newspaper’s readership. New columns that did not receive positive reader feedback could be pulled after only a few weeks, while others garnered enthusiastic support, ran for decades, and launched popular columnists to stardom. Finally, advice columns of the period incorporated readers’ letters and requests in very different ways. Some featured letters front and center and invited readers to participate regularly, while other columns focused on the ideas and wisdom of the columnist. This tension between participatory dialogue and editorial authority became a defining characteristic of the modern advice column. Most mass-​circulation newspapers relied on national syndicates—​content-​ producing agencies that sold columns and other features to editors across the country—​to provide advice content. By 1925, the great majority of American newspapers featured at least one syndicated advice column on their woman’s pages, and many featured several.19 Syndicates saved publishers the time and cost of having to hire a columnist and generate original content; if a column did not attract reader feedback, a publisher could simply cancel his or her subscription or substitute a new columnist or feature. From home economist Marion Harland to opera singer-​turned-​beauty maven Lina Cavalieri, many of the most popular and long-​standing advice personalities penned syndicated columns. Along with motion pictures, women’s magazines, advertisements, and radio shows, syndicated woman’s page features disseminated standardized advice on beauty and fashion, gender norms, social values, etiquette, leisure pursuits, and even politics to female audiences across the country.20

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With their prescriptive focus on women’s appearance and behavior, syndicated beauty and fashion columns could sometimes resemble the one-​way advice mechanisms of the past. By contrast, local columns—​those created and generated by individual publications rather than by syndicates—​ tended to foster more interactive and creative advice content. These columns flourished in well-​capitalized, high-​circulation newspapers that could afford to hire a columnist and could garner the necessary letters from regional reader-​correspondents. Though local columns required a higher initial investment from publishers, when successful they drew remarkably loyal, long-​term readers and shaped the paper’s marketing and content decisions well outside of the column inches of the woman’s page. They sometimes maintained hundreds of repeat contributors and were able to address the particular regional needs or demands of their audiences—​from where to get the freshest groceries to where to see and admire local art.21 More nimble and responsive than syndicated columns, local columns were able to foster dialogue between columnists and readers—​and sometimes, between readers themselves. Housekeeping forums, for example, tended to be successful in regional papers situated in large urban areas. The Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat” and similar columns created flexible, public, and quasi-​anonymous spaces in the newspaper for participants to trade cooking, housekeeping, childcare, and other domestic tips. A  letter writer seeking good recipes for pie filling, for example, might receive several responses from household forum readers.22 “Lovelorn” columns, which addressed marriage, romance, and the changing cultural meaning of the American family, also provided opportunities for reader interaction.23 To address the diffuse problems of America’s jilted and jaded, lovelorn columns relied heavily on the personality and opinions of advice columnists, who carved out distinct writing styles and worldviews. Yet particularly in non-​syndicated lovelorn columns, loyal readers began sending their own responses to questions; sometimes they even took issue with the guidance provided by the columnist herself. Whether syndicated or local, and whether addressing home economics or marriage woes, newspaper advice columns represented a fundamentally new way of giving and receiving advice. Certainly, the columns reflected key conservative strains of modern American society—​in particular, the values of consumer capitalism that shaped both the business models and the content strategies of mass-​circulation papers. Yet newspaper advice columns also opened up unintended and potentially radical opportunities for women editors, columnists, and especially readers to seize on the structure of the woman’s page and make it their own.

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America’s Confessional Advice Columns and Their Readers

In October 1910, novelist-​turned-​advice columnist Laura Jean Libbey responded to a distraught letter from a heartbroken young woman. A. M. identified herself as “one of many girls [working] in a big department store” in the booming city of Chicago. While at work, A. M. made the acquaintance of a young gentleman who professed his love and asked for her hand in marriage. “O do pity me, Miss Libbey, in my mortification, when I tell you, without mincing words, that he jilted me for no reason. The day I was to have been married dawned; in my bridal dress my friends waiting—​ but no bridegroom came. . . . I lost my position and my heart is as one dead.” Libbey responded sympathetically, encouraging the girl to take some time away, if she could, “where you have friends who will be kind enough to take a new interest in your welfare and will help you to forget the trouble that is fresh in your grieved mind.” Libbey also assured A. M. that she had turned to the right place for help. “You have indeed poured your heart woes to one who sympathizes with you in your misfortune, more than words can tell.”1 A. M.’s letter and Libbey’s response revealed the multilayered reasons that newspaper readers wrote into advice columns. The columnist offered A. M. counsel on what to do and how to behave in the aftermath of her failed engagement. But her column also provided the letter writer with a public confessional where she could convey her grief, embarrassment, and anxiety, eliciting the sympathy of the columnist and, presumably, the column’s thousands of readers. The exchange between Libbey and A.  M., moreover, demonstrated that by 1910, many Americans dealt with very different cultural, social, and economic conditions than did previous generations. A.  M.  was a single woman taking advantage of new employment opportunities in an

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expanding consumer economy. It was A. M.’s friends and coworkers, rather than her family or religious community, that most influenced her life and provided her with support. And rather than encouraging her suitor to seek her hand through her father, A. M. eschewed patriarchal conventions of courtship, followed her heart, and made her own arrangements for her marriage. The exchange between Libbey and A.M. seemed to suggest that it was these decidedly modern conditions that led to the young woman’s heartbreak. This chapter examines the meanings of advice and the cultural purpose of advice columns from the mid-​1910s through the late 1930s, a period in which Americans incorporated advice columns into their everyday newspaper reading and came to view them as an indispensable source of counsel, support, and camaraderie. During these decades, newspaper advice columnists and letter writers came together to create a complex exchange of advice that both responded and contributed to the making of modern American society. Newspaper readers wrote into columns to confess their problems and anxieties, to seek empathy and answers from virtual strangers, to propose topics of debate, to take issue with columnists’ advice, and even to offer their own guidance. By identifying the process of confession as central to the diagnosis and cure of their anxiety, advice column participants helped to carve out a remarkably modern—​and enduring—​genre of entertainment and popular therapy.2 Advice columnists deftly led this evolving newsprint dialogue. Many espoused worldviews that sought to appeal to a broad swathe of readers, while simultaneously outlining a bewildering set of expectations and ideals. To help readers navigate the problems of urban industrial life, the columnists blended an optimistic approval of modern innovation with a nostalgic reverence for a supposedly premodern past. They rarely mentioned race or racism, and almost all of their advice internalized the values of racism and segregation that shaped Americans’ lives across the country. At the same time, the columnists implicitly acknowledged the growing diversity of their readership and shaped their advice around concepts of practicality and respectability—​ideas that saw wide acceptance among many Americans regardless of race, ethnicity, and class. While advice columnists often sought to assert themselves as the “bosses” or the “mothers” of their columns, they also recognized the power of columns that included dissenting opinions from readers. Advice columns drew so many reader responses because they were able to serve as public forums that could nonetheless ensure contributors’ anonymity.3 This was a potent combination and prompted detailed, candid, intimate, and often engrossing glimpses

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into contributors’ worldviews and psyches. Over the decades, it was reader-​ contributors, and the debates they helped foster, that made advice columns into a quintessentially modern mass media juggernaut—​an adaptable genre that served alternately as a means of popular and cathartic therapy, an entertainment feature, a force of cultural assimilation, and a site of democratic cultural debate.

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Advice columns featured questions about religion, politics, courtship and sex, childrearing and the meaning of parenthood, marriage and divorce, beauty, fashion, women’s employment, cooking, budgeting and running a household, loneliness and depression, and other topics. Regardless of specifics, almost all the discussions in advice columns of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s reflected Americans’ struggle with changing meanings of womanhood, manhood, and family in an urban, industrialized, and mass-​culture-​saturated environment. The vibrancy of discussions, the skyrocketing popularity of the columns in newspapers across the country, and the organic interactivity of columns—​especially local columns—​marked these decades as the heyday of advice. This period also served as a transitional one between the more puritanical advice of the Victorian era and the period following World War II, in which most advice columnists acknowledged the permanence of a pluralistic society and proved more willing to engage in frank discussions about sexual experience and to question traditional notions of women’s roles. Columnists adopted different tones—​ from romantic to intensely practical—​ and sometimes parted ways with each other on particular subjects; but as a group, they generally endorsed mainstream and traditional worldviews, assuming middle-​class housewifery as the standard experience for women, encouraging chastity during courtship, and counseling divorce only in extreme situations. They sought to modernize this perspective by encouraging women to approach their domestic roles as they would a job—​with efficiency, practicality, and professionalism. They expressed concern about the potential for idleness and luxury that consumer culture engendered, yet insisted that women were instinctually good consumers and encouraged them to remain attractive and fashionable. In other words, advice columnists found a way to blend the old and the new, to encourage Americans to adjust to the vertigo of modern times without giving in to its excesses. Lovelorn columns proved one of the most popular sub-​genres of advice columns. American newspaper readers had an almost insatiable desire to read and talk about the changing nature of courtship and marriage. Though many

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letter writers asked about personal minutiae—​the meaning of a particular encounter, frustration with a spouse’s foibles—​they nonetheless grappled with broad questions about the nature of the modern family and the relationship between self and society. For example, in the early twentieth century, it appeared as if an epidemic of failed romances had struck the United States, or so many columnists and reader-​contributors remarked. Advice columnists came at the pressing problems of jilted lovers from different perspectives. Drawing on her experiences as a sentimental novelist, Laura Jean Libbey often employed emotional and romantic tones in her advice in order to cast her relationship with readers in an affectionate light. In her first Chicago Tribune column, Libbey greeted her readers thus: In every life there are dark and lonely moments during which one would give the world—​were it possible—​for some kindly heart to confide in, some sympathetic being to share and assuage their grief. In such an hour, if you will entrust your little sorrows to me, there may be much to teach each other—​a strength and a refuge in the hour of need . . . A little silver cord, so tiny you cannot see it, draws us together in a friendship which I hope will be enduring as long as life lasts.4 In deploying the flowery language of the sentimental novel genre, Libbey marketed herself as a loyal and exceedingly kind confidante, offering “a refuge” and “friendship” just as much as advice. Posing herself in contrast to the sentimental writings of novelists like Libbey and Victorian women journalists like Jenny June, Dorothy Dix identified romance as the singular problem of courtship and marriage. “No other one thing has done so much harm,” Dix declared confidently in 1919. “Novelists and poets sing the glory of romance, but in reality romance is merely a kind of sentimental delirium.” Romance, she regularly argued, was particularly pernicious in a society saturated with modern amusements, where parents were less likely and able to police the activities of their children, and where sexual and behavioral boundaries were eroding.5 Most columnists agreed that courtship, especially casual courtship, should be a chaste experience. The “kissing question” dominated many advice columns during the 1910s and 1920s, especially in letters written by teenagers. Almost across the board, columnists reminded girls of the threat that sexual permissiveness posed to their marriage prospects, their reputations, and their moral fiber. Responding to “the vital question among girls of 14 to 17 . . . ‘Is it right to let a boy kiss me,’ ” Detroit News columnist Nancy Brown answered

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Figure  2.1  Novelist and early advice columnist Laura Jean Libbey, 1910. Bain News Service, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

with an unequivocal no. “The right kind of girl does not allow promiscuous kissing. The right kind of girl, with a clean, little girl mind, such as she should have at that age is not always thinking of kissing.”6 Columnists incentivized the withholding of kissing and petting by explaining to girls the best way to capture a young man’s long-​term attentions. “Believe me, it is the modest girl, chary of her kisses, who will win his admiration, and awaken his heart,” Libbey assured young women. Yet these strictures did not go unquestioned by readers. Only a few weeks later, a young man who dubbed himself W. R. K. wrote in to Libbey, borrowing her flowery and romantic tone. He and his sweetheart had confessed their love for each other, but he complained that

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“she will not grant me a love’s privilege of holding her dear self in my arms and pressing her dear lips to my own. Please, dear Miss Libbey, give me the benefit of your advice and help me out of my difficulty, for my love is true.” Libbey gently chastised W. R. K., reminded him how “sacred” a woman’s lips were, and counseled him to appreciate the good sense of his girlfriend. By featuring W. R. K.’s letter, Libbey allowed a multiplicity of opinions in her column, but ultimately reinforced her insistent belief that promiscuous kissing was detrimental to modern courtship.7 Most columnists and letter writers believed that the kissing question was indicative of the tensions between two cultural archetypes: the modern girl and the old-​fashioned girl. These two figures loomed large in letters written by both men and women in the 1910s and 1920s and in the advice given by columnists. The modern girl drew on the concept of the New Woman that emerged at the turn of the century, though columnists did not often use the latter term. The modern girl embraced consumer values, participated in mass leisure, and interacted in the public sphere with ease. Though shaped by women’s new political opportunities, especially after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, she was not inherently political. Dorothy Dix characterized the modern girl as practical, frank, and independent. Yet, “like a great many other modern improvements  .  .  .  she isn’t an unmixed blessing.” The main reason, Dix continually insisted, that courtship and marriage had fallen on such hard times was because the modern woman had no male counterpart. “We’ve evolved a new woman,” she insisted in one column, “but Man is the same Man as he was when Adam was a boy.” In Dix’s worldview, masculinity required no reinvention. It remained the responsibility of women to temper their new opportunities and desires, while still deferring to time-​honored male fantasies about ideal womanhood.8 Readers themselves also debated the value of the modern girl and the old-​fashioned girl. Responding to a spate of letters about extramarital affairs in the Detroit News “Experience” column, Disappointed wrote that he longed for a traditional girl, as those he had met in Detroit turned out to be selfish, only interested in money or a good time. Responses to his criticisms came quickly, many from the self-​proclaimed “old-​fashioned girls” that Disappointed had insisted were a rarity. A Tin Pan Heart retorted, “In answer to [Disappointed’s] question, ‘Where are the old-​fashioned girls?’ I should like to ask . . . Where are the men who want old-​fashioned girls? In this present day the average man wants a Twentieth Century girl, and the girl who does not care for dancing, swimming and the rest of the sports, is the girl of two centuries ago.” Young, single Detroiters like Disappointed and A Tin

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Figure  2.2  Many images of the New Woman abounded at the turn of the century. The Gibson Girl blended aspects of modernity—​the bicycle, for example—​with trappings of traditional feminine beauty. Scribner’s, June 1895. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

Pan Heart used the column to express their frustration with the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of courtship and leisure in the modern city. They also insisted that traditional values continued to hold strong among some Detroit residents.9 By the 1930s, many young column participants no longer found resonant the demands for chastity made by columnists like Dix, Libbey, and Brown or the traditional nostalgia of Disappointed and A Tin Pan Heart. Syndicated columnist Beatrice Fairfax dedicated several columns to the topic of “petting”

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in 1938, and both the questions asked and counsel given reflected growing public acceptance of premarital kissing and an increased frankness on the part of younger column participants. In an essay entitled “Playing with Fire,” Fairfax argued that the problem of modern dating was not the act of petting, but the fact that parents did not explain properly to their children the nature of courtship and the inevitability of sexual urges. “We can’t nowadays keep youngsters in ignorance of the fact that human nature is an inflammable sort of thing. On the contrary, the more clearly they understand this, the better.” Petting was a problem, Fairfax concluded, for those youngsters with negligent parents, but not for “sweet wholesome youngsters who . . . have been sensibly brought up.”10 In refusing to flatly condemn petting, Fairfax proved willing to adjust her advice in order to complement changing mainstream beliefs and practices and to appeal to new generations of readers. Fairfax’s amended approach to the subject may have resulted from her column’s interactivity. Many letter writers shared candid feedback on this topic, expressing frustration with hard-​and-​fast rules about abstention from petting. “I went out with a very nice boy the other night but he wanted to kiss me good night,” Anxious and Not so Prudish wrote to Fairfax. “I said ‘no,’ and when I saw him again he acted very cool. I like him a lot but I’m afraid I won’t see much more of him. Was I right in saying ‘no’?” Another young woman who had been jilted by a boy after kissing him used the pen name Man-​Hater, but sought opinions from “good sorts of chaps” on the subject.11 Some letters revealed readers’ poignant struggles to balance their physical desires with social rules. In an unprinted letter to Beatrice Fairfax stating that she “can’t seem to like anyone else” but the young man she had been dating for several years, Betty confessed, “Whenever I  see him I  get weak around the knees.” She asked Fairfax how to control these feelings when around her boyfriend. Another correspondent, Margaret, conveyed similar sexual frustration: Tell me, please how far can a girl go and still be good? My body cries to be loved but my conscience will not allow me to go very far. I have been raised by very strict parents who believe that it is a sin for a girl to even kiss a boy unless he is engaged to her at least. Yet it seems to me that everybody does quite the contrary. I am so muddled that I do not know what to do and what not to do. I feel that I am normal and human. And I want to do the things that cry out to be done from within me. But, I do not want to be cheap, promiscuous or foolish. Please, do nice girls “pet”? How far shall I go?

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Margaret’s handwritten letter was annotated “hard to answer,” presumably by the columnist or one of her assistants.12 The honesty of correspondents like Betty and Margaret reflected how difficult it was for young Americans to interpret the rules of courtship during a transformative cultural moment—​ and during the throes of young adulthood. The anonymous confessional of the advice column allowed these readers to share frank details about their own sexuality; such candor might not have been possible with their parents, friends, or other in-​person supports. Their letters show that the reality of young American women’s experiences—​especially their reckoning with their own sexual desire and agency—​differed greatly from the idealized standards of womanhood that prevailed at the time. Kissing and petting became a particularly debated issue during these decades because of the increasing mobility and personal freedom experienced by young people. As growing numbers of Americans dwelled in cities, it became more difficult for parents, extended families, or local communities to monitor their behavior. Modern sites of amusement, from Coney Island to nickelodeons, offered public spaces where young men and women could meet, yet provided enough privacy for sexual experimentation. The increasing ubiquity of the automobile created a new, perhaps unprecedented quasi-​private space in which young people could interact. Dorothy Dix noted often that the anonymity of city life and the lures of modern amusements were particularly dangerous for working-​class girls. In response to a working girl’s plaintive question, “DOES IT PAY TO BE GOOD?,” Dorothy Dix penned a sympathetic but cautionary response: [This] girl is pretty and poor. She has to work for her living. Her hours of labor are long and hard and her earnings only enough to pay for the bare necessities of existence. She has few pleasures and no luxuries, and she sees the future stretching before her, an arid highway along which she must toil footsore and weary, cold and hungry and discouraged. Yet she has the natural impulse of her sex within her. She is no senseless, passionless machine. She is all quivering, throbbing girlhood. She longs for pretty clothes to set off her beauty, for amusement, for gayety, for feasting and dancing and lovemaking. Dix acknowledged how enticing the excesses of urban leisure could be, but ultimately advised her correspondent to rise up against these impulses. “Truly, little sister, there is nothing in the world so little gay as what we call the gay life. . . . It pays to be good, because only good women get any decent

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treatment from men.” Her advice revealed that no matter her economic position, a woman’s ultimate goal was to acquire the “decent treatment” of a man. Her response also alluded to the ominous threat of indecent treatment from men. The lures of leisure, Dix seemed to imply, created opportunities for men to take sexual advantage of working girls like the letter writer. Dix believed it was women’s responsibility to protect their virtue, leaving unquestioned the notion that by moving freely in the public sphere, modern women invited sexual assault.13 For those who had fallen victim to these pitfalls of modern culture, fellow reader-​contributors often proved more effective comforters than advice columnists. A  letter from Lonely Heart to participants in the Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat” about her office affair prompted a number of responses from contributors in early 1919. While some women condemned Lonely Heart for her behavior, others jumped to her defense. “Lonely Heart, it seems to me,” wrote Granite Heart, “was more sinned against than sinning to be made love to by a married man.” She went on to remind Lonely Heart that she had the support of her column sisters no matter her mistakes. “It does one good to read [these] letters and know that there are such helpful understanding women.”14 This sentiment—​that participation in a virtual community could sometimes draw condemnation and judgment but more often fostered support and camaraderie—​would be echoed years later in online chat rooms, message boards, and social media groups. Urban life meant that Americans interacted with people of very different backgrounds. While most columns mentioned topics of race and ethnicity relatively rarely, segregation and white identity were central subtexts and assumptions underlying mainstream advice columns and the dialogues they hosted. Columnists espoused beliefs that idealized white womanhood and reinforced the racial status quo that defined early twentieth-​century America. In their silence about race, columns failed to address issues of discrimination, violence, and socioeconomic inequality that shaped the experiences of people of color living in urban centers.15 Unsurprisingly, then, columnists embraced a segregationist vision of courtship. They endorsed interpersonal relations between people of different European ethnicities, but not between those popularly considered to be of a different race. When R.  S.  wrote to Nancy Brown about how upset her parents were over her Greek suitor, the columnist quelled her fears. “If the young man’s nationality is the only objection, I see no reason why you should not marry him. The Greeks belong to the white race, which is the main consideration.” But for Brown, Jewish Americans were a different story. “Maxene,”

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the columnist wrote to another correspondent a few weeks later, “A marriage of Jew and Gentile is a very doubtful proposition. It is rarely successful. The racial traits are too wide apart.” Never did Brown—​or any other white advice columnist—​feature a letter addressing platonic or romantic relationships between African Americans or between white readers and African Americans.16 The topic of courtship revealed an implicit distinction between newspapers’ approaches to white readers who were working-​class or had recently arrived from another country, and their approaches to black readers, whether immigrants themselves or from families residing in the United States for generations. Advice columnists envisioned themselves as providing a blueprint for assimilation, Americanization, and idealized whiteness for immigrants and working people that they and many Americans considered white. Although columnists may have embraced a vision of modern city life that was more ethnically and economically diverse, that vision remained racially segregated. By discouraging their presumed white readers from becoming romantically involved with Jewish men or women—​and by being unwilling to even mention the idea of interracial relationships—​columnists identified which groups their readers should consider to be the real “others.” Ironically, there were some aspects of mainstream white advice—​columnists’ advocacy of notions of respectability, their practical and no-​ nonsense approaches to courtship—​that might have resonated with African American readers, but those were hard for black readers to square with the columnists’ unexamined racism. This left black Americans to carve out a separate vision of black modernity that informed their own media forms—​including African American advice columns.17

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Columnists and column participants fretted about the failures of modern courtship because courtship fed into an even more alarming development: what Dorothy Dix dubbed “the modern matrimonial problem.” By the early twentieth century, many American men and women sought affection, romance, and even personal fulfillment in marriage. This “companionate marriage” was a relatively new idea—​a departure from earlier understandings of matrimony as a largely economic transaction shaped by duty and hierarchy. Ideally, companionate marriage was meant to encourage more democratic relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children. The fact that one’s marriage and family were supposed to provide almost total emotional satisfaction, however, created high, if not impractical, expectations. Young people, newly married, found that these “great expectations” often

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went unmet and unfulfilled. A record number sought divorces, often on the grounds of incompatibility, rather than on more traditional grounds like adultery, physical cruelty, or desertion. Others remained in their marriages, sometimes writing into lovelorn columns describing their loneliness and anomie. As the benefits of marriage—​fulfillment, affection, companionship, and sexual satisfaction—​became more abstract and intangible, so too did the meaning and definition of the institution. In lovelorn columns, Americans increasingly expressed frustration that the permanence of marriage could no longer be taken for granted.18 Inspired by romantic storylines in novels, magazines, and moving pictures, Dix and others pointed out, young people paid no heed to the practical questions of marriage: finances, housekeeping, and compatibility. Upon receiving a letter from Lillian, a divorcée who laid out her ten demands for an ideal husband and asked how she could find him, Dix threw up her hands. “All you seem to desire in a man are all the virtues and graces and then some and that may explain not only why you are a divorcée, but why you have been unable to hold the men who attracted you. You ask too much of any mortal man.” Lillian’s problem, Dix concluded, was just an extreme version of one common among many modern women: the problem of overinflated expectations.19 Dix, as usual, placed blame on a woman—​in this case, Lillian—​for the excessive demands she made of her potential partners. But columnists like Dix rarely acknowledged the paradoxical messages that women encountered in a media-​saturated environment—​indeed, in the very newspapers in which her column ran. A growing and lucrative market of syndicated content provided romantic fiction, portrayals of motion picture heroes and starlets, beauty and fashion tips designed to snag a man’s attention—​alongside Dix’s withering criticism of women’s selfish and unrealistic desires. This fostering of the unattainable—​whether consumer wants or romantic longings—​has remained the backbone of media capitalism. Dix helped set a long-​lasting precedent of blaming media-​consuming women steeped in idealized depictions of romance for their own unrealistic expectations.20 Yet even as they contributed to a bewildering messaging campaign about the nature of companionate marriage, advice columnists like Dix conceived themselves as early, inexpensive, and accessible marriage counselors. In fact, the columnists predated the profession of mainstream marriage counseling, which emerged in earnest in the late 1920s. Before the advent of marriage clinics and a massive body of research dedicated to “making marriage work,” advice columnists advanced the idea that marriage required significant

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emotional labor, particularly on the part of wives. They also insisted that marriages succeeded when both partners had a realistic understanding of the everyday banality of relationships. Advice columnists envisioned themselves as educators dedicated to unpacking romantic clichés about marriage and teaching Americans, especially American women, how to build and maintain a compatible and functioning long-​term partnership with their spouse.21 The modern conception of companionate marriage, many columnists believed, prompted young people to marry too quickly, in the first flush of infatuation. Only careful, deliberate courtship would make for well-​informed marriage choices, or so Nancy Brown counseled her many young Detroit News readers. Sixteen-​year-​old Broken-​Hearted Blue-​Eyed Frenchie confessed to Brown that after she and her sweetheart had agreed to marry, he began to ignore her and showed her no affection. Brown insisted that Frenchie was much too young to get engaged, pointing to her poor choice of fiancé as evidence. Dix, too, criticized twentieth-​century youth for being “impatient.” “The tie that binds two people together is not love or romance, as boys and girls think,” Dix reminded an unhappy couple in 1919. That tie was something more mundane. “It is congeniality. It is similarity of tastes. It is a mutual interest in things. It is knowing the same people and having done the same things.” Fifteen years later, Dix’s beliefs had only strengthened. “No more idiotic theory was ever advanced than that an early marriage makes for a better companionship, and that a boy and girl who marry early will grow up together,” Dix informed her readers in 1934.22 Beatrice Fairfax, one of Dix’s fiercest competitors, took a contrasting approach to the question of when to marry. In 1936, she wrote positively about a New Jersey school that taught women courses in domestic science to enable them to marry at a younger age. A few months later, she penned a column describing the ideas of British socialist, eugenicist, and feminist Naomi Mitchison, who proposed that young men and women should marry and procreate in their late teens to “insure . . . a magnificent race”; in return, she argued, the state should fund a woman’s education and professional training after her children reached schooling age. Regardless of repeated warnings given by parents, advice columnists, and other pundits, Fairfax argued, young people would continue to experiment sexually, and they would continue to marry early. Fairfax believed she was taking a rational approach to the inevitability of impetuous marriages.23 Fairfax’s coverage of Naomi Mitchison’s ideas also demonstrates the unspoken way that advice columnists endorsed and reinforced mainstream racist beliefs—​even while simultaneously endorsing feminist ideas related to white

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womanhood. Mitchison was an outspoken defender of women’s rights and a staunch advocate of birth control and women’s education. But she framed her arguments around the notion that these feminist platforms would encourage the most “fit” women—​that is, young, educated white women—​to reproduce. Like Margaret Sanger in America, Mitchison embraced birth control as a way of easing the burdens of poor women. But she also acknowledged her interest in limiting the reproductive capacity of those deemed “unfit”—​a category that sometimes included the physically and mentally disabled, as well as immigrant women and women of color. That Fairfax celebrated Mitchison’s ideas with no acknowledgment of their racist implications demonstrates how unquestioned these beliefs were in the early twentieth century—​and the power that influential white columnists wielded to reinforce the racial status quo. While it is possible that some readers may have sent responses criticizing advice columnists’ worldviews, editors and columnists generally chose not to print them, preventing exchanges that explicitly addressed racism and xenophobia from appearing in advice columns.24 Though columnists disagreed about when couples should marry, they all insisted that marriage was the only option for two young people beginning a life together. In the pages of “Experience,” Nancy Brown debated passionately with self-​styled “moderns” who had given up on the institution of marriage. One such correspondent was Bob-​o’-​Link, who was “deeply in love with a man, and he is in love with me as well, but neither of us believes in marriage.” “Never will there be a marriage ceremony,” Bob-​o’-​Link told Brown and her readers. “If he should decide that he loves someone else, and the same applies to me, we will simply separate and try to be happy.” Brown was blunt in her criticism: “If you are in earnest, I feel very sorry for the misery that you are starting for yourself, Bob-​o’-​Link.” In a subsequent letter, Brown held her ground. “You must know that our laws—​especially the old and tried ones—​ were made by wise people and found to be for the best. Why try to deny them? Can you picture good women drawing their skirts away from you, or good men passing remarks that good women do not want spoken of them, because you choose to defy the law to gratify a whim?” Later, Brown happily reported that Bob-​o’-​Link “followed my advice, and is glad she did.” The exchange between Brown and Bob-​o’-​Link became a public referendum on the topic of monogamous, non-​married couples. After Bob-​o’-​Link’s marriage, Brown was able to use the debate to reinforce the rightness of her worldview to her readership. In Brown’s assessment, if time-​honored and unquestioned traditions like marriage came into question, the modern era could devolve into chaos, relativism, and ruin.25

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Once married, Americans continued to write into advice columns with their problems. Some sought extremely concrete help. “Dear Marion Holmes,” Mrs. C. G. S. wrote the Chicago Daily News’s resident advice giver in 1928, “My husband left me and our boy about three months ago. I think he is still in Chicago. His name is Charles Schultz.” The woman detailed her husband’s age, build, and profession, and described the hardships that she and her son now faced. “I am almost ill from anxiety and worry. What can I do?” Marion Holmes sent her to Chicago’s Court of Domestic Relations. Through the column, Holmes also asked Chicago readers to share any news they might have of the man’s whereabouts.26 Most letters in this era, though, expressed more existential struggles with marriage: isolation, ennui, and dissatisfaction. Interestingly, the complaints of advice column letters mirror the changing nature of divorce complaints in America, which by 1920 focused less on abuse and desertion and more on emotional neglect, lack of sexual fulfillment, and confusion over the changing expectations of husbands and wives.27 Many letters to advice columnists failed to pose concrete questions; instead, they served as anonymous professions of discontent that often concluded with the open-​ended, “What shall I do?” An unprinted letter from Married Doris to Beatrice Fairfax exemplified readers’ difficulty in identifying the source of their unhappiness. Doris was a divorcée who had recently remarried and given up working due to an illness. Her new financial dependence on her husband left her uncomfortable and disconsolate: I can’t seem to settle down to the idea of asking for money nor does my husband seem to realize I do like a little money besides what I run the house on. I  get brooding and discouraged at times and wonder if I  wouldn’t be happier working and alone as before so I  could do as I  please and not have to ask for things afraid I  might be turned down. . . . I cannot give in enough to ask for money or anything from him. We get  along very well, have never quarreled yet. But I’m the type that rather than quarrel, I’d pick up and move out. I hold all my feelings to myself afraid of hurting him and I  suffer—​letting things grow like Mountains. Otherwise I act very contented and happy with my present marriage. What do you suggest I do?28 On first glance, Married Doris’s complaint seemed to revolve around money. But Doris’s letter revealed much more. It told of her inability to communicate with her husband, her disappointment that his generosity during courtship did not continue after their marriage, her frustration that the

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intimacy of her marriage did not replace or assuage her need for independence, and her propensity to brood and to suffer in silence. Married Doris’s letter, in short, revealed how painful the unfulfilled expectations of companionate marriage could be for many Americans. Twenty-​five years later, Betty Friedan would term Married Doris’s observations “the problem that has no name.”29 In 1938, well before the dawn of second-​wave feminism, the advice column would serve as a place for Doris to vent her pain—​but yet not a place to foster collective activism. According to columnists, marital dissatisfaction took different forms for men and women. Men grumbled of wives who wanted to be wooed, pampered, and taken out even after years of marriage. Women complained of their husbands’ lack of affection, inability to communicate, and unwillingness to continue enjoying public amusements together. These complaints, argued Dix, Brown, and others, stemmed from the conditions of the modern era: the new economic, political, and social options for American women, loosening sexual norms, and the rise of mass leisure forms that allowed the sexes to interact both publicly and intimately.30 An Unhappy Wife was one of many women who wrote into Nancy Brown about her spouse’s indifference. “My husband . . . is so taken up with business,” she told the columnist, “that he neglects me and never takes me anywhere. I like to go out and I crave excitement so lately I have gone to the theater once in a while with gentlemen friends. . . . Could you suggest to me any inducement I could make to my husband so that he would take me out sometimes and pay more attention to me?” Brown was stern in her response, chastising her for going out with other men and encouraging her to embrace life at home. As for going out, “have a good heart to heart talk with him and see if you can’t arrive at some compromise with him,” Brown counseled. “And remember that the woman is always the one who has to give in and there is a heap more happiness in it than in being eternally determined to have your own way at the sacrifice of peace and love.”31 In her answers to such queries, Brown, like her colleague Dorothy Dix, reinforced a misogynistic perspective on gender relations that placed responsibility on women to compromise for the sake of matrimony—​even at the expense of their happiness, interests, and desires. Brown’s response also revealed her pessimism about the influence of modern leisure activities on marriages and a condescending belief that women were particularly tempted by such amusements. Dorothy Dix reassured her readers that it was entirely natural for both men and women to feel twinges of disappointment after marriage. How could they not, after all, in light of the modern veneration of romantic intimacy?

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In the reaction that follows marriage, and in which the man finds out that the beautiful angel he has espoused is no angel at all, but a commonplace creature who wears curl papers, and has nerves and a temper; and the woman discovers that the hero of her romantic days is not a little tin god, but a groundhog who eats onions and is fussy about his neckties, they wonder what on earth they saw in each other that made them go and do it. Yet the rush to divorce, like the rush to marriage, was a dangerous byproduct of modern companionate marriage. “This might be well enough if divorce was a panacea for domestic misery. But it isn’t. It cuts the tie that binds together the mismated, but it does not give them any substitute for the broken home. . . . It does not take the bitterness out of their souls, or blot out the sense of having failed in a great and high undertaking.” Just as Brown expressed in her exchange with the matrimony-​averse Bob-​o’-​Link, Dix insisted that marriage was a necessary anchor in a constantly changing, fast-​paced world.32 Divorce, most columnists agreed, was only appropriate in extreme cases of abuse, neglect, or adultery. Nancy Brown, for example, told M. V. T., “I cannot conceive of a woman submitting to the abuse and indignities you mention. If I could not make it better, I believe I would leave it.” Brown did not print M. V. T.’s letter, perhaps out of discretion for her situation.33 Well into the 1920s and 1930s, columnists continued to be cryptic about the details of presumably violent relationships. Of course, the decision to avoid the messy realities of abuse was not just made by Brown, but by the newspaper itself. During an era when publishers marketed their papers as wholesome “home papers,” graphic details of domestic violence, deemed inappropriate for women readers, likely would have soured advertisers. Abuse or no abuse, rarely did columnists counsel women to divorce while their children remained in their households. A Seeker wrote to Dorothy Dix in 1927 describing her unhappy marriage but expressing concern about the effects that a divorce might have on her sons, aged eighteen and twenty, who still lived at home: My marriage has been a most unhappy one, and for years I have endured it in order to give the boys everything that it was possible to give them, but now conditions have grown so bad that the situation seems to me almost unendurable. I adore my sons and it will break my heart to live apart from them, but I do not know how I can go on any longer living under the same roof with a man I loathe and keep my reason. Will I be

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failing my duty as a mother if I leave my home? . . . While making my own way may be a frightful struggle, there is hope in it. There may be happiness ahead. Now there is nothing. Dix was sympathetic to A  Seeker’s plight, but firm in her advice. “When you say that you love your boys more than life itself, you answer your own question, O, heavily burdened sister. For a little while longer you are bound upon your cross, and must endure its agony.” The columnist warned the woman that to break up her children’s home would push them to embrace wild behavior and make “undesirable acquaintances.” Stay for a few more years, Dix told the woman. In the meantime, she encouraged A Seeker to acquire some professional skill that would allow her to support herself after the separation. Modern society or no, Dix still expected women to deprioritize their own emotional needs when considering what was best for their families.34 Column reader-​contributors, too, counseled each other to think carefully before jumping to divorce, and these interactive exchanges often proved more effective at gratifying the advice-​seeker’s desire for empathy. In August 1919, the Boston Globe featured a letter from a reader, Desperate, in its “Confidential Chat” advice forum. “Dear Globe Sisters—​I have had help so many times from you,” Desperate wrote, “that I turn to you for help now when I need it.” Desperate confessed that she was heartbroken after discovering that her husband was having an affair. She found herself questioning her marriage, her life as a housewife, the validity of her love for her family—​things that she had built her life around and had once taken for granted. Desperate did solicit some advice on whether or not she should leave her husband. But she was more interested in using the forum to express her mental turmoil, her loss of confidence in her marriage, and her inability to feel joy: I am utterly wretched. I have worried myself nearly sick over it. . . . I can’t be the same to him, and I have tried hard. Something inside me is gone and I don’t feel like the same person. I was so happy just a short time ago and now I don’t seem to care about anything. My faith in him is gone. I don’t think it will ever come back. Desperate ended her letter by asking for comfort from the Chat reader-​ contributors. “I don’t know which way to turn,” she admitted. Only a week later she received letters from several “sisters,” all regular contributors to the Chat. Pollyanna wrote:

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You poor, dear Child! What a frenzy you worked yourself into—​and for what! If the grave accusation you bring against your husband is really true, you have my deepest sympathy. And you will have to face the fact and keep right on doing your best day by day. Life is strange, and we all realize this the older we grow. True to her pen name, Pollyanna concluded optimistically about Desperate’s marriage, “This may be just what is needed to draw you closer together.” Pollyanna and the other Chat sisters offered Desperate varied advice, but each of them gave her what she had been seeking the most: the assurance that she was not alone.35 Reader correspondence could sometimes complicate columnists’ firm criticism of divorce. In response to a spate of letters and columns condemning the effect of divorce on families, Beatrice Fairfax received a heart-​rending missive from Revolting Child, who wished that his parents had divorced long ago: For about as many years as I can remember my mother and father have not been on friendly terms. Everyone blames Dad, because he at one time had an affair with another woman. That is over now, but there certainly were many royal battles over this. . . . Dad doesn’t even speak to Mother, except when absolutely necessary. Everyone in town knows of the relation between Dad and Mother, and I can tell you that my brother and sister and I have one grand inferiority complex knowing that everyone knows. . . . We can’t invite friends to our home because they feel the tension, and don’t come back. My heart aches for both of my parents. What I want to stress is that I’d a thousand times rather face the embarrassment and humiliation of having had our home broken up than to have to spend another eight years going on as we have been. I  can’t remember ever having been happy. Don’t advise any parents to stay together “for the sake of the children.” I’m telling you, Miss Fairfax, the children do the suffering.36 Revolting Child’s letter demonstrated that the anti-​ divorce stance advocated by advice columnists did not adequately address the complex nature of familial and interpersonal crises. Such a letter could easily have been penned by the sons of A Seeker, who had written to Dorothy Dix about her loathsome marriage. Fairfax did not feature Revolting Child’s plaintive letter in her column—​the letter was found in her professional papers—​though as a policy she responded privately to every letter received. In revealing the messy

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and far-​reaching consequences of a marriage miserable yet endured, Revolting Child would have shown readers the gaping holes in the worldviews of many advice columnists. Above all, Fairfax and other columnists wanted to leave readers with some hope that they could instill order on their lives despite the chaotic nature of modern interpersonal relationships. Revolting Child’s letter also touched on another pressing cultural issue addressed in advice columns:  the problem of modern parenting. Revolting Child had become a victim of the excesses of failed marriage. His parents appeared too preoccupied with their own anger or despondency to consider the experiences of their children. When parents wrote to Dix fretting about their lack of authority over their children, or their fears that their sons or daughters were becoming too wild, the columnist ultimately blamed the leniency and self-​involvement of the mother and father. “There is no other crime in the world today,” Dix wrote, “comparable with the way the average child is being raised. Spoiled, pampered, indulged in every wish, made egoistic. . . . Obedience is a lost art.”37 For Dix, this problem of modern childrearing occurred at a moment when structures of authority were coming under fire in seemingly unprecedented ways. In response to An Unhappy Stepmother, who voiced concerns about her husband’s unruly children, Dix wrote, “My dear lady, every other mother in the country . . . is facing exactly the same problem that you are. And nobody knows what to do about it. Everywhere there are half-​grown youngsters that have revolted against parental authority and thrown off all restraints and set themselves up as arbiters of their own destinies.” Dix suggested boarding school for the teenagers. While she rarely absolved permissive parents of blame, Dix also argued that young people had to bear responsibility for their bad choices.38 In contrast to the stereotypical negligent parents and headstrong teens that columnists condemned, most letters revealed a more multilayered set of parental problems. Letter writers stated poignantly their fears about their children and expressed frustration that their hard work as parents had not paid off. In 1919, Worried confessed to Nancy Brown that her fourteen-​year old daughter had become quite wild: she wore revealing clothing like gauzy blouses, short skirts, and thin silk stockings; she insisted on buying her own clothing; and she refused to listen to her mother’s pleas to dress more appropriately and come home earlier. Worried insisted that she was an attentive mother, but felt that her own lack of education made her daughter scornful of her. She also had trouble keeping track of her daughter at night, as the young girl tended to take advantage of Detroit’s many amusements with her friends.

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Taking a page from Dix, Brown chastised Worried, writing that “it is difficult to imagine a mother letting a girl of 14 get so far away from her protecting discipline.” She told the woman to think hard about her parenting skills and to provide a more secure and strict home for her child. “You need some self-​ analysis to find out where you have failed to make your child well-​bred.”39 Brown’s offhand mention of “good breeding” reflected the columnist’s class assumptions—​and may have been a way of subtly indicting Worried for her lack of education. Brown and Dix may have deemed themselves experts on identifying the problem of modern parenting; Brown was even employing proto-​therapeutic terms like “self-​analysis” in her exchange with Worried, presaging the language of popular therapy. But as Brown’s responses to Worried revealed, their advice did not always address the complex generational tensions between parent and child, nor the impact of city life, educational disparities, and leisure activities on a parent’s authoritative reach. Other letters revealed that women struggled to balance the demands of motherhood with their need to earn money. In a 1934 letter, A Worried Mother told Dorothy Dix that she had worked for the past eight years, since her child was four years old, “to help with the household expenses and save a little money for the future.” While at work, she had left her son with her mother-​in-​law, who had recently passed away. “I must continue working, as my husband lost his regular job, but between us we earn enough to pay the bills. My problem is the boy. Is it safe for him to be left alone from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m.?” Dix answered with an emphatic no, suggesting either boarding school or leaving her son with “some nice middle-​aged woman.” “These are the formative years of your boy’s life, and you want him to get the right start. You don’t want him to be reared on the street and to absorb the morals and manners of the street.” The columnist, however, did not discourage the woman from working. So many mothers, Dix told A Worried Mother, frittered away their afternoons shopping or playing bridge. “You, at least, have the justification of working so that you may give him a better home, a better environment, and a better education than he could otherwise have.”40 Here, Dix proved sensitive to the complex burden of working women during the 1930s, when so many families dealt with financial precarity. In fact, Dix and some other columnists endorsed, at least in theory, the notion of women working. For Dix, this conclusion was based on an almost Calvinist belief in hard work and a disgust toward the frivolity of modern leisure. Wage work, she argued, kept women from developing a taste for idleness. “There is no more pathetic figure than that of the superfluous girl,” she insisted to readers. In response to a series of letters asking why working women

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rebuffed the advances of suitors, Laura Jean Libbey noted that many women chose to remain single and financially independent. “The example of a sister who may have wedded a scamp,” Libbey wrote, “or of school friends who have had diverse and bitter experiences with the marriage problem have caused them to turn their attentions away from love’s channel into more practical if prosaic avenues.” In Dix’s and Libbey’s accounts, women’s paid work appeared clean, safe, and respectable, and wages were generous enough to cover living expenses. This was a far cry from the working experiences of many laboring women, especially immigrant women and women of color in industrial cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and New York. Such rosy depictions could serve as an aspirational goal for many working-​class people looking to make their way in the world.41 Many working women shared that their employment threatened their interpersonal relationships. In a 1932 letter to Marion Harland of the Chicago News, Would Be Earner feared the impact that her employment would have on the psyche of her husband, who was out of a job. After taking off a few years from paid work to raise her children, Would Be Earner recently received a job offer. “While the salary isn’t large, it would help out in these days of diminishing income. Do you think my taking a job now will destroy [my husband’s] incentive?” Holmes pointed out that many husbands might “be crushed” by their wives’ employment, but that in the uncertain years of the 1930s, she needed to make sure that her family remained afloat. Would Be Earner’s letter showed that the rising number of women working during the 1920s and 1930s called into question the fixity of traditional roles of “breadwinner” and “housekeeper,” particularly in light of the record unemployment rates during the years of the Great Depression.42 Nancy Brown was less enthusiastic about the prospect of women working than Holmes, Dix, or Libbey. She insisted that women who chose careers over marriage, motherhood, and a happy home would lead empty, unfulfilled lives. Brown employed one of her favorite rhetorical techniques to reinforce her beliefs: she published “testimonial” letters from women, married and unmarried, who offered their experiences and concluded that women could not find satisfaction without marriage and motherhood. Southern Pines, a thirty-​ seven-​year-​old woman who never married, sent Brown a poignant tale. Her mother, who came from a prominent old Southern family, married a bookish scholar and then died giving birth to Southern Pines. Her father insisted that she concentrate on her studies and pushed her to earn her doctorate. Having had no time to meet a husband, she found herself middle-​aged, unmarried, lonely, and trapped in a profession she hated. What could she do, she

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asked Brown? “Your problem,” Brown counseled, “is that of every unmarried woman, I believe, Southern Pines. The woman who has no home and no one who stands first with her and with whom she is first, is indeed a lonely soul. She gropes and gropes for work that will take the place of home times. Work helps more than anything else, but, oh, what work it must be that will compensate for such a loss.”43 For Brown, the issue was not whether women had the aptitude for work, but about whether it would make them happy. Ultimately, Brown believed that it was women’s responsibility to curb their talents and ambitions in order to find happiness in the roles for which they were supposedly biologically suited—​wifehood and motherhood. The testimonial letters she featured also served as a counterpoint to the growing number of positive depictions of working women in the media and in motion pictures—​ depictions Brown would have considered dangerous and misleading. Notably, Southern Pines did not write to Brown for specific advice, but instead to elicit the columnist’s sympathy and affection. Because her parable reinforced Brown’s traditional worldview, Southern Pines could be sure to receive that sympathy. Whether columnists endorsed the working woman, as Dix did, or condemned her, as Brown did, all columnists agreed that deep down, women shared one supposedly natural and inevitable goal—​to be loved by a husband and to have children. Even the most progressive of columnists believed that a woman’s desire to keep house and to be a mother was innate. In response to Tweenie, who quarreled with her husband because she didn’t want children, Dix chastised, “You are the selfish one, Tweenie. There is something abnormal in a woman—​something cold and hard and unfeminine and unlovable—​who does not like babies, nor long for the cling of little arms about her neck.”44 To remain relevant, however, columnists needed to square their belief in women’s supposedly innate roles with the new economic and cultural options facing them in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. To do so, they portrayed the woman housekeeper as a career woman. As Dorothy Dix often said, “housewifery is one of the most lucrative professions that any woman can follow.” More so than with other topics, columnists encouraged women’s interactivity and welcomed contributions concerning domestic queries and debates. Women wrote seeking recipes and housekeeping tips from each other and often took on the role of advisor themselves. They modernized traditions of women’s kinship networks by communicating with anonymous correspondents rather than family members. And they sought validation and empathy from other women struggling with similar responsibilities.45

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Influenced by the Progressive Era ideals of professionalization and scientific efficiency, newspaper readers used advice columns and housekeeper forums to streamline their domestic techniques and to express pride in their “profession.”46 In the Boston Globe’s long-​running housekeeping forum “Confidential Chat,” women sent and solicited cooking, housekeeping, childrearing, and personal health tips. In July 1912, for example, Somebody’s Mildred expressed appreciation for a superior recipe sent by Zip’s Sister and hoped to return the favor. “Tried your beef loaf the day it was printed,” Mildred effused, “and it was delicious. Wish you would try this pudding.” A  Buttered Pudding recipe followed. In the Chicago Daily News, Marion Holmes’s “Replies” column served as a similarly interactive site where readers could solicit information and advice about various topics. In response to a 1928 query made by O. M. R. about a particular household plant with a mint odor and healing properties, Holmes printed two of the many responses received. Mrs. L. A. S. identified the plant as “ragged Robin” and gave detailed instructions on how to care for and use the plant. In the case of O. M. R.’s letter, the “Replies” column served almost as a pre-​Internet search engine that this reader used to find her answer.47 When mothers used such forums to compare notes on childrearing techniques, exchanges could quickly transform into more intimate conversations. In 1919, Maine, N. H., Mass. sent her first letter to the Globe’s “Chat,” sharing her detailed regimen for her baby boy. After laying out her formula recipes, a complex schedule for napping and playing, and the exercises she employed to encourage the nine-​month-​old to speak, she included a message for correspondent Teddy G, who had recently lost her infant to illness. “I feel so sorry for Teddy G. in her loss and for all those who lose their children. It certainly must be a terrible thing. . . . I almost feel acquainted with all the dear sisters. How I wish some one would write a letter to me, I should cherish it so much.” Acer Rubrum also expressed her condolences to Teddy G. “I was so sorry to hear of your great loss,” she wrote on the same day. “I was interested in [your] babies, and your method of bringing them up, as I too, am trying to bring up my little fellow by system. You have my heartfelt sympathy.” These conversations transitioned easily between effusive sympathy and technical details—​a pattern that can be seen today on blogs, forums, and Facebook groups about attachment parenting, sleep training, special needs children, and many other topics related to childrearing.48 In light of the dislocations of urban life, housekeeper forums like the “Confidential Chat” and Marion Holmes’s “Replies” sometimes served as a replacement for waning structures of community in the modern city. Even

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those readers who did not carry on regular correspondence expressed fondness and appreciation for the columns. “This is the first time I have ever written to this column,” Love One Another confessed in 1919, “but have thought many times I would like to, if I could make a success of it. I have taken the daily and Sunday Globe for many years. The Household Department is the first news I look for. I can assure the dear sisters (if I may call them such), I, too, have been helped in many ways by their kind and beautiful thoughts.” Love One Another’s endorsement reinforced the boundaries of the Chat’s virtual community while also providing ideal material for publishers looking to impress potential advertisers.49 Advice columnists and reader-​contributors alike internalized the assumption that women were natural spenders; indeed, they helped incorporate consumerism into the “profession” of housewifery. Because the inclination to spend came naturally to women, columnists like Dix argued, they were the efficient and logical choice for the role of family “pursekeeper.” Dix saw this as a particular innovation of the “modern girl”: “When it comes to spending money,” the columnist wrote, “these bobbed-​haired Shebas can come nearer to getting 110 cents on every dollar than Mr. Mellon can.” Yet women’s spending instinct also had the potential to become dangerous in a modern world filled with disposable consumer goods. Though in some cases she praised women’s budget-​keeping capabilities, Dix just as often railed against female extravagance. Women who spent excessively “admire themselves for their generosity and the carelessness with which they fling money about. Perhaps if they saw themselves in their true light as thieves and grafters,” Dix insisted, “they might have more respect for the homely virtue of thrift, which is the foundation of honest self-​respect, success in life, and comfort in one’s old age.” Framing spending (and saving) as a household duty, columnists insisted, allowed women to channel their impulses into a more “worthy” endeavor. As always, columnists encouraged women to focus not on their own desires, but on the needs of their families and households.50 Columnists approached questions of budgeting as educators helping to teach young women about the nuances of household consumption. Nancy Brown proved particularly invested in aiding her “Experience” “columnites” struggling to make ends meet. If readers sent her an explanation of their family income and expenses along with a stamped envelope, she promised to send them detailed budgeting advice. Tillie struggled to pay her family’s $60 monthly rent on her husband’s $40 a week salary. Brown advised Tillie and her husband to find a less expensive apartment, and then outlined proposed expenditures for housing, food, utilities, clothing, and insurance.

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Brown did not stop there. She went on to give Tillie specific tips to promote household saving, suggesting that she divide her husband’s pay into household “categories” as soon as he brought it home. “You are spending too much for food,” she continued. “Young people usually err in that direction. Every scrap of good food can be used up in some way that is palatable and nourishing. Study your cook-​book. . . . I believe there are cook-​books for brides. Go to a good book-​store and ask for one and try it. You will find it would repay you many times over.” Like the “sisters” in the “Confidential Chat,” Brown saw herself as a seasoned expert sharing her skill set with younger, less experienced women.51 During the 1930s, letters concerning household budgeting took on greater urgency, as families struggled to keep afloat during the Great Depression. In 1930, The Minx confessed her fears to Brown and other “Experience” readers. Referring to her family’s savings, she wrote, “You can imagine how low we are.” The Minx’s husband retained his job, but the factory that employed him had ground to a halt since the onset of the Depression. “Every Monday they are told to come over the following Monday only to be told the same next Monday. He has looked high and low for employment elsewhere but to no avail.” The Minx wondered whether she should borrow money from her parents and return with her children to her hometown in Massachusetts, leaving her husband in Detroit to support himself: He is the most optimistic fellow you ever saw, Nancy. Nothing seems to hurt him. He has more bad luck than any one I’ve ever seen. Everything he touches turns to mud. But it doesn’t seem to bother him any. He hopes for better things. He insists on writing stories, and is forever writing. He expects to be an author but I  am so very doubtful. . . . What will I do, Nancy? Stick it out here or go back to safety? I know I would rather stay here with my good man and starve, maybe. Lovingly —​THE MINX. Brown encouraged The Minx to “stick it out” in Detroit. “I would stick to my work, if I were your husband, and try to fill the best he can with odd jobs,” she replied. “I believe the factories will open before long.”52 Here in the early years of the Depression, Brown doled out strikingly upbeat advice. But as the decade wore on, letter writers became more pessimistic about their prospects. Writing Beatrice Fairfax in 1937, Heartbroken and Desperate feared that financial stress was destroying her marriage:

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For two years, while the depression was so bad in our home state, my husband was unable to find employment, so of course bills and old debts continued to stare us in the face. I started out and always succeed in finding enough work to somehow meet the creditors and keep us in clothing. Finally things got better and my husband landed a job. Small pay and separation for several months of the year. Now my husband can find very little interest in his home and is seeking entertainment elsewhere. So easy to forget the solemn promise to “cherish and love,” “to have and to hold.”53 Despite her enduring love for him, Heartbroken and Desperate confessed a desire to leave her husband, as the financial strain of the Depression combined with her husband’s lack of interest made her despair. Her letter showed how budget problems affected much more than financial solvency. Yet the Depression also demonstrated the remarkable flexibility of the advice column genre and the willingness of participants to bend it to their needs. Columnists, especially local ones like Marion Holmes, turned their columns into sites where both men and women could solicit private aid. This was particularly evident in the early 1930s, before major New Deal legislation was implemented. “Dear Marion Holmes: I have been out of work for eight months,” came a matter-​of-​fact letter from Frank B. to the Chicago Daily News in 1930. “We have two children and are expecting another. I have paid no rent in this time and the landlord will not wait any longer. Gas and electricity will be turned off soon. I  have had a few odd jobs and my wife has worked when she could. The girls, 10 and 11, both need clothing.” Holmes appointed herself liaison between her neediest readers and those who might be in a position to help. Having visited Frank’s family, she reported, “This family is facing actual want. There were very few staple groceries in the house, which was scrupulously clean.” She requested that readers send clothes, “sizes 1 and 2,” and food staples for “this family on Osgood Street.” The following day brought two new requests, one from a woman whose sick husband needed shoes, and another from an indebted family. Of the latter Holmes requested clothing of a specific size and informed her readers, “They have never before asked for aid.” Holmes and her readers were able to use the advice column as a method of crowd-​sourcing aid well before local and federal governments expanded welfare mechanisms. The advice column also served as a replacement for something more personal—​the safety net of extended families and rural communities, assets often lost when men and women moved to big cities.54

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Taming and harnessing their desire to spend was, according to columnists, one of the modern woman’s most important duties—​but paradoxically, so was remaining fashionable, attractive, and interesting. While columns dedicated solely to topics of beauty, fashion, health, and etiquette abounded in newspapers, lovelorn and household columnists also addressed these questions. First and foremost, columnists emphasized that it was a wife’s “professional” duty to maintain her fetching personal appearance and sparkling personality after she had won her man. If she let those duties slide and her husband lost interest in her and turned elsewhere for satisfaction, well, that was her fault. Dorothy Dix made this clear in 1919 when she explained the dual nature of wifehood through a biblical metaphor. “The story of Martha and Mary in the Bible,” she wrote in reference to the two female followers of Jesus, “is eternally symbolic of the life of the average woman.” Martha attended to the drudgeries of the house, cooking, mending, and cleaning. Mary, on the other hand, “read and thought and cherished ideals of the beautiful.” Many women, Dix observed, “decide in favor of Martha.” But such a decision, she argued, would no longer sustain a modern marriage. “It is always Mary who is adored by her family, while Martha’s family appreciates her good points but finds her trying to live with.” Dix encouraged women to “save the biggest part of her energy to devote to the higher things”: remaining “cheerful and even tempered,” well read and interesting, and attractive. According to Dix—​in this exchange, at least—​the cultivation of one’s personality and appearance was perhaps more important than the maintenance of a clean and organized home. A  wife and mother owed it to her husband and children to remain a figure who could be “adored.” Almost twenty years later, Beatrice Fairfax expressed a similar sentiment. “Every man is embarrassed at being seen with a slovenly woman,” she wrote. “She may be his wife, and her appearance, due to his stinginess or his unsuccess. But whatever the case, his reaction is mortification.” For Fairfax and other like-​minded columnists, a woman’s personal maintenance was her responsibility even if her husband could not afford it. “Be thankful,” she chastised, “that today one can buy good-​looking clothes at minimum cost.”55 Keeping up one’s appearance required quite a bit of work. Women had to care properly for their stockings and clothing, maintain their weight, learn to apply makeup (but never too much!), and wash and style their hair expertly. Dorothy Dix argued that a woman’s personal upkeep was a never-​ending but vital job in her endorsements for Lux clothing detergent during the 1930s. Dix emphasized the importance of “feminine charm” and informed her fans

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that Lux detergent was the only way to maintain “all the dainty, most feminine parts of a girl’s wardrobe: her lingerie, negligees, hosiery. Lovely, soft colorful underthings—​they make you feel so utterly feminine. Irresistible! And because you have confidence in yourself, you impress others—​for confidence is contagious.” In another ad, Dix’s tone was more ominous. “Broken Illusions Can Never Be Mended, says DOROTHY DIX,” the ad warned. Below a picture of a man eying doubtfully a woman’s shabby evening wear was the following message: Don’t let the “little” things—​careless, unfeminine details—​spoil your lovely effect! Such a “small” offense against daintiness as a faded shoulder ribbon peeping out . . . frayed lace edging visible when you lift up your arm . . . a silk slip not so color-​fresh as it might be. Such things as these rob you of all illusion in “his” eyes. And broken illusions can never be mended. I beg you to do these two very simple things: 1. Buy the loveliest, most exquisite lingerie you can. 2. Keep it always color-​fresh, beautiful. “But how can we keep delicate lingerie fresh and colorful?” girls often say to me. “Frequent washing leaves it so faded and worn-​looking.” Dix assured readers that Lux’s gentle suds would keep their clothing—​and by extension, the women themselves—​fresh and feminine.56 As Dix’s Lux ads indicated, advice columnists did not necessarily invent the standards of beauty they disseminated to the public. They built on ideals well established by a ubiquitous mass culture, especially with the expansion of the motion picture and advertising industries in the 1920s and 1930s. Columnists endorsed these standards of beauty and poise while also pushing women to be thrifty spenders, careful and efficient housekeepers, dutiful and cheerful wives, attentive mothers, and hard workers. These were remarkably difficult benchmarks to meet. Because they consolidated so many different topics into their outlooks, advice columnists served as influential and potent disseminators of a contradictory and ultimately unattainable set of gender standards. According to Brown, Dix, and other columnists, a woman’s behavior was just as important as her appearance. Brown lamented the increasing ubiquity of “the modern girl’s vocabulary,” a vernacular regularly employing slang and swear words like “Damn!” and “Oh, heck!” “Surely it is not prudery or

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Figure 2.3  “Broken Illusions Can Never Be Mended, Says Dorothy Dix.” Advertisement for Lux detergent, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 14, 1931.

any indication of being behind the times that makes the older woman sorry to hear the girl of today indulge in profanity pure and unadulterated,” she observed. Columnists decried modern girls and flappers for their new, seemingly unladylike styles and behaviors, yet insisted that they use the most

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modern products and techniques to maintain their beauty, freshness, and poise. Other letter queries to “Experience” reflected readers’ class aspirations, especially those letters that posed etiquette questions. “Kindly tell me how asparagus on toast is eaten—​whether the stalks are picked with the fingers or eaten with a fork,” D. De B. inquired. “Also inform me whether a salad is eaten with the meat and vegetable course or afterward alone?” After answering D.’s questions, Brown concluded with one more assurance to her response: “Your letter is correct grammatically.” In this way, Brown and other advice columnists could reinforce their vision of ideal middle-​class womanhood while still offering working-​class readers a blueprint for cultural betterment.57 To that end, advice columnists and their readers endorsed standards of beauty that encouraged the shedding of any racial or ethnic tells. Being attractive—​for both men and women—​meant being white. Young women wrote in regularly to columns requesting ways to lighten darker skin—​lemon juice was Nancy Brown’s advice to curious Detroiters. Another Detroit News correspondent, Dancing Eyes, revealed how deeply this valorization of whiteness could be internalized. Dancing Eyes was a young Alaskan Indian living in Detroit and taking stenography classes. In a long letter, she told Brown and the other correspondents about her broken betrothal to a young Aleutian man, Bak-​ook. She found his features “extraordinarily ugly” and felt relieved when the marriage plans fell through. “I took an intense dislike to his homeliness,” she wrote, “and decided then and there to never marry into my own race.” She liked that that Detroit offered her opportunities to meet more attractive companions. Dancing Eyes rarely besmirched her own appearance, emphasizing her own exotic beauty in her letters. She proudly discussed her ethnic origins with the “column family,” yet unreflectively expressed disgust at the supposed ugliness of others of her ethnicity.58 Advice column letters addressing race this explicitly were rare. Dancing Eyes’ observations—​and the ways she implicitly endorsed American values of white supremacy and justified her own racism—​demonstrated how complex these issues were in the lives of many Americans. Despite her ethnic background, Dancing Eyes embraced a virtual community that largely alienated people of color. She experimented with “passing” and eschewed the company of her fellow Alaskan Indians. In the column, she sought to represent the city’s pluralism while refusing to question the structures of discrimination that shaped so many aspects of American life. In the early twentieth century, Nancy Brown and the “Experience” readers willingly dialogued with Dancing Eyes in the pages of the Detroit News. But few advice columnists or column

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participants were prepared or willing to tackle the complex issues of power, identity, and inequality at the heart of her story.

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The genre of advice established in early twentieth century newspapers shaped the way interactive media users communicated with each other for decades to come. Its legacy can be seen in self-​help radio and television programming, podcasts, online and social media communities, and many forms of popular therapy. Even the topics so prevalent in early advice columns continue to have relevance and shape countless virtual conversations. The ethnic and racial diversity of cities, the influence of consumer culture and popular media, the sexual practices of Americans, new opportunities available to women, the changing nature of labor and the economy, conflicting approaches to childrearing—​these transformations gave rise to new and difficult questions in the 1910s and 1920s and continue to do so today.

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3

Queen of Heartaches The Advice Columnist as Icon and Journalist

Over the course of her career, advice columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer gave hundreds of interviews to magazines like Life, Colliers, McCall’s, Literary Digest, and Time. By the 1930s, the height of her popularity, Gilmer had perfected the art of the promotional interview. Being an advice columnist and a celebrity had taught Gilmer to conceal the messy details of her life—​an estranged, abusive husband, for example—​and to dwell dramatically on her innate feminine ability to counsel America’s troubled newspaper readers. “I have been the confidant of the women who keep brothels and the girls in them,” she recounted in one article. “I have sat in prison cells and listened to the heart stories of murderesses and have sat in luxurious drawing rooms while the guest of millionaires’ wives. I have seen women in their moments of triumph and in their hours of despair; and there is no joy or sorrow that can tear at the human heart that I do not know.”1 She was a pre-​eminent advice columnist, Gilmer told readers, because of the deep sense of empathy that was unique to her sex. Beyond the labor that writing her advice column required, Gilmer spent much of her career publicizing and managing her personal life story in newspapers, magazines, promotional materials, on the radio, and in public appearances. Perhaps Elizabeth Gilmer’s prose sounds familiar to the reader. That is because she wrote under the pen name Dorothy Dix, one of the most popular and prolific advice givers of the era. This chapter examines how early advice columnists, a largely female group of journalists, established their professional standards and their high-​profile public personas.2 As leaders in a new, as-​yet-​undefined field of journalism, columnists like Gilmer, Marie Manning (writing as Beatrice Fairfax), and Annie Brown Leslie (writing as Nancy Brown) carved out a distinctly, even

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proudly feminine niche of interpersonal reportage. The columnists who wrote and edited advice columns revolutionized the iconography and the practice of journalism for women, both in their fastidious management of their public images and in their groundbreaking professional practices as America’s foremost counselors. Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie crafted their public personas in ways that obscured their personal experiences and beliefs. As such, it is important to distinguish between their public personalities as advice givers and their own private realities as journalists, wives, and mothers.3 Advice columnists were among the earliest celebrity reporters. Their success hinged on their willingness to publicize their (highly edited) life narratives in their columns and in the mainstream press. There, they played up their traditional female traits and their roles as wives and helpmeets in their private lives in order to reinforce their advice worldviews and to brand their profession as a female one. Yet they could not always live up to the standards of modern womanhood they upheld in their columns. Columnists changed their personal narratives over time, tailoring them to reflect evolving cultural mores and public expectations. By the mid-​ twentieth century, the intimate details of columnists’ lives had become central to their public reception. Advice columnists helped usher in an age of celebrity journalism, which during the early twentieth century moved away from hagiographic portrayals of American heroes and heroines, and toward a new preoccupation with the intimate, personal details of public figures’ lives.4 Yet advice giving was about more than just public relations. Advice columnists took their profession quite seriously, envisioning themselves as mediators of information and counsel in an increasingly complex, subjective, and bureaucratic world. Prolific advice columnists like Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie maintained a professional staff and answered every letter they received from a reader, regardless of the topic. Columnists saw themselves as providing a service to newspaper readers; they offered them a combination of empathetic counsel and concrete information in a discreet, anonymous forum. This must have been an invaluable resource to thousands of correspondents: sexually active teenagers; young spouses contemplating infidelity or coping with the indiscretion of a husband or wife; unwed women who found themselves pregnant; jobless or homeless people; servicemen guilty about leaving behind a wife or a sweetheart; and abused partners and children. To address readers’ needs, some columnists conducted copious research on sexual education, teenage pregnancy, health insurance, women’s employment, and many other subjects. They asserted themselves as educators and fashioned their

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columns as new and important vehicles for processing people’s problems and explaining their options with clarity and empathy. The rise of second-​wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s prompted many contemporary observers, journalists, and scholars to dismiss the impact of pioneering female reporters covering “soft news”—​those writing advice columns, features, gossip columns, and other content geared to female readers. At best, pundits claimed, soft news journalism was a necessary if degrading step women reporters needed to take to gain the opportunity to cover “hard news”—​politics, business, and international relations. At worst, it was a manipulative and sexist mass-​media construct that reinforced women’s essential difference and their social and political inferiority.5 This dismissal of journalists like Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie ignores the essential fact that advice columnists exerted outsized influence on newspaper content, on their readers, and on public discourse in America. These columnists were “real” journalists, too, and the relationship between media and celebrity cannot be understood without analyzing their contributions. These trailblazing advice givers used their columns to help shape the social and political beliefs of millions of newspaper readers. At the same time, they leveraged their gender to further their own careers and to carve out a distinctly feminine niche of journalism—​one that helped pave the way for the thriving and influential market of media celebrities today.6

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Advice columnists emerged as a professional group during a time of expanding, if still limited, opportunities for women in the public sphere. As professionals and as public figures, advice columnists were influenced by two powerful and intertwined developments: the increasing presence of women in Progressive Era reform movements and the reform press, and the rise of female celebrity journalists in sensationalized “yellow” papers. It is no coincidence that the profession of advice columnist developed during the most vital years of the Progressive Era. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Progressive women reformers rose in number, in institutional representation, and in influence. These reformers embraced the popular notion of “municipal housekeeping”—​the idea that private and state organizations could “clean up” the excesses of modern city life—​and argued that reform was an extension of their roles as homemakers. Municipal housekeepers worked to eliminate child labor, improve women’s working conditions, and provide services and educational opportunities to poverty-​stricken families. By focusing on the conditions of women and children, female reformers felt

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they could justify their entry into public life, despite their lingering belief in the notion of separate spheres, if not as a reality than as an ideal for which to strive.7 As early as the 1870s, municipal housekeepers recognized the role that the press could play in spreading their messages and recruiting new volunteers. Women journalists like Jane Cunningham Croly, Helen M.  Winslow, and Rheta Childe Dorr used large newspapers like the New  York Tribune and smaller club publications to remind women that they had a particularly female duty to participate in reform. Municipal housekeepers were early and influential adopters of investigative journalism. In fact, they opened doors for the more famous—​and in many ways more radical—​exposés conducted by female muckrakers like Ida Tarbell, whose 1902 coverage of the Standard Oil empire served as a landmark of Progressive Era journalism. Inspired by the work of Tarbell and others, a generation of young women, many white and middle-​class, joined reform societies, moved into settlement houses, and sought audiences with local and state politicians. The creation of governmental organizations, such as the Children’s Bureau in 1912, allowed women to effect reform on a national scale and enact legislation that focused on the health and childrearing needs of American mothers and children.8 The municipal housekeeping and muckraking press helped publicize and disseminate ideas of social justice to a reading public and pushed women reformers and writers to see the press as a powerful organ for change. The remarkable success of reportage like Tarbell’s also demonstrated that women could gain significant notoriety and influence through reform journalism. Marie Manning, who would later become known as advice columnist Beatrice Fairfax, aspired to be a reporter after reading gripping exposés penned by women in the New  York Herald. Advice columnists, emerging during the heyday of municipal housekeeping, believed that one of their professional duties was to prompt similar social change on a grander scale by using the woman’s page to reach millions of readers—​while fusing their counsel with drama and entertainment.9 Stories in both mainstream newspapers and in smaller reform publications encouraged women to join Progressive Era causes not because they deserved equal employment opportunities or because they had the same capacity as men, but because they were uniquely suited for particular jobs as women. Many professional women found it more expedient to emphasize their supposed female skills than a universal right to participate in public life. Other women truly believed that women were blessed with specific organizational or maternal skills and interests and embraced their professional female niche.

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Most advice columnists fell into the latter category. They proudly boasted that their experiences as women gave them specific skills—​motherly empathy and common sense—​that made them fit to dole out advice to American newspaper readers. Corresponding with the Children’s Bureau, social workers, and voluntary organizations, advice columnists saw themselves as offshoots of and mouthpieces for these female-​led institutions.10 The values of Progressive Era reform also infused the work of celebrity reporters employed by “yellow” newspapers. Purveyors of yellow journalism embraced a style of reportage that drew heavily on eye-​catching feature and entertainment content. This approach, in many ways, went hand in hand with the motivations of the reform press. Both were committed to revealing the sometimes appalling living conditions of America’s urban poor, for example; but yellow journalists were particularly interested in sensationalizing their stories. Motivated by their desire to draw readers, editors of yellow newspapers increasingly hired women reporters to bring color, spectacle, pathos, and publicity to their pages. One significant innovation of this genre of reportage was the female stunt reporter, the most popular of whom was Nellie Bly.11 Bly capitalized on her own daring and her fetching appearance and personality to launch herself to national fame. At Pulitzer’s New York World, Bly got her first major story when she posed as an insane woman, was committed, and spent several days in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in 1887. Her stories of corruption and inhumane treatment were the perfect marriage of sensationalistic detail and moral exposé. In contrast to reportage of municipal housekeepers and Progressives, Bly lured in World readers with her determined, even brazen persona more so than with the content of her stories. The public was truly intrigued by the ambitious young woman who had the nerve to subject herself to such risk. Readers gained a thrill from Bly’s willingness to place herself in the path of danger—​sexual danger was the palpable subtext—​and by her ability to narrowly avoid harm. Bly’s attractive female body was as much a subject of her stunt reportage as the dreadful conditions she brought to the public eye.12 Stunt reporting waned in popularity during the first two decades of the twentieth century, due in part to journalists’ growing preoccupation with standards of objectivity that stood in contrast to Bly’s seemingly manipulative techniques.13 The topics Bly covered as a stunt reporter were more closely related to those of Progressive muckrakers—​who, in the 1890s and 1900s, would draw on her expository style but imbue it with grander themes of respectability and social justice—​than to those of early twentieth-​century

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Figure 3.1  Nellie Bly, circa 1890. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

advice columnists. But her willingness to market her personality and her physical appearance paved the way for advice columnists’ self-​promotional techniques: their exposure of their personal lives and their willingness to experiment with sensation and spectacle. The sob sister reporters of the first decade of the twentieth century drew on sensationalism in ways similar to Bly and other stunt reporters. The term “sob sisters” came into popular use during the 1906 trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of architect Stanford White, when Hearst and Pulitzer employed well-​known newspaperwomen to cover the trial from the “woman’s angle.” The original sob sisters consisted of Winifred Black, a stunt reporter and author of women’s features who wrote under the pen name Annie Laurie; Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, who had already commenced advice giving under the pen name Dorothy Dix; Ada Patterson, considered the “Nellie Bly of the West”; and Nixola Greeley-​Smith, an accomplished writer who covered the society beat. The sisters wrote emotionally wrought columns that sympathized with the plight of Evelyn Nesbit, the tragic young wife of the murderer. Sob sister reportage remained popular through the end of the decade, as the sisters went

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on to cover a number of trials of misunderstood female murderers. Their stories almost always portrayed the women defendants in a sympathetic and tragic light. Criticized as inauthentic and sentimental, sob sister coverage fell out of public favor by the 1910s; yet these reporters influenced subsequent generations of soft news journalists. Like stunt reporters, sob sisters proudly capitalized on their celebrity and popularity among women readers to push their copy. Perhaps even more significant was their implicit critique of city life during a period of urban growth, rapid increases in immigration, rising crime rates, and changing female ideals and loosening sexual mores. These were themes that advice columns drew on copiously. For sob sisters, it was the chaotic, alienating, sexualized, and violent nature of the city that prompted the murders on which they reported. From their perspectives, the perpetrators of such violent crimes were just as much victims as the dead.14 Stunt reporters, sob sisters, and other popular “girl reporters” demonstrate how central women’s reportage became during the “golden age” of yellow journalism. Pulitzer and Hearst were among the first major publishers to recognize that women readers were a potentially lucrative and largely untapped demographic, and they spent significant amounts of money to appeal to them. The rise of the female reporter was a key aspect of the feminization of the American newspaper that gave rise to the woman’s page, gendered newspaper marketing techniques, and interactive features like advice columns.15 Female celebrity reporters came under criticism during the first decades of the twentieth century, as the popularity of yellow journals faded and the hard news press became increasingly preoccupied with “objective” reportage. If objectivity served as a new professional ideal, then soft news reporters, almost always women, were examples of journalism’s worst excesses. The standards of journalism, as defined by emerging journalism schools, press organizations, and standard-​bearers of objective news like the New York Times, created a patriarchal professional structure that dismissed women’s content and women reporters as inherently and problematically subjective. Stunt reporters used trickery and even seduction to get their stories; sob sisters gave biased, overwrought analyses; advice columnists peddled in emotions and feelings. At a time when reporters’ “angles” came under criticism, female reporters were employed to provide the “woman’s angle,” not “real news.” While the woman’s page has long since been abandoned, the gendered biases inherent in professional journalism standards linger, as evident in “soft news” features of the twenty-​first century, from celebrity news coverage to women’s magazines.16 Of course, women journalists producing soft news content generated profits for many newspapers, even as their work was widely denigrated. It was in

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this professional context that advice columns emerged and flourished. Rather than fighting the double standards that defined their profession, columnists like Elizabeth Gilmer, Marie Manning, and Annie Leslie capitalized on this gendered divide, drawing on women’s Progressive Era reform ideology and the savvy self-​promotion of forebears like Nellie Bly to shape the role of newspaper advice columnist. As they established their groundbreaking columns and built their public profiles, advice columnists understood that their personalities were just as much the subject of their work as the issues they covered.

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Elizabeth Gilmer (pen name Dorothy Dix), Marie Manning (Beatrice Fairfax), and Annie Leslie (Nancy Brown) not only served as three of the most popular and long-​running advice columnists of the early twentieth century, but they also left behind rich archival sources that other, less prolific columnists did not. In many ways their careers were exceptional; most advice columnists did not receive the extensive press attention or attain the career longevity that Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie did. Through their columns, their other literary works, promotional materials, endorsements, and press interviews and appearances, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie proudly and carefully wove their private lives into their work and into the management of their public images. They revealed intimate details, recounted personal decisions and ambitions, and emphasized particularly feminine personality traits to demonstrate that they were perfectly suited for the female profession of interpersonal advice giving. In creating Dorothy Dix, Beatrice Fairfax, and Nancy Brown, the three columnists cobbled together carefully rehearsed biographical narratives meant to appeal to national audiences of different backgrounds and beliefs and to diffuse divisive issues about women’s work, the nature of marriage and the family, urbanization, and modern culture. In doing so they established informal but nonetheless influential standards of expertise for the profession, standards on which new generations of columnists would draw in modeling their own personas. To find the kind of success that Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie did, their successors would have to be willing to embrace celebrity: to expose the details of their lives and to tailor, edit, or change their personal narratives to suit their column, newspaper, or syndicate’s needs.17 As early as the 1890s, newspapers, syndicates, and magazines began featuring stories on up-​and-​coming advice columnists, but not until the 1920s and 1930s did such pieces delve deeply into the personal details of

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columnists’ lives. Earlier articles from the 1890s focused much more closely on the unique professional aspirations and successes of the columnists rather than portraying them as familiar, relatable women. Often, these early articles were brief, pithy, and episodic, while stories on the columnists a few decades later aimed to expose significant intimate details.18 By the 1920s and 1930s, columnists like Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie learned to seize control of their public personas and to use the press to gather new readers, familiarize a national audience with their life stories, and leverage press coverage into better salaries from their newspapers or syndicates. The rise of newspaper advice columns and the well-​known women at their helm maps directly onto the development of modern American notions of celebrity in the first half of the twentieth century. Emerging alongside the motion picture industry and Hollywood’s star system, this new understanding of celebrity marked a shift away from celebrating public figures for their accomplishments and toward fixating on them for their glamour, status, and ability to infiltrate “public consciousness,” as sociologist Chris Rojek has argued. Columnists like Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie embraced many of the values of twentieth-​century celebrity—​particularly the increasing preoccupation with personality over deeds and the alluring notion of self-​invention and reinvention. By the twilight of each of their careers in the 1940s, celebrity as a cultural construct and economic system had become nearly ubiquitous in America.19 Each columnist managed her career and personal life differently. Over the course of her career, Elizabeth Gilmer served as one of the original “sob sisters,” a woman’s page editor, and a crime reporter, in addition to her advice work. By the 1920s she made the decision to focus solely on the latter and established herself as the country’s premier advice giver. Gilmer’s success led to syndicate bidding wars over her column, a number of product endorsements, and several book deals. Her success also ensured that she was a constant subject of the mainstream print press. Yet Gilmer, who had no children and who had long been separated from her mentally ill husband, often struggled to square her private decisions with her motherly public persona. Marie Manning, on the other hand, made very different career and family decisions. After establishing Beatrice Fairfax’s “Advice to the Lovelorn” in the New York Evening Journal in 1898, Manning quit her job when she married in 1905. She remained a housewife, mother, and freelance novelist until 1929, when her family’s losses in the stock market crash pushed her back to the newspaper business. In press interviews and in her own writing, Manning played up her “retirement” to differentiate herself from Gilmer and to imply

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that her advice, based on her experience as a wife and mother, was superior. Manning’s control over her public persona was all the more important because of her lack of legal control over the Beatrice Fairfax franchise. While Gilmer had copyrighted the name “Dorothy Dix” early in her career and made millions off of it, it was Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst, not Manning, who owned the rights to the name “Beatrice Fairfax.” Manning struggled financially and professionally as a result. Gilmer and Manning both found it difficult to align their personal and professional decisions with the strict worldviews they espoused—​but in very different ways. Gilmer achieved great fame and wealth but when promoting herself, she had to downplay her role as a lifelong career woman. Manning, meanwhile, could boast of her experiences as a dutiful wife and mother and point to her willingness to give up her career, but her financial success suffered as a result of these decisions. Finally, Annie Brown Leslie’s experiences differed from both Manning’s and Gilmer’s because her Detroit News advice column was local rather than syndicated. The “Experience” column maintained the strict anonymity of all of its participants—​including its “Column Mother.” As Nancy Brown, Leslie did not reveal concrete details of her life to the public until just before her retirement, though she would sometimes insert tantalizing tidbits into her editorials and correspondences. The anonymity that her “Column Family” maintained allowed Leslie to edit out or gloss over particulars—​her real-​life lack of children, for example—​in order to portray herself as the ultimate advice giver: motherly, honest, and community-​oriented. Despite minor variations, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie crafted strikingly similar public personas, emphasizing three overarching themes when recounting their life stories. Drawing on the popular and very American notion of the “Self-​Made Man,” they posited themselves as “Self-​Made Women,” who came from humble if respectable backgrounds and, overcoming hardship, rose to fame and success through their hard work and ingenuity. Responding to Americans’ ambivalence about “modern times,” each columnist managed to blend a progressive, optimistic perspective on change and innovation with a nostalgic reverence for a supposedly simpler past—​a nostalgia that also reinforced unquestioned mainstream beliefs about racial segregation and hierarchy. Finally, each columnist took care to emphasize that her gendered life experience—​especially wifehood and motherhood—​gave her the necessary expertise for the uniquely female profession of advice giving. To be Self-​Made Women, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie crafted personal narratives that blended ordinary, homey details with their exemplary ambition and drive. The columnists portrayed themselves as everywoman—​but

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one who distinguished herself using sheer nerve, innate talent, and hard work. They encouraged their readers to cultivate these traits as well, offering their own narratives as blueprints for class aspiration and assimilation for white working-​class or immigrant readers. As Self-​Made Women, the columnists emphasized that they came from modest yet respectable roots. Reporters, for example, regularly described Leslie’s “rugged New England virtues,” implying that her austere, no-​nonsense upbringing gave her the common sense and empathy that made the “Experience” column so successful. Raised in rural Maine and Massachusetts, one article claimed, Annie Leslie learned from her parents, especially her Civil War veteran father, “the quick sympathy for people who are lonely and afraid; the ready understanding of those who have been wounded in heart and mind.” In interviews, Elizabeth Gilmer evoked a similarly rustic childhood. Though she characterized her family as “old-​stock,” she tempered the description with stories of her ancestors’ rough, character-​ building experiences on the Tennessee frontier. Weathered, adventurous, and hard-​working, her grandfather came to Tennessee to escape from Virginia, which, as she described it, “had become too overcrowded and effete.” Her grandparents built their family home, Woodstock, “laboriously by hand.” In much of her press, Gilmer cited her family’s frontier toughness as a formative influence on her beliefs and ambitions.20 Gilmer and Marie Manning also stressed that they had learned self-​ sufficiency and independence from an early age due to the deaths of their mothers. Manning’s mother died when she was five years old, and her father brought over the young girl’s Irish grandmother to raise her. “Gran had not a scintilla of humor,” Manning recalled in an unpublished manuscript she wrote about growing up in Washington, DC. “The light and frivolous side of things I  believe, she regarded as sinful.” Manning soon became too much for the older woman, so her father sent her to boarding school. Elizabeth Gilmer also was sent away to school after her mother’s death, and both women recalled seeking solace for their loneliness in literature.21 As Self-​Made Women, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie emphasized the importance of personal initiative and life experience over grades and lessons. For Elizabeth Gilmer, who in interviews regularly dismissed her education as “flubdub,” her father’s great library served as a temple of learning more than any secondary school or college did. “I cut my teeth on the solid meat of good literature, for which mercy I  thank God,” she recalled in an interview. Marie Manning dismissed herself as too stubborn and too restless to concentrate on lessons; “reading was my sole resource,” she wrote in a collection of childhood reminiscences. Manning recalled being punished for

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“brazenly [reading] Oliver Twist, Ivanhoe, and the Vicar of Wakefield during school hours.” Gilmer and Manning meant for these descriptions to demonstrate their independence, their ambition, and their practicality. They painted youthful rebelliousness in a charming light, relating anecdotes that burnished their intelligence and self-​sufficiency. Their recollections sent a clear message to readers: a young girl did not have to follow the rules to make it as a celebrity advice columnist; in fact, a truly successful newspaperwoman carved out her own path.22 Advice columnists’ life narratives drew on a second important theme: they deftly balanced progressive optimism with nostalgia for bygone days. Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie marketed their private lives and public personas in such a way that tapped into Americans’ collective wistfulness about an earlier era. Yet to be successful, the women had to blend this reverence with a cheerful endorsement of modern innovation and social progress. The language of nostalgia, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie recognized, was a compelling and popular one for early twentieth-​century Americans. Even as men and women flocked to dance halls, shortened dress hems, and took greater sexual liberties, they also gravitated toward romantic portrayals of a pre-​modern past. Nostalgia abounded in Lost Cause narratives about the Old South and the Civil War, in the popular sentimental literature long marketed to women readers, and in many other cultural narratives.23 Even the pen names of the columnists reflected a nod to a seemingly simpler rural past. Marie Manning chose the name Beatrice Fairfax to reference the green farmland of Virginia, where her family owned a country house. Elizabeth Gilmer often reminded readers that her pen name Dorothy Dix was an adaptation of the name of one of her family’s African American servants, “Mr. Dicks,” a former slave who supposedly remained faithfully in her family’s employ for decades after the Civil War.24 Gilmer’s pen name demonstrates the often unspoken yet critical way that white supremacy permeated the biographies of columnists. The columnist shaped her personal and professional identity around enduring and pernicious African American stereotypes, including the notion of the “faithful slave.” The reference to Mr. Dicks allowed Gilmer to connect her life story to the Lost Cause and sectional reunion literature that was popular in both the North and the South in the early twentieth century. Through this self-​ fashioned biography, she could embrace and encourage a condescending and paternalistic racism in a seemingly non-​political way. Gilmer may not have explicitly addressed topics like employment and racial discrimination, lynching, and school segregation in her columns, but she nonetheless built her persona around a romanticized vision of the antebellum and Jim Crow South.25

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When describing her childhood and her lineage, Gilmer dwelled on her Southern origins, her ancestral roots, and even her family’s genteel poverty in the years after the Civil War. Gilmer recalled her grandfather as an authoritative yet magnanimous patriarch who presided over the family’s thoroughbred horse farm and their mansion, Woodstock. According to Gilmer, it was her grandfather who instilled in her the common-​sense axioms that shaped her advice. “Grandfather used to point a moral to us children: ‘If blood is worth that much in a horse,’ he would say, ‘it is worth more in human beings. A thoroughbred can’t give up or whine.’ ” When talking about people and animals, Gilmer often turned to the language of “blood,” “stock,” and “breeding.” Influenced by widely held beliefs about eugenics and racial hierarchy, Gilmer regularly attributed her family’s success to their superior genetic makeup. The Civil War wiped out her family’s fortunes, Gilmer often pointed out, but not their spirit: The war swept across Woodstock and took with it the slaves that had tilled the fertile fields and the thoroughbreds that had been its pride and glory. Nothing was left but the famous [mare] Frazinella, then past the quarter of a century mark—​she lived to be 29. I was nursed on her fatback and my earliest recollection is of being perched on her while she grazed about the yard and of being swept off when she wandered under the low bough of a tree or clothes-​line. For Gilmer, that wise, aged horse represented her family’s connections to a simpler and more refined past as well as their desire to maintain their strength and respectability despite hard times. Gilmer reduced the men and women enslaved by her family—​“the slaves that had tilled the fertile fields”—​to mere props, described interchangeably with the Gilmers’ other prized possessions, “the thoroughbreds that had been [the family’s] pride and glory.”26 Gilmer made much of the fact that several “faithful slaves,” including the aforementioned Mr. Dicks and the columnist’s beloved Mammy, remained with her family after the war. In her references to her family’s black servants, Gilmer simultaneously emphasized her familiarity with the African Americans who staffed her childhood home and reinforced their inferior status. “I grew up with thoroughbred colts and little Negroes,” Gilmer was famous for remarking, “the two things I really understand best.”27 She displayed no interest in the actual lived experiences of African Americans, however. What Gilmer actually understood best were the racist narratives that would enthrall her white audience. As in the literature of the Lost Cause, African Americans were more scenery than protagonists in Gilmer’s portrayals; for

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her readers, black men and women served as stereotypical symbols of bygone days rather than as complex and autonomous human characters. By regaling her audience with stories about a “simpler time” of racial harmony and social hierarchy that stood in stark contrast to the turbulence of modern American society, Gilmer shielded her white readership from the realities that people of color faced each day in both the North and South. She also made it clear that in her understanding of her profession, the ideal advice columnist was not just a woman, but a white woman.28 Annie Leslie deployed nostalgia in different ways than Gilmer. Embracing the language of sentimental literature, she also expounded on the simplicity of the past and the chaos of modernity, but did so in a flowery, romantic writing style that stood in contrast to the commonsensical prose of Gilmer and the spare, experimental modernist literature fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s. In “Do You Remember?,” a September 1919 editorial that ran alongside the “Experience” column, Leslie wrote of the power of childhood memories: “Reminisces of school days, a laugh or a tear in everyone, are revived. Those who have gone before are remembered and live again with us for a little while. And so it is that with ‘Do you remember?’ the mind slips ‘back upon the golden days’ and revives the memory images that are part sad and part sweet, like old tunes.” Describing “Mother’s Scrap Book” in an editorial with that title, Leslie wrote emotionally about an object “so lovingly reminiscent . . . that to destroy or dispose of it is impossible.” It was, she said, “one of the dear, useless bits of sentimentality that are among the sweetest, most unreasoning things of life.”29 In their interviews, press materials, and columns, the three advice columnists tempered their nostalgia with a progressive optimism about the future, particularly in terms of Americans’ technological progress and social and political gains made by women. Perhaps because “Experience” was so centered upon a sentimental longing for bygone days, Annie Leslie softened this perspective with editorials on the benefits of modern society. Though she looked back fondly on her hardy childhood, Leslie nonetheless endorsed what she called “the age of rapid changes”—​the busy, fast-​paced, free society in which Americans found themselves living in the 1920s and 1930s. “The changes that are the natural results of time and progress,” she told her readers, “have come at a hurried pace these last few years. Standards of everything have changed—​ethics, religion, customs, manners. We think differently. We talk differently. . . . We feel sure that the broadness and freedom are for the best. It is only their abuse and excess that are harmful.” She advocated social and technological progress—​but cautious progress.30

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Leslie particularly endorsed the social and political advances that women had made during the first decades of the twentieth century. “The Victorian sister who blushed and fainted with or without provocation is no more. Prudes and prigs have no place in the modern, broad, free life. The artificial has been forced to make way for the natural.” An abandonment of strict Victorian conventions, Leslie believed, allowed women to express their true selves for the first time. She reserved much praise for “modern women” able to blend old-​fashioned maternal instinct with practicality and innovation. In her observances on recent changes in motherhood, Leslie commented that many of the mothers she met were “modern, up-​to-​date women . . . and just as truly mothers as the old conception of mother.”31 Gilmer and Manning also endorsed the progress made by and for women in the twentieth century. Gilmer was highly critical of the sentimentality of women journalists of the 1870s and 1880s; at the beginning of her career, she sought to inject “Sunday Salad,” her inaugural column in the New Orleans Picayune, with practicality and logic. “I knew women knew they weren’t angels, were tired of being martyrs and doormats . . . and were weary of suffering and being strong!” she reflected. “So I started writing the truth about the relations of men and women as I saw it. And readers liked it!” Gilmer wanted to modernize women’s newspaper content by valorizing usefulness and common sense. Marie Manning joined Leslie and Gilmer in decrying the stodginess and artificiality of Victorian gender politics. In a 1940s article reflecting on her career, she took particular offense at the hypocrisy of US Postal Inspector and anti-​vice activist Anthony Comstock, “one of those immaculate souls to whom all things are impure.” She recalled her horror upon learning that Comstock had burned “seventy tons of obscene literature” that included “Anna Karenina, the Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary and Tom Jones.” Happily, the days when newspaperwomen had to edit their work with Comstock in mind were over. Like Gilmer, Manning saw herself as leading the pack by injecting “large doses of common sense” into newspaper content for women.32 As advocates of “women’s progress,” each of the three columnists supported (to varying degrees) the woman suffrage movement, though they carefully limited the public’s knowledge of their involvement. In an October 1918 editorial entitled “20th Century or Victorian Age?,” Leslie, writing under her own name, endorsed giving women the right to vote. She argued that women “have shown themselves capable of organization on a great and small scale; they have proven their executive ability in international service; they have demonstrated their power to do almost every form of work

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Figure 3.2  This 1942 portrait of Annie Leslie was taken as part of a Detroit News pictorial honoring her retirement. George M. Stark, “Visiting Nancy Brown at Home,” Detroit News, March 1, 1942. Courtesy of the Detroit News Archive.

heretofore considered the exclusive precinct of man.” But as advice columnist Nancy Brown, Leslie was significantly less likely to chime in when her reader-​correspondents debated the subject of women’s political participation, and rarely if ever mentioned her own beliefs on the subject in the pages of “Experience.”33 Gilmer, too, tended to avoid the topic of woman suffrage even though she was an ardent supporter of it. A 1915 private publication chronicling the accomplishments of her family revealed that

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It is not generally known that Dorothy Dix is an ardent suffragist, and in very close touch with Miss Shaw, Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Belmont, and Mrs. Makey. She is in great demand as a speaker, and has spoken many times before conventions, and before many clubs in and around New York. Over a year ago  .  .  .  she was appointed one of the delegates to the International Women’s Suffrage Convention. . . . On account of important business matters at home she declined the last-​named honor. Perhaps it was not, in fact, the important business matters at home that made her decline the honor, but her concern that such an open statement of her politics would alienate some of her reading public. Gilmer appears to have made no public statements on her suffrage beliefs. Given her Southern roots and her beliefs about race, moreover, Gilmer may have endorsed suffrage because she saw it as an effective way of limiting the black vote, as Southern suffragists like Kate Gordon argued.34 Manning was the most outspoken suffragist of the three columnists and the only one to proclaim herself a feminist. Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, she participated in suffrage activities in New York and Washington, meeting the Pankhurst sisters when they visited the United States, marching in rallies, and raising money for the cause through the production of pro-​suffrage plays. When she penned her autobiography in 1944, just a year before her death, Manning intended it to be a “cavalcade of women’s progress” over the first half of the twentieth century and hoped that educational institutions would use it as a feminist textbook. She even asked that its publication date coincide with the National Women’s Party’s petitioning Congress on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.35 Manning sometimes found that her outspokenness on the subject of women’s political rights alienated certain segments of American society. In the competitive market of newspaper advice giving, Manning could not afford to lose potential readers. As such, she often gave interviews in which she offered very conservative perspectives on women’s aspirations. In an interview most likely from the early 1930s, Manning argued that although she advocated for their de jure rights, she believed that women were best suited for housekeeping and motherhood. “The woman in business is a problem. To herself, most of all,” the article quoted Manning as saying. “Unless they have a terrific urge to express themselves, or achieve good success a woman usually loses in following a career.” Beneath it all, Manning insisted, “in their hearts [women] want the same things their mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers wanted. A home, a husband, and children.” Manning’s

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Figure  3.3  Marie Manning dictating to a secretary, 1930s. Marie Manning Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts).

articulated traditional beliefs often conflicted with her more assertive political activism.36 Manning found herself doing public relations cleanup when her overtly feminist autobiography came out. In a letter to a local Roman Catholic priest, she assured him that despite her advocacy of women’s political rights, “when it comes to morals, I’m a fundamentalist as is to be expected of one of the fold.” She attributed some of the progressive advice given by Beatrice Fairfax over the years to the other women who penned the column during her temporary retirement, confiding to the priest that “other writers have written for

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it and I have not always approved their points of view.”37 While Manning was the most forthcoming of the three columnists about her advocacy of women’s political rights, she also struggled the most with justifying her feminist beliefs to a mass audience with varying opinions. For Manning, Gilmer, and Leslie, tempering progressive and nostalgic language and themes reflected the celebrity advice columnist’s most important and most vexing task: she had to embody moderate, mainstream beliefs so as to be palatable and likeable to the widest possible audience. A final important theme tied together the columnists’ public images: time and time again, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie portrayed themselves as uncompromisingly feminine and branded the profession of advice columnist as an inherently female one. In public, the columnists continually pointed to their experiences as wives, mothers, and housekeepers as evidence of their ability to advise America’s lost and lovelorn—​though each of them struggled to live up to the standards they endorsed. If women were the ideal advice columnists, then men lacked the traits necessary to succeed in the profession. Columnists like Elizabeth Gilmer and Marie Manning regularly went out of their way to refute the oft-​discussed notion that advice columns were actually penned by men. “Some people might like to believe that B.F. [Beatrice Fairfax] is a figment of editorial imagination or at least a cynical bachelor newspaperman,” reporter Stuart Robertson wrote in Woman’s Digest in the 1940s. But Manning’s life story, the article argued, proved these people wrong. In a 1941 article, Elizabeth Gilmer also addressed this issue. “Dorothy Dix, to many people, is only a name,” reporter Victoria Stafford began, “Some think she’s a ‘he.’ Others think she doesn’t really exist. But she is real—​very much alive. And she lives right here in New Orleans.”38 To assume that a man could write an advice column as successfully as she did, Gilmer often pointed out, was a common and grave mistake for newspaper editors. In a 1939 marketing brochure sent to newspaper publishers by Gilmer’s syndicate, the columnist told publishers that figuring out what women wanted to read in newspapers was “the hardest riddle . . . to unriddle” because “the feminine mind works in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, and no one can foretell which way the cat is going to jump.” No one, Gilmer concluded, could pinpoint women’s desires without being a woman—​and a particularly perceptive woman at that. In one interview, Gilmer even went so far as to say that women made more “natural newspapermen” than men. “They are the greatest gossips in the world and eternally interested in human affairs,” she told Everybody’s Magazine in 1925. “What is a newspaper but a

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very great shop always interested and always sympathetic toward the other fellow’s business.” Gilmer walked a fine line here. She unabashedly burnished her journalistic skills, but she did so by emphasizing her personality and femininity—​the very traits that differentiated her from “real” (read:  male) journalists. Gilmer also invoked the ubiquitous ideal of the female purchaser, dubbing her newspaper “a very great shop.”39 Manning tended to be less direct about women’s aptitude for newspaper work—​not surprising considering her abandonment of the business in 1905 and her vocal embrace of wifehood and motherhood over her career—​yet she seemed to agree with Gilmer that advice giving was a woman’s endeavor. In her recounting of the early days of the Beatrice Fairfax column at the turn of the century, Manning noted that her editor Arthur Brisbane was smart enough “to let [the column] alone, to work out on its own salvation.” Manning juxtaposed Brisbane’s wisdom with the meddling on the part of other male editors (many of whom were loudly anti-​suffrage) who tried to change Beatrice Fairfax copy to reflect their more conservative views. As a young columnist, she was thankful for Brisbane’s quiet, hands-​off approach to the fledgling column.40 There was something quite assertive in these columnists’ insistence that men were not equipped to pen an advice column. During a period when women had considerable difficulty breaking into the newspaper business—​particularly into branches outside the women’s department—​these columnists co-​opted the language of gender selectivity used by male reporters and portrayed male colleagues as unable to achieve greatness in the genre of soft news. Press coverage of the three columnists dwelled extensively on Leslie, Manning, and Gilmer’s feminine appearances and affectations and on their wifely and maternal experiences. In their own writings, in articles written about them, and in publicity and marketing materials, the columnists asserted themselves as the collective mothers of their readers and advice seekers. As Nancy Brown, Annie Leslie played up her role as “Column Mother” presiding over her brood in the pages of “Experience.” In a 1920 Detroit News article, “Mothers Thousands from All Over the Land,” she dwelled on the mother-​ child metaphor. “With implicit, childlike trust and confidence that rends the heart of the editor and reduces her to the depths of humiliation,” the columnist wrote, “each and every one requests, ‘Please, Nancy, tell me what to do.’ ” Even her self-​effacing tone was meant to appear humbly maternal. By the end of her career, Leslie’s image as universal mother had only intensified; the News’ announcement of her retirement stated that “for almost 23 years she has been a wise mother to tens of thousands of unseen children of all ages. Their

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problems have been her problems; she has laughed with them and wept with them.” The anonymity that the “Experience” column afforded Leslie allowed her to burnish this metaphorical motherly role—​despite remaining childless herself.41 Marie Manning’s press descriptions always referenced her statuesque height, her warm demeanor, and most of all a common sense linked to her gender. She was, one reporter described, “a tall and cheerful woman of delightful humor who has been married to the same man for thirty-​nine years,” reminding readers of her marriage accomplishments before her career accomplishments. “She is a vigorous woman of over 60  years, six feet tall, witty and utterly devoid of any lacy sentimentality,” another wrote. “Her advice . . . crackles with plain, ordinary horse sense.” The reporter emphasized Manning’s traditional marital status, appearance, and even her heterosexuality as professional qualifications. Here, Manning represented a perfect amalgam of old-​fashioned and modern femininity. She rejected “lacy sentimentality” and her advice was above all practical. These traits were representative of a new kind of woman, who still built her life around wifehood and motherhood but embraced the efficiency and common sense of the career woman.42 When she began her career anew in 1929, Manning, the only one of the three columnists to have children, recognized that her experiences as a housewife and mother would help her market herself as an appropriate and successful advice giver. In interviews, when Manning explained the decades-​long break between her first stint as Beatrice Fairfax and her post–​stock market crash return, she made no apologies for her decisions. As a reporter described in a mid-​1930s article, “she took her own advice to other young brides when she gave up her job and settled down into being the best wife and mother she knew to be.” The reporter insisted that Manning’s advice had only improved as a result of keeping house and raising her two boys. “Today with thirty happy years of marriage behind her she brings that same understanding to the problems of those who seek her help. Add to that the knowledge the years have given her, and her wisdom and tolerance and kindliness and you find the reason for her success in the newspaper world.” In her 1944 memoir, Ladies Now and Then, Manning described her marriage as an affectionate one filled with humor and camaraderie: It’s been a long partnership—​we’ve been married thirty-​eight years—​ and it may be a strange recipe for avoiding Reno, but we never agree on any subject, political, religious, ethical, or the better way of making coffee. Our arguments which I beg you to believe are always conducted

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in a minor key, have cleared the domestic atmosphere, which otherwise might have grown stodgy. We adore our children, we love our animals, we love to plant things in the garden. Manning made clear that this charming and never-​ stodgy partnership influenced her approach to advice—​she was proud to have a marriage full of humor, practicality, and “good old-​fashioned horse sense.”43 Yet Manning (and her family) could not live up to the wifely and maternal ideals she set for herself. In interviews and in her own writing, Manning insisted that, while she gave up her career to focus on her husband and her children, she did so also because it was her husband’s duty and desire to care for his family financially. “[Men] like the feeling of providing for the woman they love,” she told a reporter in the 1930s. “Many a woman successful in her own work has defeated her husband in his by taking too much from his pride, or his initiative or his sense of well being.” Manning’s husband Herman Gasch, however, was not a good businessman, and he struggled continually to keep the family afloat after Manning’s 1905 retirement. Often, Manning found herself forced back into the role of breadwinner that she sought to discard or at least downplay. In fact, she became a seasoned and prolific short fiction writer, publishing over forty stories in Harper’s, the Saturday Evening Post, and other widely read magazines. Manning avoided this subject in many interviews and in her own autobiographical writing, de-​emphasizing her own literary work and highlighting her husband’s achievements; sometimes she described him as an “entrepreneur,” other articles as a successful “artist.”44 Manning took every opportunity to remind the public that women should approach housekeeping and motherhood as they would a career, as she had. “Making a husband happy,” she insisted to one reporter, “is a full time job and reaps more benefits than any other work I know of.” She often invoked domestic images of herself running a warm, efficient, and neat home. Yet privately, Manning left housekeeping duties to others. The money her short stories brought in allowed her to hire housekeepers and nannies to maintain her house and care for her children. Manning herself often lamented in private correspondences that “I never was any good for the daily grind about a house,” though she pointed out that no one could throw a more enjoyable dinner party than she.45 One of her son Oliver Gasch’s fondest childhood memories involved his African American nurse, Mammy Fanny, carting him around Washington, DC, and Arlington while Manning was writing. Gasch mentioned his relationship with Fanny in passing in a speech near the end of his life, but the observation says much about the structures of privilege

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that allowed Manning’s career to flourish. Manning boasted publicly of her pleasure and aptitude at housekeeping in order to advance her career and burnish her public image. But it was the unrecognized labor of a woman of color that made that pretense of domesticity possible. And Gasch’s expression of affection for his “Mammy” demonstrated that the racist nostalgia that permeated Elizabeth Gilmer’s worldview certainly influenced that of Manning and her family, as well.46 Even later in her life, when she returned to work, Manning still struggled in her relationships with her husband and her youngest son, Manning Gasch, who was named after her. Though she claimed in interviews that she lived in Washington, DC, with her husband, by the late 1930s she had sent him away to a boarding house in the country due to his senility; Manning could not care for him while penning the Fairfax columns, reporting for Hearst’s International News Service, and writing her autobiography. In public she bragged about her marriage, but in private correspondences she referred to him as an invalid whom she had to support financially.47 Her position as sole breadwinner strained her relationship with her husband and her son, neither of whom had a head for business, routinely lost the family money and property, and, in the case of her son, quarreled with her often.48 To the public, Manning was the ideal mother, willing to sacrifice her career to be a hands-​on parent to her two boys; in private, neither she nor her family could live up to the traditional and unattainable portrait she had painted. The most financially successful of the three columnists, Elizabeth Gilmer emphasized her maternal and feminine traits in her press coverage, perhaps to temper what some might have seen as an almost masculine ambition. “Mrs. Gilmer’s the highest paid woman writer in the world, the newspapers tell us, but she’s most loved, too,” one reporter observed. “And she’s tremendously proud of the latter, for Dorothy Dix is so very feminine and human!” Very subtly, the author excused Gilmer’s success and determination by emphasizing that her true goal was universal love and approval. Articles almost always addressed Gilmer’s appearance or her mannerisms to make her seem motherly. “Short, a trifle plump, she is full of vivacity,” one article quipped. Another described her writing the column while “rocking back and forth in a big chair” as an aged matriarch might.49 Articles about Gilmer reminded the public that advice columnists could—​and should—​marry their professional ambitions with a maternal air and a purportedly innate feminine desire for public acceptance. The heavy emphasis on Gilmer’s maternal affectation was no accident. Elizabeth Gilmer never had children and may have been concerned about

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lacking the domestic credibility that columnists like Manning could boast. Gilmer struggled to square her private life with her public image because she had a secret to hide—​her estrangement from her mentally ill husband. As she built a career on counseling women to prioritize their roles as wives and mothers, Gilmer herself spent the majority of her adult life separated from her husband, George, as he grew increasingly unstable and abusive. Like Manning, Gilmer believed that her decision to focus on her career over her husband’s care was justified—​even necessary. She originally entered into newspaper work in 1892 because George proved unable to support them. That summer, she was in Pass Christian, Mississippi, recovering from exhaustion and emotional trauma brought on by her marriage. There she befriended Eliza Poitevent Nicholson, publisher of the New Orleans Picayune; shortly thereafter, Nicholson gave Gilmer her first job. Over the next twenty-​five years, George Gilmer’s behavior became more erratic and dangerous, necessitating hospitalization—​and the income his wife brought in. Yet Gilmer carefully edited out George’s problems in public interviews. She found this particularly difficult when recounting how she came into newspaper work, since George’s mental illness was so central to the start of

Figure  3.4  Elizabeth Gilmer with letters, undated. Tulane University Archives and Special Collections, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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her career. In interviews, she danced around both her difficult marriage and her reasons for vacationing in Mississippi in 1892. “Soon after I left school, and before I  got fairly into long dresses, I  married (most happily) George O.  Gilmer, and for a time my fondness of writing—​I had never dreamed of publishing—​slept,” Gilmer told a reporter in an interview around 1902. “Chance threw me into a little Mississippi Coast town, where my next door neighbor was Mrs. E.J. Nicholson, the editor and proprietor of the New Orleans Picayune.” Gilmer replaced the unpleasant details of her broken marriage with the vague and romantic “chance.” Another recounting of Gilmer’s life, written around a decade later, fabricated both the columnist’s age and the details of her recovery in Mississippi. “In her teens she was married to Mr. G.O. Gilmer, and soon thereafter she and her husband visited a summer resort near New Orleans. While there she met Mrs. E. J. Nicholson, the talented proprietor of the New Orleans Picayune. Their congenial tastes drew them often together, and Mrs. Gilmer confided to her new friend her great desire to write.” Instead of turning to Nicholson for employment to assuage her financial troubles, this account highlighted Gilmer expressing only a “great desire to write.”50 As Gilmer’s long career progressed, she became more candid about the details of her personal struggle, especially after George’s death in 1929. This decision also reflected an increasing public frankness about divorce and marriage troubles in advice columns and in popular culture more generally. A 1944 New Orleans Times-​Picayune article revealed that Gilmer’s marriage was troubled from the start. An event that “should have inaugurated a tranquil, uneventful Southern home life”—​the Gilmers’ wedding—​“proved instead to precipitate a crisis such as few girls just out of their teens are called upon to overcome.” The article referred vaguely to George Gilmer’s unnamed “ailment” from which he never recovered. “But he lived for 35  years, and during all that time, Mrs. Gilmer supported and nursed him.” Even in these later, more honest portrayals, Gilmer emphasized in interviews the nurturing care with which she approached her marriage, rather than her estrangement from her husband. Other articles pointed to Gilmer’s successful career as being motivated almost entirely by her desire to care for George. “Almost from the first, the marriage was a tragedy,” one article stated candidly. “Her husband had fallen victim to an incurable mental affliction whose slow course was not to end until he died. . . . Did Mrs. Gilmer divorce him? Desert him? She did not. Instead she launched herself on one of the most amazing journalistic careers the world has ever seen—​all to support an invalid husband.” By the end of her career, after decades of experience with self-​promotion and

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having been interviewed “literally hundreds of times,” Gilmer abandoned her attempts to bury the details of her marriage and learned to spin her life narrative to reinforce her reputation as America’s pre-​eminent maternal counselor.51

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Being an advice columnist was not simply about public relations and self-​ branding. Early twentieth-​century columnists also carved out a unique and useful genre of didactic journalism that fused their celebrity with an ideology of reform and established best practices for engaging with readers. They conducted copious research in order to supply accurate information about cooking and budgeting, about organizations and programs that helped women with health and childcare, and about options for the poor and unemployed. By the 1920s, when women Progressive reformers had established the Children’s Bureau, a network of settlement houses, and other successful public and private aid institutions, columns became key sites where readers could seek information about organizations and benefits available to them. Some advice columnists, most notably Marie Manning, embraced this vision so thoroughly that they became essential participants in the building of the New Deal state. As advice columns’ readership grew, columnists established professional practices to manage the number of queries pouring in. Many popular columnists maintained a staff—​almost always women journalists, many new to the business—​to help manage, organize, and answer the flow of letters. In the early days of her column, Marie Manning described the dread she felt at “the sight of the office boys, straining under mail sacks” filled with letters addressed to her. She soon convinced her editor to allow her to bring on an assistant, whom she nicknamed “Atropos,” to appropriately manage incoming mail; in the years that followed, Atropos was joined by several others. Depending on the nature of the columnist’s contract, assistants were sometimes employed by a newspaper or syndicate, sometimes by the columnist herself. By the end of her career, Elizabeth Gilmer, writing for the Public Ledger Syndicate in Philadelphia, oversaw a “corps of secretaries” based out of the syndicate offices as well as those working in her personal offices in New Orleans.52 A columnist’s daily schedule was rigorous. Gilmer began her work promptly at nine, working with her onsite secretaries to sort and organize the mail. She answered letters by dictation, relying on her staff to record each reply. Gilmer estimated she received an average of 500 letters a day, though the number was known to swell to 1,000 during moments of social or political

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upheaval. Careful sorting of incoming letters was imperative because almost all advice columnists made a point of personally answering each letter received, regardless of whether the query was worthy of print. Gilmer made much of this commitment in her press interviews. “Every letter sent to Dorothy Dix is answered,” wrote reporter Frances Faulkner in an undated article, “either through her column or personally, if properly addressed return envelopes accompany the queries, even the missives from fond, doting parents asking, ‘What shall we name the baby?’ ” Marie Manning was slightly more discerning in her mail sorting practices, discarding “letters with no names and addresses, those which asked absolutely foolish questions, rambling along about in-​laws and mean neighbors, begging for publication, so that the ‘meanies’ could read in print about themselves.” But, like Elizabeth Gilmer, Manning committed to answer all queries from “writers of letters with real problems, who enclosed stamped, self-​addressed envelopes for personal replies.” Over time, columnists and their staff built up a library of standardized responses to popular questions; assistants were delegated with responding to these “frequently asked questions.”53 Columnists often observed that the majority of letters they received were too raw and personal to be printed, rendering the bulk of their most important work invisible. Observed Besse Toulouse Sprague, a columnist for the Des Moines Evening Tribune, “the most interesting of letters cannot be published. They are too intimate and personal. Very often I am forced to delete the most interesting portions from the ones we do print because I  must run no risk of allowing the identity of the writers of these letters to be suspected.” In a 1922 article in The American Magazine, Sprague also laid to rest the popular belief that advice columnists made up the letters printed in their column, insisting that she herself could never fabricate the harrowing stories sent her way. Newspaper records and the personal and professional papers of advice columnists show no evidence that advice columnists or their staff made up or excessively enhanced letters.54 Research was another essential behind-​ the-​ scenes task for advice columnists. Many read extensively about topics like marriage counseling, childrearing, social services, government benefits, and other sensitive, intimate, complex, or taboo subjects. Marie Manning proved one of the most prolific researchers on such topics; she maintained close and continuous contact with public and private organizations in order to get the most updated information on everything from armed forces dependency benefits to health and childcare options for unwed mothers. Manning’s personal and professional archives reveal the extent of her institutional connections, but it is fair

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to assume that other columnists conducted similar research and correspondence. Both Manning’s advice and her close relationship with federal agencies like the Children’s Bureau point to the powerful influence of Progressive and New Deal women reformers on her column, and likely many others. In the earliest days of newspaper advice giving, columnists conducted significantly less research than they did in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Part of this was due to the genre’s infancy, to its experimental nature, and to its early emphasis on entertainment over social service. “In the early days of the column,” Manning wrote around 1940, “there were few social agencies to which such a [newspaper advice] department could turn. There was no well-​organized Legal Aid, no Community Chest, no Adult Educational and Vocational Training, to bridge educational gaps and enable people to get better jobs. Today,” Manning reported happily, “almost every social problem has some sort of helpful answer.” Her optimism reflected her earnest belief that the solutions to Americans’ socioeconomic problems lay in the public and private reform agencies that had been created during her lifetime.55 Manning was a thorough and copious researcher. She maintained and updated extensive files with information on maternity and childcare options, sexual education literature put out by the US Public Health Service, food and cooking brochures published by the Department of Agriculture, and many other topics. To counsel those with questions about marriage and divorce, Manning kept information about state-​by-​state marriage and divorce law, corresponded with the Immigration and Naturalization Services about those wanting to marry non-​citizens, and collected various magazine and newspaper articles about the paperwork involved in World War II soldiers’ marriages. Manning’s file on adoption contained reports and articles written by the Child Welfare League of America, a large collection of press releases from the Children’s Bureau, and correspondence with orphanages. Reformers would sometimes write in to correct mistakes the columnist might have printed in past articles. Manning always responded to such letters positively, and, when she could, printed retractions in her column.56 Manning corresponded with several organizations that offered shelter and services to unwed pregnant women, as did other columnists.57 She kept up to date on the studies and writings of Maud Morlock, a Children’s Bureau official who focused on issues of teen pregnancy, illegitimate children, and juvenile delinquency. Morlock, a social worker, issued reports on improving public and private maternity homes, combating stigma against unwed mothers, and publicizing adoption options to pregnant women. In

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one report, she criticized the failure of both public and private organizations to address “the tragic need of the girl for assistance in planning for herself and the coming baby.”58 The regularity of contact between Morlock and Manning suggests that the former believed advice columns to be an effective way to publicize the options available to expecting teenaged girls. Manning (along with Gilmer and Leslie) often sent young women to the Florence Crittenton Home, the most well-​funded and well-​known organization offering shelter and care for unwed pregnant women at the time. Manning kept copious lists of local Crittenton homes and used their informational pamphlets to educate her readers on the benefits of the organization.59 As with the content of their advice, the columnists’ research presumed a white readership. Crittenton homes, according to the organization’s pamphlets, were “for  .  .  .  the white unmarried mother of any age.” From Manning’s perspective, this was actually a broad demographic, encompassing different classes and ethnicities, and she reminded her readers that the doors to the Crittenton houses were “open to all.” Of course, this was an explicit confirmation of Manning’s presumed audience. Her embrace of public and private institutions reflected the underside of the Progressive and New Deal Eras: many of the new services and entitlements created for Americans were not available to citizens of color.60 The largest research files that Manning kept were those concerning World War II and the armed services. She corresponded regularly with the War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations and the Office of Dependency Benefits to obtain information about soldiers’ and spouses’ rights and benefits. She kept a collection of booklets and pamphlets outlining the duties and requirements of the Coast Guard, the Army Nurse Corps, the Army Chaplains, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and many other branches of the military. Manning also collected significant literature covering the complex system of ranks, duties, and promotion requirements for Army privates and officers. Her research files did not prevent her from printing erroneous information occasionally, much to the chagrin of readers in the military. “Your column in the Wednesday edition of the Times Herald has caused no end of confusion and high blood pressure among the warrant officers of the Army Ground Forces,” Warrant Officer Walter A.  Cullen wrote sternly in April 1943 after she botched her explanation of warrant officers’ “ranks, duties, and courtesies” in her column. “It is felt that you have committed the unpardonable and certainly owe the warrant officers your humblest apology,” Cullen pressed.61 To prevent such gaffes, Manning began corresponding regularly with the Office of Public Relations in the War and Navy Departments to properly

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answer the copious questions she received about armed forces protocol. Many of her letters listed up to ten questions—​from “What is a shore patrol?” to “Is a retired U.S. Marine Bandsman’s wife entitled to hospitalization at a Navy hospital? Is she entitled to a pension, in case of the death of her husband?” In fact, Manning sometimes wrote several times a month to find or confirm information about readers’ military-​related questions. Between August 1943 and July 1944, she penned over twenty letters to the Offices of Public Relations; each letter contained anywhere from three to a dozen questions. She received responses to each of these.62 Manning even began to advocate for column correspondents struggling to obtain military benefits from the Navy and War Departments. She often wrote to the Office of Public Relations to inquire on behalf of female dependents who had not received their benefit checks from the Dependent Benefits Unit at the Bureau of Naval Personnel or the Army’s Office of Dependency Benefits. “Mrs. Edward Fitzgibbons, 613 E. Athlone Ave., St. Louis, writes that her son Edward F. Fitzgibbons, S 1/​c. U.S.S. Sculptor, c/​o Fleet Post office, S.F. Calif. made her an allowance last July,” Manning inquired in February 1944. “Can you tell me whether this has gone through or not? She’s very hard up, says she has written but receives no answer from you.” Less than two weeks later, Commander W.  Marvin McCarthy confirmed to Manning that Mrs. Fitzgibbons would begin receiving monthly checks of $37.63 As an advice columnist, then, Manning took on a set of responsibilities much wider than meting out her opinions on lovelorn problems, particularly by the 1930s and 1940s. She served as a booster of public and private social agencies, an educator for a reading public uninformed about potential resources, and an advocate for her correspondents struggling to break through bureaucratic red tape. Manning’s embrace of institutions as the answer to society’s more significant problems indicated her advocacy of a large and active liberal state and the impact of middle-​class Progressive ideas on her outlook. In subtle yet far-​reaching ways, Manning made her column a political organ as much as an advice community or an entertainment feature. In her championing of institutions and services, Manning implicitly encouraged her readers to embrace a particular kind of sociopolitical outlook. As “Beatrice Fairfax,” Manning considered herself a soft-​news journalist and even tarred her advice giving as “dallying in the features pages”; yet under Fairfax’s auspices, she helped advance a vision of an activist American state to an audience of millions.64

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In carefully defining, branding, and editing their experiences as advice givers, columnists like Marie Manning, Elizabeth Gilmer, and Annie Leslie both widened and limited options for women in the field of journalism. They embraced and even exaggerated their seemingly feminine traits and their personal experiences as white women. For Manning, Gilmer, and Leslie, being wives and mothers (or, at least, having maternal traits), running successful households, cultivating a finely tuned sense of empathy, and embracing emotion and nurturance made them exemplary advice columnists—​though the reality of their lives fell short of their own high standards. Ironically, these columnists achieved striking success by marketing their personal lives during the same period that journalists championed objectivity as their highest standard. Manning, Gilmer, and Leslie carved out a different but no less influential path, insisting that women could be successful journalists because of their femininity, not despite it. Advice columnists did more than entertain their readers, advance their own celebrity, and make money for their newspapers and syndicates. Marie Manning’s reconfiguration of the advice columnist as a researcher, advocate, and mediator of information reveals that columnists served as educators to a mass audience searching for answers to difficult, sensitive problems. Manning’s work also demonstrates the political undertones of advice giving; as Beatrice Fairfax she introduced millions of readers to the benefits available to them in an expanding system of public and private aid. Manning and columnists like her demonstrate that “hard news” reporters were not the only ones exercising political influence. In fact, with their massive audiences of both men and women, advice columnists probably shaped more Americans’ social and political beliefs than did many other early twentieth-​century journalists—​male and female alike. This enormous reach makes the racism at the center of their advice and their self-​promotion all the more troubling. In descriptions of their Southern upbringings, in veiled references to their African American domestic employees, and in their unquestioned assumptions of their readers’ whiteness, Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie reinforced and even celebrated the systems and practices of discrimination and white supremacy in the United States to a rapt audience. As with their advice, these three columnists did little to question the patriarchal structure of the profession of journalism. By endorsing the notion that advice giving was a singularly female endeavor, the columnists reinforced the dichotomy of a masculine, objective “hard news” genre and a feminine, subjective “soft news” genre. Advice columnists’ emphasis on women’s innately nurturing, maternal gifts most likely hindered women who sought

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journalistic careers dealing with issues of politics, finance, and diplomacy, further ghettoizing women reporters to a particular niche of reportage. On top of this, advice columnists often stretched the truth about certain parts of their lives, reinforcing unattainable personal standards for their successors. For the most part, these columnists counseled women to embrace the supposedly innate roles of wife and mother, even at the expense of their careers. Yet behind the scenes, they did not necessarily take their own advice. Today, the successors of these early advice columns, from lifestyle bloggers to Instagram icons and influencers, follow precedents set by Gilmer, Manning, and Leslie by carefully editing their public personas to suit their advertisers and audiences. And like these columnists a century earlier, they also endorse seemingly impossible standards of beauty and modern womanhood—​while struggling to live up to those standards themselves.

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Advising the Race Princess Mysteria and the Black Feminist Advice Tradition

As the columns of Dorothy Dix, Beatrice Fairfax, Laura Jean Libbey, and many others appeared and flourished in white mass-​circulation papers across the country, a separate but equally important tradition of advice took root in African American newspapers. By the 1920s, the century-​old black press had become a thriving and lucrative industry, blending activist traditions with modern innovation. Black publishers, like their white counterparts, raised profits from advertising revenue and courted female readers by expanding their woman’s pages. The Chicago Defender column “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” which ran from 1921 to 1930, reveals how the participatory dialogue of advice in African American newspapers addressed the particular experiences of modernity for African Americans. Columnist Princess Mysteria, a vaudeville mentalist-​turned-​advice giver, embraced the Defender’s mission of racial “uplift” and advocacy and offered a blueprint for coping with the economic, social, and cultural challenges of modern urban life. Her advice also reflected a unique sensitivity to the dual prejudices that her black female readers faced. As such, she often doled out more assertive, even feminist advice to her readership. Princess Mysteria’s advice acknowledged the violence, discrimination, and segregation of the Jim Crow South and North, and the countless ways that white men and women upheld white supremacy in intimate personal encounters and in the country’s social and political institutions. Many of the issues faced by Defender readers resulted from the Great Migration of African Americans to cities like Chicago, as letter writers both reveled in the freedoms that urban life provided and expressed a sense of dislocation at the

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loss of traditional networks of family and community. As Black Nationalist movements of the 1910s and 1920s offered sharper political critiques of the United States and of systems of racial imperialism across the globe, a more politicized understanding of the black community filtered into the populace at large, regardless of their involvement in Nationalist organizations. In Chicago, New York, and other cities, a separate and self-​conscious black marketplace of ideas, media forms, and commodities emerged. Influences included the Chicago School of Sociology pioneered by E.  Franklin Frazier, Madame C.  J. Walker’s cosmetics empire, and the rapidly growing black newspaper industry, including the Defender and a number of competitors. Black stores, black music, black theater, black film, black newspapers, black art movements, and black intellectuals all contributed to the making of what historian Davarian Baldwin has called a “New Negro Consciousness.” The Defender’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” chronicles the ways that black Chicagoans used the interactive forum of advice to redefine black modernity.1 African Americans certainly read large mass-​market dailies, especially because black newspapers were usually weekly publications during the 1920s. But dailies—​and the features they ran—​did next to nothing to curry their favor. Mainstream advice columns reinforced unquestioned beliefs about racial hierarchy and segregation, and if black readers wrote into the columns, their letters were rarely if ever featured. White columnists regularly employed racist humor: Dorothy Dix, for example, wrote a syndicated column from the perspective of African American washerwoman “Mirandy,” complete with exaggerated black dialect. Black newspapers, by contrast, offered their readers news, features, and opinions free from the racism, both implicit and explicit, displayed in mainstream newspapers. As the scholar and reformer Robert Kerlin wrote in his 1919 book, The Voice of the Negro, “The colored people of America are going to their own papers these days for the news and for their guidance. . . . There he speaks as a Negro to Negroes, and he is aware that the white people do not so much as know of the existence of his papers.”2 Publications like the Defender took cues from major trends in journalism and made them their own. Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott recognized the irony in white newspapers’ devotion to a supposedly detached neutrality even as they rarely questioned discriminatory practices, whitewashed racial violence, and failed to hire journalists of color. He sought to tap into a growing market of black readers by providing exciting, relevant, and entertaining content. By the 1920s, the Defender had embraced similar topics, forms, and modes of marketing as mainstream white modern mass-​market newspapers had. Abbott courted advertisers, employed public relations gimmicks like

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Figure  4.1 Dorothy Dix’s “Mirandy” columns were frequently accompanied by cartoons featuring racist caricatures of African Americans. “Mirandy on ‘In-​Laws,’ ” San Francisco Examiner, October 7, 1906.

reader contests, printed sensational and sometimes sexually titillating material, and sought female readers through a diverse offering of feature content. In addition to political commentary and “race news,” the Defender featured a number of columnists, a theater and movie page, music reviews, society and “Coming and Goings” sections, a sports page, religious news, and a woman’s page. As a result, the Defender’s circulation rose to well over 200,000 by 1920.3 Abbott combined this consumer-​driven approach with a politically assertive agenda of racial uplift, black advocacy, and respectability politics. The Defender railed against the segregation and violent repression that marked life in the South, yet Abbott also partnered with more conservative social welfare organizations like the Urban League and exhorted newly arrived black Chicagoans to behave with decorum, work hard, and avoid the lures of modern leisure. Advice columnist Princess Mysteria embraced many aspects of this vision, publicly decrying injustice and advocating prudence and modesty on the part of her readers. More so than Abbott, however, and certainly more than other white columnists of her time, Mysteria emphasized the importance of women’s autonomy and self-​respect, both for their own lives and for the betterment of the race. She doled out sometimes stridently feminist advice, encouraging women to abandon inequitable marriages and to secure their own financial independence. Mysteria rarely shied away from dealing with taboo or graphic subjects like infidelity, rape, and abortion, and in doing so she helped make acceptable an increasing frankness about modern sexuality

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in the pages of black newspapers. Adopting the language of abolitionists, post–​Civil War black reformers, and early feminists, Mysteria asserted that women’s need for “freedom” and “independence” trumped any marital vows. She acknowledged and praised black women’s work experience and resilience in struggles against racism and sexism; but she also stressed that that black women’s multiple burdens as wives, mothers, and workers left them particularly vulnerable to oppression—​both from a racist society and from within their own families. Mysteria understood that the tenets of black feminism were defined by an acknowledgment of these multiple burdens.4 Mysteria’s column came to embody many of the contradictions in the Defender’s mission and in the heated ideological debates among early twentieth-​century African American reformers, authors, artists, professionals, and other public figures. Like many white columnists, Mysteria struggled to square the paradoxes of traditional and modern values. Her championing of respectability revealed the influence of white Victorian social mores and of more conservative black leaders like Booker T. Washington. Yet she also endorsed a strikingly modern vision of femininity, one rooted in individualism and self-​respect. She asserted the importance of black racial uplift but downplayed her own race by marketing herself as an East Indian mentalist. She touted her own “occult” skills yet offered her readers practical and frank advice rooted in Progressive Era rationality. Mysteria’s column reflected the complex marketplace of black self-​help ideology in the 1920s. Despite the more conservative aspects of her advice, Princess Mysteria articulated an influential form of intersectional feminism that stands in contrast to the more limited visions of women’s rights endorsed by Gilmer, Leslie, and Manning.

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Princess Mysteria’s column “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” premiered in the Defender’s April 30, 1921, issue. But Mysteria had been a presence in the newspaper well before that date. In fact, were it not for the coverage of the “Hindoo mentalist” in the black press, we would know almost nothing about the woman named Vauleda Hill who became one of vaudeville’s most popular mind readers.5 Given existing records, only her public persona, the image that Princess Mysteria and the Defender wanted readers to know, can be analyzed. According to Mysteria’s 1930 obituary, she was born forty-​two years earlier “at the foot of the Mahali Mountains in India, near Bombay.” The obituary went on to chronicle a remarkable childhood: “The Princess astonished her teachers and parents at the age of 7 by answering questions before they were completed. Prelates and potentates marveled at her occult powers and the

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rajah of Bengal titled her Princess Mysteria when she was 14 years of age. She received her education in America and abroad. She spoke four languages fluently.” The minimal vital records that exist about the woman that would become Princess Mysteria tell a different story. According to death records from the state of Illinois, Vauleda Hill Strodder was thirty-​five when she died, not forty-​two, while the 1920 Federal Census indicated that she would have been forty-​four at the time of her death. That Census also recorded her permanent residence as the South Chicago household of her sister and brother-​in-​law, where her parents, Joseph D.  and Frances Hill, also lived. Vauleda and her sister Espanola were born in Kansas. Her parents’ birthplaces—​Joseph was born in Kentucky, Frances in Missouri—​suggest that Chicago was likely the most recent stop on the family’s Great Migration journey.6 Mysteria’s claimed exotic birthplace, foreign childhood, and her much-​ discussed foreign accent were probably fabricated to lend legitimacy to her act as a mind reader whose powers were supposedly connected to Far Eastern occult practices. By labeling herself an “East Indian mentalist” and recounting her birth and childhood in India, Mysteria sometimes implied that she was Indian. Yet she was also reported as “the Race’s leading mentalist,” and pictures of her in the Defender, though blurry, appear to have been of a woman of African origin, which is further corroborated by official documentation of her family. What is clear is that Mysteria deliberately demurred on the subject of her race—​a far cry from the tenets of black pride espoused by leaders like Marcus Garvey during the 1920s.7 According to reviews in the black press, Princess Mysteria, accompanied by her husband, “Prince Mysteria,” appeared on the vaudeville circuits in the mid-​1910s. By 1917, the Mysterias were already touted as the “great Mentalists” of the stage.8 Both husband and wife took part in the act, but it was the Princess who was the true talent. Mysteria would conduct her mind reading blindfolded from a stage. The Prince would roam the audience, soliciting questions well outside of the Princess’s earshot. Almost immediately after the Prince acknowledged the audience member’s question, Mysteria would call out the question and answer it. According to the New York Daily Mirror, a white theater journal covering the act, an audience query about whether a family’s baby carriage would have further use “was so refinely answered by her that any saintly soul at a wedding party couldn’t take exception.”9 Most reviews of the Mysterias’ show emphasized its “cleanliness” and “refinement,” branding it one of the more respectable shows of the various vaudeville circuits. The Defender wrote that the Mysterias’ act appeared only “at the best of the Race’s theaters in the South”:

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Figure 4.2  Princess Mysteria, 1923. From the Chicago Defender, April 25, 1923. Courtesy of the Chicago Defender.

They have been well received every place and have left behind satisfied and appreciative managers and audiences. Their work is distinctive, inasmuch as they prove without a doubt the reality of mental telepathy and a sixth sense power. The Princess is incomparable, inimitable, and her work is above criticism. The entire show, and not just the Princess, the Defender gushed, was “above criticism.” The Prince was “a gentleman at all times”; the cast “well-​ costumed—​the Princess in native Hindoo costume and the Prince in conventional full dress.” The Defender told readers that the Mysterias “work hard and get pleasing and satisfactory results.” The Pittsburgh Courier agreed, announcing that the Princess “should present as classy and cleancut [sic] a performance as any patron would desire to see.” Several years later, another reviewer reminded readers, “She has appeared before psychological societies throughout the world and so remarkable are her powers that she absolutely convinces the most skeptical.” The Princess, according to her admirers, offered exemplary theater because of her work ethic and her authenticity, and because her show was composed of high-​class, family-​friendly fare—​but with the excitement and exoticism that “occult mesmerism” entailed.10 Much debate ensued about the Princess’s accent. “Her English is perfect and her style impressive,” insisted the Defender in 1918. “Her replies are plainly

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given and her comedy is natural and shows ready wit and humor.” Yet the white New York Dramatic Mirror proved less enamored of the Princess’s diction: “One thing is certain, [she and her husband] are foreigners by speaking genuinely broken English, too much so in regard to the Princess. Some of her soothsaying is chattered in such a bird-​like tenor that it can’t be understood.” Given her Kansas birth, the Princess’s accent was presumably fake, and she had a talent for appearing genuinely foreign, adding to her celebrity mystique and to her deliberate obscuring of her racial and ethnic origins. The Princess chose to move subtly between Indian and African identities during an era in which residents and lawmakers were redefining the definitions of “Black,” “White,” “Aryan,” “Caucasian,” and “Indian” and the relationship of these categories to United States citizenship. In the 1923 case US v. Bhagat Singh Thind, for example, the Supreme Court determined that Thind, an Indian Sikh, was ineligible for citizenship because he was neither white nor of African descent. The case further muddied already convoluted debates about the boundaries of whiteness in America and about who was entitled to the privileges that the category bestowed.11 In 1920, the Mysterias undertook a grand international tour, performing in Australia and in various places in “the Orient.” That September, the Princess sent a proud telegram to the Defender announcing their successes abroad:  “Just arrived from the Orient. Regards to all. Coming east soon. Extracts from Sydney, N.S.W., Times declare Princess Mysteria one of the most interesting importations, also greatest box office attractions ever in that country. PRINCESS MYSTERIA.” By this time, Princess Mysteria had solidified her reputation as an exciting and respectable theater act—​and her professional partnership with the Chicago Defender. The newspaper’s glowing reviews of Mysteria’s act were matched by the performer’s effusive correspondence with the Defender (always published in the paper) detailing her travels, her collaborations with other theatrical troupes, and her dedication to black theater. By April 1921, Mysteria’s affiliation with the Defender, along with her growing reputation as a performer specializing in questions of “love, lost money, and illness,” made her a natural choice for the newspaper’s resident advice columnist.12 With Princess Mysteria on the payroll, publisher Robert Abbott was able to capitalize on his new columnist’s fame, which he himself had helped cultivate. Abbott could also draw subtly on the cultural cachet of a diffuse school of thought that was finding popularity among African Americans of many different backgrounds. In the 1910s and 1920s, religious figures, club leaders, reformers, artists, and writers began linking African American culture to an

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ancient and venerated Asian past. The tying of African and Asiatic culture reached its height in 1930, when W. D. Fard Muhammad founded the Nation of Islam in Detroit. But in the preceding decades, a generation of black thinkers infused black culture with “Oriental” symbols and traditions in attempts to reclaim African and African American history from the racist historical narratives of white scholars and pundits. These figures included John George Jones, a Chicago lawyer who founded the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the first black Shriner’s organization, in 1893. The Shriners were an offshoot of Freemasonry, but they infused their practices and traditions with Islamic language and symbolism. In 1913, Shriner Timothy Drew founded the Moorish Science Temple in Chicago, an organization that more assertively adopted the religious tenets of Islam, but also reflected the influences of Taoism, Buddhism, esotericism, astronomy, and other forms of Asian mysticism. Drew changed his name to Noble Drew Ali and began preaching about the grand and ancient “Moorish” heritage of African Americans. Through his teachings at the Moorish Science Temple, Ali promulgated a proud and engaging narrative of black history.13 Yet in his theories about African Americans’ Asiatic origins, Noble Drew Ali also departed from certain tenets of black pride. Rather than underscoring the grandeur of ancient African culture, Ali instead contended that Africa’s past was momentous because of its Asianness.14 Likewise, while the Princess consistently expressed an abiding concern for “the race,” she instead emphasized her own “East Indian” origins. It is impossible to discern how knowledgeable the Princess was about Ali’s beliefs and teachings or how she received them, but the two preached a similarly paradoxical worldview to their followers: while they sought to foster assertiveness, pride, and self-​respect among their African American supporters, they also avoided identifying themselves as proudly, particularly African. The Asiatic symbolism used by leaders like Noble Drew Ali quickly made its way into the marketplace. Vaudeville shows, popular songs, fiction, and newspaper stories often portrayed black women as having particular mental gifts and a better understanding of the mystical nature of Eastern thought. Ads for mentalists, psychics, and astrologers flourished in black newspapers, and the Defender even ran an astrological question-​and-​answer column decades before horoscopes became standard fare in mainstream white newspapers. Yet while Asiatic themes and symbols abounded in black popular culture, most of these entertainment forms did not directly address the assertive message of racial pride from figures like Noble Drew Ali, who sought to proclaim the greatness of an Asiatic-​African past to counteract the racist portrayals of African

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Figure  4.3  Prophet Noble Drew Ali (standing center) and temple members at the Moorish Science Temple of America, circa 1925. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library.

heritage propagated by white society. Newspapers like the Defender walked a fine line in using such symbolism; they quietly capitalized on the popular and charged teachings of figures like Ali without explicitly endorsing specific ideologies.15 In contrast to common tropes employed by white columnists—​for example, Dorothy Dix’s romanticized Southern childhood and embrace of the Lost Cause—​Princess Mysteria, Abbott, and the Defender editors marketed their advice column using very different yet parallel narratives. They gave their readers a gifted mentalist who reflected the magnificence of African antiquity—​but with an ethnic identity fluid enough to draw on the exotic legacies of Indian and Asian cultures. Mysteria was marketable as an entertainer, but also as a potent symbol of the past and potential future greatness of the African race.

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The messages and meanings of Princess Mysteria’s advice in the Chicago Defender proved as diverse and paradoxical as her public image. In “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” the Princess demonstrated a conservative

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preoccupation with her readers’ respectability, pushing them to educate themselves, to secure financial independence, to respect their families and elders, and to lead upright and prudent lives. These lessons, of course, complemented the Defender’s message of prudence and racial uplift.16 At the same time, Mysteria articulated an unprecedentedly pro-​woman worldview. She prioritized women’s personal and financial autonomy and insisted to her readers that they should value their self-​respect over any romantic or even marital attachment. In her column, the Princess proved remarkably frank about graphic sexual topics—​issues that were never addressed overtly in white mass-​circulation papers. In giving straightforward and sympathetic answers to questions about rape, premarital sex, and abortion, Mysteria built upon the Defender’s sensationalist reputation—​its willingness to vividly depict the sometimes violent fallout of a society built upon inequality. But Mysteria took this mission one step further:  she offered her readers—​especially her women readers—​a place to solicit clear and nonjudgmental counsel on topics that were rarely addressed in sites of “respectable” public discourse. The majority of letters featured in “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” sought counsel on troubled marriages or relationships, and in many cases, Princess Mysteria encouraged separation or divorce. This stood in sharp contrast to the advice of white columnists of the era, who almost universally condemned the termination of a marriage except in extreme cases of abuse or desertion. The column’s focus on relationships—​and the tenor of her advice—​reflected the deconstruction and reconstruction of the black family during the Great Migration, a moment of political, geographical, and cultural transition. Indeed, the Defender played a central role in this mass migration, actively encouraging African Americans to leave the South and relocate to Northern cities. Between 1915 and 1919 alone, over 61,000 African Americans moved to Chicago. In 1910, Chicago’s black population was 44,104; by 1920, almost 110,000 African Americans lived in the city, and by 1930, 233,903.17 The remarkable surge in African American populations in Northern urban centers informed the questions and dilemmas that correspondents shared with Mysteria and her readers. Migrants who had recently arrived in Chicago would have confronted an almost completely alien landscape in terms of housing, the nature of labor, the rapidity of urban life, and the increasing ubiquity of popular leisure forms. Black theaters, nickelodeons, clubs, and dance halls proved something of a revelation for new arrivals, allowing for a freedom of movement and personal expression that would have been unimaginable in the South. Of course, migrants to Chicago did not leave racism, segregation, and violence behind. Black Chicagoans found that segregation was just as real

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in the urban North as in the South. Though jobs were plentiful, especially in the stockyards, packinghouses, and steel mills rising up in Southeast Chicago, African Americans were often placed in the lowest-​skilled, lowest-​paying jobs and excluded from unions. Women could sometimes obtain menial factory positions, while many others took domestic positions. Black Chicagoans were often barred from access to public parks and certain neighborhoods and were able to find homes only in neighborhoods with poor housing stock and substandard city services. Tensions over segregation often resulted in violence, from ongoing police brutality to the horrors of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. The economic and social inequalities they faced, combined with the rapid pace of urban life and the attenuation of extended family and kinship networks, changed the way many black Chicagoans understood the meanings of courtship, marriage, childrearing, and family relations.18 It was against this backdrop that the Chicago Defender launched its pathbreaking new advice column in April 1921. Thanks to Princess Mysteria’s celebrity and her exotic allure, her column found almost immediate success. Within a few months, letter writers were regularly complimenting the Princess on her “valuable” advice and proclaiming themselves regular readers. Ironically, Mysteria very rarely referenced her celebrity or her persona as a Hindu mentalist in her advice to her readers; any nods she did make to her unusual background or her career appeared as a novelty, more style than substance. For example, after answering a reader’s question, Mysteria might give a psychic analysis of a correspondent’s handwriting or explain the spiritual meaning of his or her name. Elsewhere in the column, the Princess appeared critical of the nonwestern belief systems with which she was often associated. In response to James, who did not get along with his wife and wondered whether it was a result of their “unharmonious” birth months, Mysteria scoffed, “No, positively not.” She denounced astrology as “a very old and senseless superstition.” Although she marketed herself as a “Hindoo mentalist,” she made clear in her responses that she was a practicing Christian and that Christianity was the only “respectable” religion to which her readers should adhere. “The atmosphere of Christianity is absolutely necessary in every home,” she stated unequivocally to one enquiring reader.19 The marketing of Princess Mysteria as an exotic figure who represented a venerated Asiatic-​African past stood in contrast to the actual advice she gave, in which she encouraged her readers to vigilantly maintain their Christian propriety. Mysteria put particular emphasis on the importance of respectable behavior and appearance when dealing with questions about courtship and parental authority. By the second week of her column’s publication, Mysteria

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stated explicitly her standard advice to young women on appropriate behavior during courtship. Pansy G. sought an explanation for “why I always lose all of the fellows I have ever had. I treat them nicely,” she wrote, “and I do not mind kissing them if they ask me to.” Mysteria responded succinctly. “Familiarity breeds contempt, Pansy,” she counseled. “If you wish to retain the respect of your friends, be ladylike, reserved, dignified, and above reproach at all times and in all places.”20 Other questions about kissing and petting received similar chastisements. “Under no circumstances permit [your beau] nor any other boy to freely kiss you,” she instructed Blackeyes, an eighteen-​year-​old girl. “Reserve your kisses for the one man in the world: the man who chooses you from all the others to share his future life.” Mysteria reserved sharper language for men who complained about women who withheld their kisses or insisted that access to their sweethearts’ lips was customary during courtship. “There are no permissible privileges in courtship,” Mysteria responded curtly to Love Bug, a young man, “only courtesy and decency. . . . The code of morality constantly demands caution, so I agree with [your sweetheart] in refusing you her kisses.” This more critical treatment of men over women on the kissing question stood in stark contrast to white columnists, who placed responsibility for chastity solely on their female readers.21 Mysteria’s strict no-​ kissing policy reflected the columnist’s belief that African Americans needed to be concerned constantly with public appearances. Yet Mysteria wanted her readers to tread carefully not because of the judgmental gaze of white Chicagoans—​in fact, Princess Mysteria almost never referenced white people in her column—​but because she considered prudent and chaste behavior essential to African Americans’ financial solvency and access to better jobs and education. Mysteria’s vision of uplift also included the careful selection of one’s partner and spouse. She made this clear in her response to Big Girl, a teenager who chose “to wait a few years” before dating. “I think you are a very wise and discreet young lady,” Mysteria praised the girl. “It would do us proud as a race to have more like you. . . . A few years will give you poise and womanliness that will make you more than ever attractive, so wait: that is my advice.” Mysteria made it clear that she considered self-​respect to be central to a woman’s happiness. She also promised women that the trait would help attract the right kind of husband.22 Like white columnists, Mysteria expressed concern about young men and women intermingling at nickelodeons, theaters, dance halls, parks and beaches, and other public leisure sites. “No sixteen-​year-​old miss should go to any place of amusement at night unless properly accompanied or

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chaperoned,” Mysteria informed Sweet Sixteen, who inquired about suitable courtship behavior. Not unlike white columnists, the Princess warned her female correspondents that the loosening of sexual mores that marked the modern age had made men more forward and more demanding of young women. As a result, Sweet Sixteen and girls like her had to be more assertive in their modesty and self-​protection. Mysteria reinforced this message to Casca, who complained that young men pressured her into dates even though she was not ready and called her names when she refused them. Their jeers “are the meaningless ravings of some of the empty-​headed jazz kings of this modern era,” Mysteria assured Casca. She told the girl to be firm in her refusals. Mysteria regularly emphasized the importance of young women’s confident self-​representation in the face of overly aggressive modern suitors.23 Mysteria expressed particular criticism for those who drank, and most letters on the subject were from women concerned about their husbands’ habits. Perhaps influenced by ongoing debates about temperance and prohibition, and by the growing lures of public leisure spaces, Mysteria deemed drinking an unpardonable sin in a husband and counseled women to separate themselves from such men no matter how unfortunate their situation. Dinah wrote in with a particularly pitiable story. She was happily engaged to a “city employee” who was “a perfect gentlemen” when tragedy struck:  she found herself “the victim of an accident and lost both of my legs.” Her fiancé stood by her and had “not changed in kindness, but he has become a drunkard which he says is caused from grieving over my loss. What shall I  do?” the woman inquired. After giving Dinah “all of my sympathy,” Mysteria leveled her verdict. “Your intended husband is wrong to show a weakness for alcohol in order to display his sorrow for your loss. A drunkard will not make a husband for any woman and for you to go on with your sweetheart unless he decides between you and alcohol would be worse than death.” For Mysteria, the man’s drinking habit overruled his better traits. Neither his steady job nor his affection for Dinah could make a “drunkard” into a respectable husband.24 In the Princess’s opinion, upstanding young men and women needed to acknowledge the authority of their parents and even to place the opinions of their family above their own and those of their romantic partners. Again, there were practical reasons behind Mysteria’s strictness:  she believed extended families provided much-​needed community support in uncertain social and economic times, especially in light of the familial dislocation that so many experienced during the Great Migration. Mysteria emphasized this to Sue and Lew, a couple of eighteen and twenty planning to marry despite their parents’ concerns that they were too young. They asked Mysteria if they were

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old enough to marry, and if she would endorse their decision to elope. At first, Mysteria’s answer looked promising. “I do not think you are too young to marry,” she began. “In fact I think 18 and 20 very good ages at which to plan on the more serious side of life.” Yet for the Princess, age mattered little in light of the objections of Sue and Lew’s parents. “It is proper and advisable to listen to what advice or suggestions the parents have to offer because their wisdom is mighty and they know what is best for us. Their thoughts and plans are always for our protection and happiness. . . . I advise you to wait on their consent, which I am sure they will give [soon].”25 Whether or not Sue and Lew were ready to marry, Mysteria insisted that their union could never be proper without the blessing of their parents. Mysteria sometimes encouraged married women to consider their parents’ needs and wishes above those of their spouses. Pony, who lived with her husband and several children, expressed concerned about two things:  her mother’s failing health and the fact that her husband was “not a Christian and is against giving the children a Christian training.” Mysteria proposed a solution: she encouraged Pony to leave her home and to bring her children with her to stay with her ailing mother for some time. That way she could care for her mother and expose her children to their grandmother’s healthy Christian influence. Mysteria emphasized that Pony’s loyalty should be to her mother, not her husband. “Your mother needs your help and you owe it to her to do what you can, as she is the foundation on which your present has been built.” The Princess encouraged Pony to “try to get the consent of your husband” to go to her mother—​but she also counseled her to act even if he did not give it: “Go to her in her present condition above all things.”26 While the Princess internalized the more conservative notion that it was Pony’s duty, as a woman, to care for her parents, she also prioritized the ties between two women, mother and daughter, over the patriarchal structure of marriage. Mysteria’s emphasis on the importance of extended family acknowledged the transience of life in 1920s Chicago—​which she, living on the South Side with her kin, understood firsthand. Mysteria’s counsel about respectable behavior and familial authority bore some similarities to the traditional worldviews of contemporary white advice columnists. But in stark contrast with Dix, Manning, and others, Mysteria’s endorsements of respectability were almost always rooted in a strong assertion of black female self-​worth. In her advice about women’s place in society and in romantic relationships, the Princess appeared even more vocal about the importance of female autonomy. Over the course of the nine years she wrote the column, Mysteria honed a feminist worldview rooted in the

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particular experiences of African American women. While white columnists dwelled on women’s duties as wives, Mysteria argued almost without fail that a woman’s first responsibility was to maintain her own self-​respect and independence. She encouraged women to strike out on their own when abused by their spouses, but also when their husbands proved quarrelsome, unappreciative, or neglectful. She told them to prioritize their children and their extended families over untrustworthy husbands. And she pushed women to arrange for their own financial security rather to depend on men to provide it. Mysteria’s feminist vision was rooted in the gendered historical legacy of slavery and in the complex inequalities African American women faced in the early twentieth century, particularly their exploitation in the labor force and white portrayals of black women as lascivious. Concepts of freedom and independence lay at the center of Mysteria’s advice, and she levied sharp criticism at those who sought to curb black women’s autonomy. But the Princess used such language less to indict white America—​again, white people received almost no mention in the column—​than to castigate black men for taking advantage of their wives. To Dissatisfied, whose husband never let her rest from her job and from keeping house, Mysteria responded, “If you need a rest don’t ask him about it: slavery days are over and now it’s every soul for himself.” In Mysteria’s worldview, African American men who took advantage of their wives’ loyalty, love, or hard work were complicit in upholding the same hierarchies of power that had defined American society before the Civil War.27 Mysteria taught her readers that the ideal marriage was based on mutual respect and egalitarian power relations. Lonesome Girl confessed to the Princess that, as her family swelled with more and more children, she felt neglected by her husband and trapped by her domestic drudgery. The columnist told her that her problem was her lack of assertiveness in her marriage. Lonesome Girl, the Princess argued, “did not assume the responsibility of matrimony on a partnership basis. Marriage is no different to any other mutually understood business.” The language of marriage as a business resembled the prose of Dorothy Dix; yet the Princess’s message of empowerment was very different. She encouraged Lonesome Girl to show some initiative and stand up to her husband. Mysteria gave similar advice to Lonesome Stella, whose husband had deserted her, but whom she refused to sue for support because of her love for him. The Princess counseled Stella to consult a lawyer and to have his wages commandeered if necessary. Her final word to Stella reflected her insistence that marriages be built on equal power relations: “Don’t love anyone any more than they love you.”28

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The Princess received many letters from correspondents with marital troubles, including those who married rashly or for the wrong reasons, those in abusive relationships, those who had experienced infidelity, and those who had been abandoned by their spouses. Unlike any other columnist of her time, Mysteria counseled her readers to separate from their spouses in the majority of her answers to such questions, most of which were penned by women. The Princess counseled divorce to Worried Wife, whose husband “seems to be satisfied to drag along where we merely exist, but I want to go where we can make and save some money.” Worried Wife had arranged for the couple to move to a more prosperous area but her husband refused. Mysteria considered the husband’s lack of initiative to be evidence enough of his quality: I advise you to talk the matter over with him and if he still refuses to go elsewhere then go yourself. There are so few these days who care enough for their wives to even try to make a living for them and still they have the nerve to claim that they love them. I guess your husband tells you the same thing. Love is one thing, and happiness is another and it is far more preferable to be truly happy and successful than so deeply in love that you make a clown of yourself. . . . Loyalty and obligation cause many good women like you to suffer, but all suffering must cease sometime, so I advise you to cut yours short without him if he will not go and prepare the way.29 The Princess advocated separation based on the notion that love and marriage were significantly less important than self-​assurance, autonomy, and respect. Unlike white columnists, Mysteria believed infidelity to be incontrovertible evidence that a man was unfit to be a husband. “Well, if that does not justify a divorce,” the Princess told Bumps, who had recently caught her husband in the act of cheating, “then I feel that the divorce courts should be closed forever.” She encouraged divorce to both female and male victims of adultery, but she reserved particularly harsh language for male cheaters, like the husband of Adgie. Adgie was a young married woman who, along with her husband, had chosen a stage career. She complained that her husband had begun spending most of his time with another woman and wanted to feature his new sweetheart in their act. Mysteria expressed sympathy for Adgie and contempt for her spouse. “Your husband evidently is trying his nerve and testing your intelligence. He must be tired of your association or he could not so heartlessly offend you. Don’t let this affair discourage you with all men. They are not all alike. Talk with him, request him to get such notions out of

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his head. Give him one chance to redeem himself, and if unsuccessful bid him adieu.” Mysteria encouraged Adgie to remain levelheaded and act in a way that reflected her own self-​worth. She also placed the blame on the relationship’s demise solely with Adgie’s husband. Had this question been posed to Beatrice Fairfax, the white columnist most likely would have blamed Adgie’s inability to keep her husband satisfied.30 The Princess insisted that marriages should be sustained through mutual respect, but she believed that unless other terms were laid out explicitly, it was a man’s responsibility to support his wife and children financially. She also deemed a man’s inability or unwillingness to do so grounds for separation. Broken Heart, for example, claimed, “I love my husband dearly and he says he loves me, but he won’t give me any money, nor will he buy anything to eat nor any clothes. I am a neat housekeeper,” she continued, “keep his clothes ready for him all the time and I am always clean myself. I feel like ending it all. Help me,” she entreated the Princess. Mysteria explained to Broken Heart that her husband was not keeping up his end of the marriage bargain. “He should love you,” the columnist pointed out, “because you are so inexpensive.” She counseled Broken Heart to leave her husband. “You can get honest labor and earn more than that, if it was only board and room, and unless he changes, that is what I advise you to do.” From Mysteria’s point of view, Broken Heart’s marriage was a terrible investment; she worked hard and got nothing in return. The columnist insisted that the young woman would be better off working for her own living. Perhaps that experience, she concluded, would help instill a sense of personal autonomy and spirit in Broken Heart.31 The Princess had particular ire for husbands who made their wives into “drudges,” reflecting her sensitive understanding of black women’s experiences as wives, mothers, and laborers trapped in low-​paying, menial jobs. The problem with such neglectful husbands, Mysteria argued, was that they took for granted the strong work ethic that most black women displayed. The columnist minced no words in explaining this. “Your husband is a splendid sample of lazy love,” she told A. M. C., a clerical worker whose unemployed spouse was a drain on their household. “He is not worth the salt he seasons his food with.” She responded similarly to A. J. Y., who wrote that she was ill and at the end of her rope with her husband. He once held a good job “but his friends told him it was like slavery, so he gave it up” and proceeded to give all of their savings to his mother. “There are many men who are prone to laziness and would rather simply exist than to live,” the Princess told A. J. Y. “These men are usually the kind who get good wives who sacrifice and wear themselves threadbare for nothing. . . . Your husband is one of this kind. He is

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doing as well now as he will ever do, so you are wasting time expecting more of him.” Mysteria encouraged the woman to work on getting physically healthy and to begin developing skills that would allow her to get a job when she finally left her husband. The columnist made it clear that to remain with such a man would be “wasting time.”32 The Princess deemed the husband of correspondent Patience especially egregious because he stood in the way of the betterment of his wife and children. Patience’s husband drank regularly and behaved violently toward his family. “Dear Princess,” Patience asked, “what is best for me to do? I want my children educated, and I want a home so I can live like people. I loved and loved him, but now I don’t love him at all.” Mysteria was frank in her advice: “There is only one solution for your problem and that is a divorce.” No matter the hardship, “you will live well and happily without him,” she concluded. Patience received particular sympathy from the Princess because the latter admired and encouraged the woman’s desire to prioritize her children’s educational uplift over a failing marriage. Whereas white columnists believed that a two-​parent household, no matter how loveless or destructive, was essential to the raising of healthy, well-​adjusted children, Mysteria insisted that Patience and her children would only suffer if they remained in such an environment.33 Mysteria’s criticism of neglectful husbands extended across class. She was just as critical of professional men who took advantage of their wives as she was of unemployed husbands. In response to Doc, who moved North, never sent for his wife and children in the South because he deemed them too demanding of his time, and then fell in love with a pretty young girl, Mysteria offered harsh words. The problem with Doc, the Princess diagnosed, was that his professional standing had made him into a lazy and emotionally withholding husband. “The real trouble is that a professional man as a rule takes his own liberties and feels that his wife should be perfectly satisfied because he is a professional man. Your wife expected and was entitled to your leisure time, which you neglected to give her.” In the end, Mysteria gave her blessing to Doc’s divorce plans—​because she believed it would be best for his wife and children.34 The Princess appeared somewhat less judgmental when she learned that her female correspondents had begun seeing other men before their divorces were final; at the same time, she encouraged women to divorce not for another man, but to secure their own independence. A. M. Y. had long given up on her neglectful husband, who refused to give her money to keep their household. She had recently made the acquaintance of a “wealthy old bachelor” who expressed a desire to marry her. Mysteria assured the woman that

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she had the grounds to leave her negligent husband but cautioned her about rushing into another relationship. “You are young and have been like a bird in a cage. You need freedom and a chance to know what life and love are. . . . Do not rush to remarry. . . . Your old rich bachelor may not be the bargain you think he is.” To Mrs. R., whose husband had been similarly withholding, the Princess gave the same emphatic endorsement of divorce and the same guarded advice about remarriage. “Your husband . . . absolutely meant you no good and his supreme intention was to gradually force you into domestic slavery. Don’t allow him to come where you are, and divorce him as soon as you can.” By invoking the concept of “domestic slavery,” Mysteria drew on a loaded term to emphasize the importance of Mrs. R.’s independence. The columnist concluded by reminding her correspondent not to throw away her autonomy once again: “As to your recently found friend—​take your time.”35 Princess Mysteria consistently encouraged women to secure their own financial independence—​both to protect themselves and their families from the transient nature of modern marriage and to secure their own personal self-​respect. Without fail, the Princess discouraged women from becoming economically reliant on untrustworthy men. Miss Sorrie wrote to Princess Mysteria with two great problems:  love and money. She had been seeing a man “who is well known and prosperous and stands high with the best people.” But his love for her had faded and he had recently “asked me to give him up and leave town” on the promise that he would regularly send Miss Sorrie money. Mysteria encouraged the girl to leave town and start over but vehemently warned her against accepting his money. “That only lowers your dignity and makes you little less than chattel. He has simply used you for his own convenience and thrown you off as he would a worn-​out shoe.” Mysteria encouraged the girl to think of her relocation as a new start and to concentrate on her career as a typist. Again, the Princess’s deployment of the language of slavery reflected both a gendered and racial analysis of freedom and unfreedom.36 For Mysteria, financial assets like a home or one’s own business were better investments than mediocre husbands. She said as much to Lonesome Girl, whose husband had taken to driving around with young, pretty girls in his automobile. Lonesome Girl worked hard and she and her husband had been able to purchase a small home; now her husband demanded that they sell the home or else he would leave her. Mysteria told Lonesome Girl to hang on to her home; indeed, the loss of her husband would only be a boon to her. “Keep your home and if he wants to go away,” she wrote, “let him go. He will never have anything as long as he lives and will endeavor to keep you from

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accumulating anything. His life means nothing to you and yours will not either unless you hold to all that you have but him.” Similarly, Carrie L. wrote that her husband had moved to South America on a business venture but had spent all of his wife’s money. Carrie’s husband then insisted that she sell her own small business and come South to help him out of his troubles. Should she join him? The Princess answered with an unequivocal no. “I feel you would be very foolish to sell out your business and go where he has already wasted such a sum of the money.” If Carrie truly wanted to take her husband back, Princess Mysteria suggested sending him only enough money to gain transportation home. At a time when black Chicagoans sought financial security in the face of discrimination and segregation, the Princess encouraged such women to consider their lives in terms of resources and liabilities; these disappointing spouses fell into the latter category.37 While Mysteria could be harsh in her criticism of lazy, cruel, selfish, and dictatorial husbands, she also took time in the column to praise good husbands who treated their wives properly. The Princess told Wife, whose husband was generous and respectful but reticent to express his affection for his wife, “There is much credit due [to your husband]. He places all he has at your command. He gives to you whatever he possesses, which proves that he is interested in you and in his peculiar way wishes to make you happy.” After all, Mysteria reminded her, “some women would give the world to be in your shoes.” Often, her praise of good husbands revealed the Princess’s most telling opinions about modern men. In her response to Cob, who described his kindnesses to his wife and the circumstances surrounding their recent estrangement, Mysteria assured the man that he was a good and thoughtful husband. “So many men,” she told him, “are too selfish to want their wives to have anything of their own. They want to be the whole thing—​chief dictator and boss.” Mysteria took the opportunity to reflect on her expectations for women as well. “I am proud of the woman who does not have to work, but prouder of the independent woman. The one who can do more than wait on a small paycheck. . . . A breadwinner, whether man or woman, is great beyond words.”38 As the column progressed, Princess Mysteria seemed to grow frustrated that the women writing into her column did not recognize the importance of being “the independent women” that stirred the columnist’s pride. Mysteria expressed this disappointment more and more vocally to female correspondents who subjected themselves to abuse, neglect, and desertion. In fact, she began to hold women as responsible for their victimization as she held their men. The Princess showed surprisingly little empathy for Willa,

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whose husband “brings his sweetheart around . . . and makes me cook for her” and then “beats and kicks me until I am in bed for weeks.” Mysteria expressed anger that Willa had not had her abusive husband arrested and “severely dealt with.” “The whole affair is ridiculous,” she continued, “and you are more to blame than he is.” To Lonely Bessie, who found herself in a situation similar to Willa’s, the Princess wrote, “I do not blame your husband half as much as I do you for your unhappiness.” Bessie endured terrible cruelty and physical abuse from her husband; though they had “parted ways” three times, she habitually took him back. “Knowing his faults as you did and having tried him to your sorrow so many times,” Mysteria continued, “it was your pitiful lack of womanly independence that brought you further misfortune. How can you permit such treatment in this day of freedom and emancipation?” For Princess Mysteria, these correspondents failed to demonstrate any sense of self-​respect or self-​preservation—​traits that were central to the columnist’s feminist mission.39 Mysteria proved willing to address issues of a graphic nature, including correspondences about sexual assault, abortion, and homosexuality—​topics often deemed too sordid for print in mainstream white advice columns. In answering such questions in a public forum, Mysteria further extended the Defender’s mission, which married educational activism with sensational detail. But her goals were rarely exploitative. Mysteria offered her most troubled readers concrete and practical answers to complicated questions that many at the time would not have considered appropriate for discussion in a public forum.40 Princess Mysteria received several letters from men and women expressing their lack of interest in the opposite sex. “Dear Princess: I am sure you have never had a letter like this before,” wrote Worried in 1924: I am a girl 22 years of age. I am not married and I don’t have the least idea of getting married. I go to shows and dances with fellows, not because I love them but to keep them from thinking I am selfish. I have a girl friend whom I love very much and she is crazy about the boys. Please tell me what I can do to become interested in boys. They seem to treat me nice when I am in their company and I can’t understand why I feel toward them as I do. Most everyone says I will never marry, and it seems I won’t. Mysteria was firm in her response to Worried. “All normal girls are interested in the boys,” she proclaimed, “and the fact that you are not classes you with

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those who are not normal. For your own peace and security, I advise you to try and cultivate the association of nice boys, as you may some day regret it if you do not.” The Princess expressed concern about the friend whom Worried “loved very much.” “As to your girlfriend,” the Princess counseled, “keep away from her until you have broken the feeling that you love her better than you could love a boy.” The Princess voiced similar concerns to Nuts, a soldier who preferred spending all of his time with men and “has never cared for girls.” She encouraged Nuts to make an effort to “seek the association of some nice young woman and cultivate the acquaintance. Boy friends are quite all right, but woman is man’s mate, not man.” Considering the columnist’s abiding concern with respectability, it was not surprising that Mysteria discouraged Worried and Nuts from pursuing their infatuations with members of the same sex. But her response exuded less moralistic preaching than an abiding concern for Worried and Nuts’ long-​term happiness in an unquestionably homophobic society.41 In her column, Mysteria frankly acknowledged the inevitability of premarital sex, children born out of wedlock, and the difficult choices that many women faced as a result. She even addressed the issue of abortion in her column. L. M. L. A. S. sent a distraught letter to the Princess, explaining, “I am a high school girl 18 years old and I am expecting to become a mother. My mother is away and does not know it, but the boy’s mother advises me to destroy the unborn child.” Mysteria expressed horror at her boyfriend’s mother, “who is the most guilty party in this affair. She is a criminal of the blackest type. Her suggestion that you take something that you cannot give—​a life—​ is murder, and her proper position is in prison. No, do not listen to her.” Mysteria emphasized that not only was abortion immoral, but “following her advice would probably be the cause of your own death.” Princess Mysteria’s anti-​abortion stance is less notable than her concern for the health, rights, and personal autonomy of her correspondent. The Princess encouraged the girl to write her mother, who would be an ally against these bad influences. She also explicitly withheld judgment of L. M. L. A. S.’s actions. “We are all sinful in one way or another,” Mysteria told the girl, “and your transgression is no greater than any other.” She reassured her that all was not lost. “Bear your child with the belief that it was so intended and have faith in yourself to know that you can repair any damage that may have been done to your character by being an upright and respectable woman in the future.” Abortion was never mentioned in the columns of Mysteria’s white contemporaries, nor would Dorothy Dix, Nancy Brown, or any of their colleagues have deemed the “sins” of an expectant single mother “no greater than any other.” Mysteria’s

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empathy toward L. M. L. A. S. may also reflect her implicit understanding of the historical legacy of sexual violence toward black women and resulting unintended pregnancies, both during and after slavery.42 Most white newspapers shied away from printing questions about sexual assault, sometimes out of concern for the letter writer, but often because they deemed the issue too salacious and graphic. Mysteria displayed no such qualms in her response to Distress, a young woman who found herself struggling with a traumatic childhood event. “I have been keeping company with a young man for a year,” Distress told Mysteria. About a month ago he questioned me as to my past life. I told him I had always been a good girl, which I have, only when I was about 8  years old I  was the victim of something I  was not responsible for. I did not tell him this, as no one knows of it but my parents. If I should become his wife is there any way he could find this out? He has hinted marriage several times, but has not asked me outright. He is an exceptionally good boy and is very particular. I am so afraid he would later find this out. Mysteria responded tactfully and kindly. “Your refusal to dig down into the hideous thing of the past, something that you were wholly irresponsible for, was only proper,” she assured Distress. “You answered his question as he asked it. A child of 8 has hardly started to live. If he proposes marriage to you, you may have your father to tell him of this dreadful happening.”43 At first glance, this exchange reflects the Princess’s abiding concern with respectability. She praised the young woman’s modesty and reinforced the patriarchal structure of the family by placing the responsibility for the revelation on Distress’s father. But in other ways, Mysteria’s response was groundbreaking. She dealt frankly if discreetly with a question about sex, one that required more than pat or moralistic judgments. Simply by printing this letter, the columnist acknowledged that issues of courtship and propriety were rarely simple. The Princess did not give an overwrought or sentimental answer in response to Distress’s suffering, as Laura Jean Libbey might have, but she took care to alleviate any fear that the girl might have of her own culpability in the situation. Moreover, reading between the lines of Distress’s letter shows that the young woman actually posed two questions. She asked how to broach the subject of her abuse tactfully; but she also sought answers about whether her young man would be able to identify her past experiences when they had sex after their marriage. Mysteria’s answer implied that he would, hence her

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counseling that the woman’s father should reveal the traumatizing events of her past. Distress turned to Mysteria as a relationship counselor, but also as an honest and tactful expert in sex education. Letter writers often confessed that they turned to the columnist because they lacked supportive and authoritative figures in their lives. Indeed, columnists like Mysteria emerged as essential replacements for in-​person supports separated by distance. L.  M. L.  A. S., whose boyfriend’s mother pressured her to seek an abortion, confided to Princess Mysteria that she and her mother had been living apart from each other, intensifying her feelings of isolation and fear at having no protective parental force in her life. Rebel wrote to Princess Mysteria complaining of similar feelings of alienation; a Southerner by birth, she had married “an Eastern man,” but found that his family regularly ridiculed her because of her place of birth. “He and his people, also his friends,” she wrote, “seem very bitter toward southern folks and that is one of the main themes of conversation in my presence.” Without her family, Rebel felt she had no one to stand in her defense. Mysteria observed that many of her correspondents lacked the emotional and financial safety nets that family often provided. She sought to be a guiding force for her readers, but she also hoped to use her column’s interactive potential to encourage new relationships among her correspondents.44 As early as the first year of the column’s run, Mysteria began featuring letters from readers responding to previous correspondents, thus fostering a fledgling virtual community among contributors. R. D. from Edmonton, Canada, for example, wrote politely to Rebel, who had complained of her South-​hating in-​laws. “Pardon my interference, but permit me to advise Rebel of the sad error committed in marrying an ignorant eastern man.” Rebel’s letter had convinced R. D. that the former had married “out of [her] class, as the margin or gulf between ignorance is too great.” R.D. encouraged Rebel to abandon her marriage and, at the end, wrote, “Hoping Mysteria may have this inserted in her column.” Mysteria let the letter speak for itself, offering no commentary, but R. D.’s advice certainly reflected the influence of Princess Mysteria’s worldview.45 By the end of the decade, readers were writing with explicit requests for pen pals, and Mysteria adopted an affectionate tone in response to such queries. In 1930, Laura wrote into the Princess expressing her love for the column:  “I am a constant reader of your wonderful advice and have been helped so much from it.” Laura also sought guidance on how to fight everyday loneliness. As the mother of nine children, she rarely got out of the house or found a break from her interminable housework. “Life seems so hard

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to go through with. I  wish you would tell me how to be happy some way. I want all the mothers to write to me. I would be glad to read and answer all. And also, Princess, if you know of any firm I could get in touch with and do hand or machine work or if any mother sees this that knows of such work I would be glad. Thanks.” Mysteria had nothing but warm praise for Laura in her response. “This appeal is so human and of such worthy consideration that I hope all who see it will feel as I do. Whenever a woman has had nine babies she is deserving of much praise.” The Princess acknowledged the difficulty of Laura’s situation: “I fear that you worry too much. But still how can you help it? Nine little ones, constantly crying, eating, playing, fighting or something else.” Finally, she endorsed Laura’s idea of corresponding with other mothers at home with their children. “Mothers,” the Princess entreated, “when you read this, see what you can do to make this other mother happy.” Mysteria was especially supportive of Laura because the young mother, though tired and depressed, had not given in to despair. By considering part-​time employment and capitalizing on the column’s interactivity by soliciting letters from other mothers, she had already taken important steps to securing her happiness and improving her self-​esteem.46 Mysteria not only encouraged correspondents to respond to each other; she also took on the role of matchmaker, using the column to introduce lonely Chicagoans and encouraging them to meet in person. By 1924, the column began featuring requests for companionship that read something like singles ads. “Dear Princess: I am very lonely and I wonder if there is a good, honest, considerate man, not too old, who is lonesome too?” asked Young Lady. She proceeded to list her best qualities: “I am fairly intelligent and neat; attractive, but very sensible. I  am asking you for this assistance.” Mysteria proved happy to oblige. “I can help you and I will,” she responded. “Men, she has described herself and has stipulated the qualities she mostly wants you to have. I am ready to serve you.” A widower with two children who called himself J. F. S. sent the Princess a similar plea. “My wife has been dead nearly three years. I am so lonesome and I wonder if there is any young woman who would appreciate correspondence with me.” J. F. S. even tried to sell himself as a good partner, adding, “I do not drink nor smoke. I own some real estate.” Again, the columnist proved willing to plead his case. “I am sure there is someone who will be interested in you, and I will surely do all in my power to bring about some relief for your loneliness,” she promised. “I have his address, girls.”47 Mysteria rarely followed up on these queries, but privately gave the addresses of her lonely correspondents to men and women who wrote in

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requesting them. The columnist made it clear, though, that she did not give out addresses to just anyone; she carefully chose the most appropriate matches for each of her correspondents. She promised as much to California, who was looking for a sweetheart “intelligent and of good appearance.” “Now, then, let us see who can win this contest,” the Princess wrote back, referring to her process of screening and matching correspondents. “I will give [you] my protection against the unscrupulous miss.” By 1927, so many readers had begun to take her up on her matchmaking services that she could not keep up with their letters. “Dear Friends: How’s everybody?” she wrote chattily. “Don’t get impatient. I will answer all your letters. There are ‘oodles’ of mighty fine men and women on the list now, so write for correspondence. But don’t forget your stamps.” Mysteria’s embrace of the matchmaker role demonstrated that, while the columnist proved more than willing to endorse divorce in the case of troubled marriages, she had not given up on the institution. In fact, she considered it her duty to reform and modernize courtship and marriage for African American men and women, both by setting up correspondents with their ideal matches, and by preaching her gospel of respectability and autonomy to her readers.48 Many readers, especially those living in cities, also wrote in seeking platonic friends, hoping to build networks of mutual support and enjoyment in large, anonymous, and sometimes isolating urban centers. Daisy made such a request to Mysteria: “Don’t you think through your columns I can be introduced to a few musical men and girls?” she asked the columnist. Princess Mysteria promised Daisy that she would help her pursue both her personal and musical interests. The Princess featured another letter from a group of young women who called themselves the New Era Club. “Having read your inspiring advice to others,” they wrote, “we take this opportunity to write and ask a small favor of you. We are a group of young girls who have formed a club and are desirous of meeting young men who come up to these requirements: High standards, good family, morally and physically fit, energetic, and who have a purpose in life. We are attractive and intelligent.” Mysteria promised to send such men along and then addressed her male readers: “I hold their names and will give them to any young man who can qualify.”49 By facilitating such connections, Mysteria helped further define the newspaper as a site for black community building. In early twentieth-​century Chicago, African American popular culture forms—​ newspapers, music, films, businesses, clubs, and more—​created networks of cultural and political exchange that defined the black modern experience. Columns like “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” made newspapers into arenas of personal exchange

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as well. While some white advice columns gave readers the opportunity to swap contact information and meet in person, no other columnist played such a hands-​on a role in fostering in-​person connections. The column allowed Mysteria to help readers forge personal and collective connections amid an era of growth, transformation, and upheaval in Chicago and beyond.

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Even after taking up the pen in 1921, Mysteria continued to work as a full-​ time vaudeville mentalist. In 1923, the Defender announced that “Princess Mysteria & Co. [had] just returned from a wonderfully successful coast trip over one of the biggest of the vaudeville circuits.” In 1926, she headlined the show “Blue Moon,” the latest act put on by Irvin C. Miller, one of the most prolific and well-​known producers in African American theater at that time. Shortly after the act disbanded, Mysteria and her husband assembled their own show of twenty players and hit the circuit again. She did all this while penning “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” which boasted an audience of “thousands weekly.” By the mid-​1920s, Princess Mysteria was certainly among the best-​known and well-​paid mind readers on the vaudeville circuit and one of the Defender’s most popular columnists.50 The Princess must have been exhausted by her busy schedule. In 1927, she announced her indefinite retirement from the stage. Considering the popularity of her column and her commitment to her matchmaking service, the Princess’s retirement was likely not a restful one. Then in 1929, she found herself drawn back to the spotlight when she returned to the stage and made a series of radio appearances across the Midwest. Perhaps it was during these busy days that the Princess’s health began to fail; according to her Defender obituary, “she had complained of feeling ill for some time, [though] her condition had not been considered serious.” The Princess gave her last stage performance on February 26, 1930, at the Michigan Theater in Chicago, and the last installment of “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” ran in the Defender’s March 15 issue. She had died a day earlier, on March 14, 1930, due to complications from a chronic stomach ulcer, at her family’s home in South Chicago. Her funeral had to be postponed after her husband suffered a “nervous breakdown” following her death. “Stage stars of both races,” the Defender reported, “many of them having appeared on the same vaudeville circuits with the Princess,” attended her funeral “to pay their last respects to her.”51 Upon her death, Princess Mysteria left behind her parents, her sister and brother-​in-​law, a distraught husband, a close community of fellow vaudeville

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Figure  4.4  This portrait accompanied the extensive coverage of Princess Mysteria’s death in the Chicago Defender. “Death Ends Stage Career,” March 22, 1930. Courtesy of the Chicago Defender.

performers, and thousands of heartbroken column readers. A  month after Mysteria’s death, a reader named Ruby Marie Wilson wrote into the Defender “in memory of our dear beloved Princess Mysteria.  .  .  .  Her bereavement has left much sadness in our hearts. . . . I treasure [her] wonderful advice as highly as I would a great amount of gold.” Wilson went on to recount how many people Mysteria brought together “who otherwise would have drifted apart.” She even revealed that one of her dearest friends had met her husband through the Princess’s matchmaking service. Wilson concluded her tribute with a short poem, and then signed her letter, “A constant reader of a paper

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that is worth more than its weight in gold—​The Chicago Defender. RUBY MARIE WILSON.”52 Wilson’s letter addressed the many ways that “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” contributed to the Defender’s mission and to the building of a diverse and autonomous black community in Chicago and beyond. The column’s success lay in the Princess’s ability to draw on the Defender’s vision of advocacy, but also to infuse her advice with a frankness and assertiveness that was rarely seen in other contemporary columns. Mysteria’s advice gave a gendered dimension to the Defender’s vision of racial uplift. The Princess insisted that, for the good of themselves and of their race, women and men had to think carefully about the decisions they made in life, whether those decisions pertained to their careers, their choice of spouse, their dating practices, or their childrearing techniques. But women, the columnist insisted, had a particular duty to cultivate their own happiness and sense of self-​worth. Only after they began standing up for themselves, asserting their personal and financial rights, and eliminating the influence of lazy and selfish men from their lives could African American women collectively begin to improve their lot. Mysteria articulated a vision of feminism that was rooted in the historical experiences of African American women. Hers was a philosophy that acknowledged black women’s work as laborers, as family members, and as community leaders. She sought to modernize how her readers dealt with their personal relationships, their finances, their jobs, and their own self-​perceptions. In her emphasis on individual self-​worth and self-​reliance, Mysteria drew on an older vision of feminism, one articulated by mid-​nineteenth-​century activists who posited that women were autonomous citizens and human beings before they were wives, mothers, and women. Yet her worldview was also remarkably modern in its stark individualism and in its emphasis on happiness and self-​fulfillment over a woman’s duty to her family. With a social analysis that acknowledged the intertwined gender and racial inequalities facing black women, Princess Mysteria served as an early and under-​acknowledged pioneer of intersectional feminist thought.

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The Modern “Experience” Loneliness, Anonymity, and the Virtual Community

In 1924, Detroit News advice columnist Nancy Brown printed a letter from Infidel, a disillusioned and unhappy Detroiter. Infidel wrote into “Experience,” the News’s popular column, not for advice, but to recount his feelings of pain, isolation, and frustration living in a bustling modern city. “Dear Nancy,” he began, “my thoughts are all awry. I’m discontented, cynical, out of tune with the universe. I feel bitter as I think of my inability to gain real friends.” Infidel held a respectable job and interacted with many people throughout his days, yet he felt alienated from his acquaintances, work colleagues, and the women he dated. He had become pessimistic about the prospect of making real connections in a society in which people focused on their own individual interests and well-​being. “Everybody tolerates you only so long as you are of some help to them,” Infidel lamented. “Should you desire something in return the so-​called friend is suddenly reminded of an appointment and away he goes! It’s a case of ‘ME’ all over. . . . It’s no use: the shams and impostures of today are intolerable.” Yet after handily dismissing the possibility of friendship in “modern times,” Infidel quickly became humble. He pleaded for columnist Nancy Brown to let him into the “Column Family,” the community of regular participants that wrote into the “Experience” column with their musings and life stories. Brown, often styled the “Column Mother,” assured Infidel that he was welcome and that the column was just the thing to assuage his pessimism. “Gracious!” she responded playfully, “Come in, come in. We’ll cure you. Lots of ‘friends’ in our big family.” The “Experience” column, Brown promised the man, would provide Infidel with wholesome friendship, lively debate, and

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unconditional acceptance among a group of caring virtual correspondents. It would provide him, as it had with many Detroiters, an antidote to the chaos and alienation of modern urban life.1 Brown and Infidel were joined by hundreds of Detroit News readers—​and millions of advice column participants around the country—​who during the 1920s and 1930s helped create a fundamentally new kind of community in the pages of the mass-​circulation newspaper. In columns across the United States, readers picked up their pens and became regular contributors, addressing their letters not just to columnists but to other participants—​and to readers writ large. In the pages of “Experience,” columnist Nancy Brown cultivated a uniquely loyal and committed group of column participants—​or as they called themselves, “columnites.”2 They were vivid, sometimes eloquent writers and chose to expound upon the complexity of their emotions rather than seek hard-​and-​fast answers to their problems. Over the 1920s and the 1930s, the columnites crafted a collective narrative around the loneliness of city life and assuaged their ennui through their expressive letters and through the anonymous comfort of strangers. They fostered long-​term and deeply felt friendships, exchanging intimate details about their lives and psyches with their Column Friends and with a broad readership. Brown’s Column Family became an influential cultural and economic force, propelling the publishers of the News to financial success by cultivating a massive and engaged community of long-​term readers. Commencing in April 1919, the “Experience” column began as a standard question-​and-​answer advice column in which Nancy Brown answered lovelorn queries similar to those in contemporary syndicated columns. Almost immediately, the narrative of modern loneliness dominated. “I have read in your column a number of letters from lonely people,” A Reader observed in October 1919. “I never before realized that there were so many who were lonesome in Detroit.”3 Columnites participating in the “Experience” advice community soon came to believe that the cure to their loneliness lay not in any piece of particular advice, but in the creation of virtual relationships within the pages of the Detroit News. Letter writers sought and received acceptance and companionship from a group of troubled but hopeful individuals, committed to remedying the isolation of modern life by engaging in idealized in-​ print relationships in front of an enormous audience of readers. The cornerstone of virtual advice communities was anonymity, which allowed for an unprecedented level of candor and a breadth of opinion. In the case of “Experience,” the high circulation of the Detroit News—​upwards of 250,000 by the 1930s—​ensured the anonymity necessary to make this virtual

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forum work; such a community would not have been possible, for example, in a small-​town newspaper, where face-​to-​face community members could speculate about the real-​life identities of column participants. Most columnites insisted that they found their virtual relationships as intimate, if not more so, than those they shared with spouses, children, family members, and face-​to-​ face friends. For columnites, anonymity promised, ironically, a space for authentic confession—​even as many of the biographical details that participants shared were likely embellished or altered. Participants could exaggerate, romanticize, and even make up their life stories, musings, and reactions—​in fact, the veracity of their letters was beside the point. “Experience” allowed readers to hone their narrative and the themes they wanted to emphasize, creating archetypal storylines that crystallized their hopes and fears better than the mundane details of real life. In this way, columns like “Experience” served as quasi-​literary spaces where participants could frame and debate the intimate anxieties, beliefs, and preoccupations that absorbed Americans during the first decades of the twentieth century.4

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In April 1919, the Detroit News ran a small ad on its features page: “Beginning Saturday, April 19, questions sent to this department on affairs relating to the daily life of busy women will be answered in these columns each Saturday. Address EXPERIENCE, Care Woman’s Page, Detroit News.” A  columnist writing under the pen name Nancy Brown would address these queries. While the News had long established itself as an innovative, dynamic, and respected “home paper,” this was its first local advice column.5 Detroit newspaper veteran James E.  Scripps founded the Detroit News in 1873, at the height of a national economic depression. With his new venture, he aimed to win what he considered to be a neglected demographic: the growing working class of Detroit. Scripps made the News a smaller, tabloid-​ size daily and charged only two cents, whereas most Detroit publications sold for about a nickel. He called in family members to help run the paper, including his brother, E. W., who would eventually leave the News to form one of the country’s earliest and largest corporate newspaper chains. By contrast, James believed that the News should remain independently owned in order to maintain a consistent editorial voice and tailored, high-​quality, relevant content. James was so proud of his newspaper’s private ownership status that he continued to print “An Independent Paper” or “Not Affiliated with Any Other Newspaper” on his masthead for decades to separate himself from his brother’s national newspaper empire.6 Well into the twentieth century, the

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Figure  5.1  This small, unassuming ad ran on the News’ woman’s page in the days leading up to the column’s launch. “Experience Column,” Detroit News, April 18, 1919, 28. Courtesy of the Detroit News Archive.

News remained fundamentally local in spirit, and James Scripps marketed his newspaper as a powerful emblem of Detroit’s civic and community pride. The Detroit News grew steadily in the early twentieth century. By 1915, the newspaper had a circulation of almost 150,000 daily; twenty years later, it was 250,000. Thanks to new distribution technologies, the News could disseminate its paper across a wider geographical area, into the city’s young suburbs and other smaller cities in Michigan. Content-​wise, the News followed patterns similar to other early twentieth-​century mass-​circulation newspapers. The paper boasted a sports section, theater and literary news, fiction, a diverse array of columnists, and a society page. Its woman’s section occupied two pages in the daily edition and sometimes spread onto seven pages on Sundays. The woman’s page editors did employ some syndicated content—​fashion, for example—​but continued to cater to their local audience through in-​house features.7 James Scripps’s decision to keep his paper independent and local was what made the “Experience” advice community possible. When “Experience” commenced in 1919, the News was a highly capitalized business that had the financial flexibility to experiment with cutting-​edge interactive features. Its content, moreover, could be tailored to the specific needs and demands of Detroiters. A local column like “Experience” would not have been cost-​ effective or even feasible as a feature in the nationalized newspaper chains

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of E.  W. Scripps, Hearst, Pulitzer, or Munsey; “Experience” columnites’ musings on sculptures at the Detroit Institute of Arts, for example, would not have resonated with Houstonians or Los Angeleños the way they did with Detroiters. “Experience,” then, was borne of an important transitional moment in the development of the modern American newspaper:  one in which papers had become thoroughly capitalized, and circulation was high enough to make experimental, anonymous communities possible; but one early enough in the process of corporate consolidation that privately owned, local newspapers could still flourish.8 Columnist Annie Brown Leslie would eventually become a living legend in Detroit, but she was not originally from the city; she arrived from Pittsburgh in 1918 after the death of her husband. In the summer of 1918, she began writing short editorials for the woman’s section of the News under the name Mrs. J. E. Leslie. By April of the following year, she had gained enough confidence to approach editor-​in-​chief George E.  Miller about heading up an advice column. In proposing her column, Leslie had done her research. She had read up on competitors, including Beatrice Fairfax and Dorothy Dix; she considered their advice to be witty and commonsensical, but distant, due mainly to the fact that they were syndicated columns, unable to address the needs and requests of a local community. Leslie also emphasized that her age—​she was forty-​nine at the time—​gave her the experience and empathy necessary to create a grounded, personal, even intimate advice column. Miller was sold, recognizing that Leslie’s “Experience” column would mesh well with the newspaper’s proudly independent identity.9 Detroit took to “Experience” almost immediately. By the end of May, the column featured up to nine different letters each issue, written under pseudonyms like Frenchie, D.A.B.  and Constant Reader. By mid-​ June, Brown’s column began running daily, sometimes taking up almost an entire page of the News’ woman’s section. Despite the fact that Nancy Brown set out to differentiate her column, the first few months of “Experience” looked a great deal like the syndicated lovelorn columns so popular at that time. This might have been due to the ubiquity of syndicated lovelorn columns; presumably, “Experience” readers would already have encountered similar columns in other newspapers and internalized the already-​established language and topics used and addressed in them.10 “Experience” covered twenty-​three broad topics in 1919, from etiquette to questions about women’s employment to health queries, but problems about courtship and heartache vastly outnumbered any other subject, drawing double the inquiries of the second most popular category, beauty. Lovelorn

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young women such as Blue Eyed Blonde, for example, pressed Nancy on what had gone wrong with their boyfriends. Blue Eyed Blonde and her older beau had kissed and stayed out late together, but now he no longer wrote her letters. A  month later, another contributor wrote in with a similar woe:  she had given her picture to a suitor, but when she ran into the young man at a party, he ignored her. What, she wondered, had she done wrong? Other contributors fretted over their shyness and their inability to meet nice young men and women. Disappointed and Just A Man worried that they could not find nice “old-​fashioned” girls in a modern city like Detroit. Katie begged Brown for tips on beguiling hairstyles and ways for her to overcome her shyness in order to find a suitor, while other young women lamented that they would become old maids. There were meaningful undercurrents to these requests and to Nancy’s responses: girls like Blue Eyed Blonde, according to Brown, lost their sweethearts because they adopted modern dating habits like kissing and attending dance halls. Correspondents like bashful Katie and old-​ fashioned Just A Man, meanwhile, expressed feelings of frustration and loneliness in their quest to find companionship and comfort. For Brown, these courtship struggles were emblematic of a larger issue—​the feelings of isolation and alienation that modern times prompted in so many.11 As letters like these poured into “Experience,” Brown and her readers began to grasp the great irony of these problems; in modern, bustling, crowded Detroit, courtship and the quest for fulfilling relationships could be lonesome and isolating experiences. Despite the city’s expanding population, the rising interest in leisure pursuits, and the loosening of sexual mores, Detroit’s men and women found it more and more difficult to find and maintain meaningful connections with people. Modern courtship felt empty, insincere, even futile. The loneliness that “Experience” contributors expressed reflected more than just a longing for companionship; it became a symbol through which to understand the transformed society in which they lived, a way for Detroiters with very different problems to come together within a common narrative framework.12 “Experience” letter writers expressed their loneliness in many ways, but virtually all of them drew on their own intimate experiences and feelings to communicate and relate to the News’s readership. Often contributors critiqued modern city life rather explicitly. “This is such a big city, filled with so many people, and a great many of them desperately hungry for companionship,” Young Bachelor Maid mused. “Why should it be so? I think if people were a little bit more human and charitable, and not quite so dignified, the problem could be solved.” A few days before Christmas in 1919, Drifting also waxed

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philosophical about the loneliness epidemic that had hit Detroit. “Being a constant reader of the News,” he wrote, “what strikes me very strange is that most of the letters complain of unhappiness? What in the world makes such depressed feelings?” Drifting went on to share his difficult emigration to the United States, his mistreatment as a foreigner who spoke little English, and the death of his sweetheart. Sadly, he told Brown, he had joined the ranks of the city’s depressed. “Thus the cup was filled with bitterness right up to the top and I have drunk it. . . . I am losing all interest in my life at 31.” Brown herself described many of the darker letters she received in her editorial “No Faith—​ No Hope.” “Many, many,” Brown told her readers, “write to the Experience column that, because of cruel blows of Fate, they have lost their faith, their hope and their belief in God. They are disillusioned, discontented, miserable and unhappy.” Brown counseled her readers to cure this disillusionment by embracing marriage and family life, but her advice often failed to address the existential issues facing the column’s most depressed correspondents.13 In the aftermath of World War I, some readers drew their language of loneliness from Lost Generation literature. Brown printed a number of letters from soldiers and their sweethearts who discussed their failed relationships, their inability to communicate with each other, and young veterans’ brooding preoccupation with their combat experiences. Betty described the seemingly idyllic relationship she had had with a young man before he enlisted in the Army. Since he returned home, he had avoided her, making no attempt to get back in touch. She pressed for Brown to tell her why. “I cannot tell the reason, Betty,” Brown answered. “But I would have patience and wait. The boys are different since they came back, most all of them. They have to become readjusted to civilian life. They are a bit confused after the great change from the war excitement and do not quite think clearly.”14 While Brown chalked up such behavior to “war excitement,” another letter writer, Soldier, found his readjustment more troubling. Mourning his inability to communicate with his sweetheart since his return home, Soldier observed: Believe me, we are going through a period of readjustment both physical and mental, and personally I am finding it very hard to grip life in the same way. I wonder if you can ever realize what we have gone through over there. I  find that I  am lacking something—​possibly nervous energy. I do not know really what is the matter. I have been repeatedly knocked down by concussion of shells; have been caught in our own

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and enemies’ barrage and covered with dirt and corruption. Have been in the front lines for 20 days at a time without rest or sleep; have gone over the top so many times that I’ve lost all count; have seen my buddies killed or wounded until at times I’ve envied the dead. And when we have been relieved we have come back to the rear, mental and physical wrecks. Oh, if we could only make people understand. Do you believe we can be the same boys again after going through such hell? I  am sick with the horror of it yet and I  do not know if I can ever get a grip on life again. I am trying very hard. Brown wrote that Soldier’s was “one of the finest letters I have ever had,” perhaps reacting to his adoption of a tone of disillusioned realism reminiscent of Hemingway or Dos Passos, who dwelt on the horrors of modern war and the deadening loss of self upon returning from the front. Soldier’s letter also showed that “Experience” columnites were making a greater effort to craft moving and poetic letters. Brown deliberately highlighted the quality of his prose and tacitly encouraged other potential columnites to employ popular and compelling literary styles of the day. She also urged Soldier to keep in touch with the column about his progress.15 Other contributors’ turmoil had nothing to do with the war; in fact, their feelings sometimes seemed inexplicable. Yours in Sad Need wrote that, despite her kind husband and wonderful children, “it is my health I am concerned about, and my very depressed mental state. . . . I could have sunshine and happiness, but I cannot absorb it no matter how hard I try.” A Wasted Life lamented that he devoted himself wholly to making money and only too late did he learn that wealth and success were empty pursuits. “That night my bachelor apartment seemed cheerless and lonely for the first time. I began to take inventory. I was absolutely necessary to no one. I had sacrificed many friends, for they gradually forget you when you are too busy to enter into their pleasures.” Ever optimistic, Brown responded, “Why don’t you marry now? I can see no reason why you shouldn’t, and make some woman happy as well as yourself. . . . I’d waste no time.” Yet Brown’s consistent claim that romantic companionship would cure such despondency failed to slow the barrage of lonely letters that came her way.16 Brown’s responses to many reader letters reflected her concern about the secularization of modern society. Hopeless referred to herself as a “disillusioned, discontented woman” who, because of her hardships, had abandoned the Bible and now read only “Darwin’s ‘The Descent of Man,’ also Ingersoll, Voltaire . . . and everything by Charles Dickens.” “I don’t know why I want

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to write to you,” Hopeless wondered, “unless it is because I am just lonesome for some one to talk to, that is some one who will understand. . . . I am one of those horrid skeptics.” Brown observed cheerily that Hopeless did not “need to be discontented, you know. That is entirely ‘up to’ yourself.” She suggested that Hopeless concentrate on having “a good time,” wearing “pretty clothes,” and reading light novels instead of Voltaire. Both directly and indirectly, Brown connected her readers’ loss of religious faith—​Hopeless’s substitution of Darwin for the Bible, for example—​with the onset of their searing loneliness.17 Despite her own cheerful optimism, Brown did not censor the level of anguish that contributors expressed: she published a spate of letters and wrote candidly in her editorials about contributors’ increasing obsession with suicide. For Querita, anguish over a failed relationship prompted her to consider taking her own life. When her sweetheart Ramon left her, Querita expressed fear that she would succumb to the suicidal urges that another “Experience” contributor, Faith, had apparently embraced: Three days ago I kissed him goodbye and smiled him a farewell. My heart says he will come back. And when he went he said I did not love him enough or I would go [with him]. Three days—​moving only for another cigarette—​alone, oh, so alone—​and no one knows how my heart cries—​the dull, numb feeling—​the cry for help—​help to resist the path that “Faith” took—​and it is within reach. He left it to be used only in case I felt I could not “carry on.” Oh help me, someone, I must go on! He will come to me! Querita credited Brown and other column contributors for her flicker of a will to live. The columnist stoked the fires of Querita’s bravery: “Yes, Querita, someone does know how your heart cries. Someone does know the dull, numb feeling. . . . More than one woman’s heart is reaching out to you with understanding sympathy. You will not take the path that he left open to you, I know.”18 The exchange between Querita and Brown demonstrated the extent to which the column served as a creative outlet for lonely contributors. Querita’s correspondences read more like a romance novel than like the real experiences of a young woman. Her story was descriptive and evocative; she made it easy for readers to imagine her lying on a couch, languidly smoking, observing a pistol on the table nearby. Querita also chose a seemingly Latina pen name, infusing her persona with an exoticism without addressing issues of race and

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ethnicity directly. Hers was an archetypal image, sentimental yet modern, that resonated with News readers, as evidenced by the spate of responses printed in “Experience” over the following weeks. A week later, Fides wrote to her column friend Querita with a simple letter of empathy and encouragement. “I know—​and understand. I was just where she is, only last August—​not so far away. And there wasn’t a shoulder for me to cry on, either, Querita. But I didn’t die. Just as soon as I had strength to get my breath, I began to fight. And that’s what you’ll do.”19 The correspondents writing to “Experience” about their loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts rarely sought straightforward advice. Rather, they hoped to express their feelings to a sympathetic and equally isolated community of readers. Querita, suicide weapon within reach, promised “Experience” readers like Fides that they were the ones stopping her from succumbing to her grief. The process of confession and the common language of loneliness allowed the columnites to find solace in others and to conceive of a symbolic antidote. From the earliest days of the column, Brown and many of the column contributors came to advocate the cultivation of family and community as the most important means of combating the isolation of the modern world. While they encouraged turning to one’s face-​to-​face family, they also began to build a virtual, anonymous “Experience” community that would become known as the Column Family.

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At first, some of Brown’s lovelorn contributors sought to use the column’s burgeoning community to find lasting in-​person relationships, in ways similar to Princess Mysteria’s Chicago Defender readers. In response to letter writers’ requests for introductions, Brown established the “Get-​Acquainted Club” in conjunction with a local Unitarian Church. She extended “a cordial invitation to all lonesome correspondents of the Experience column, to attend a get-​acquainted meeting there every Sunday evening at 6:30.” “That looks like a solution of all the lonesome folks’ problems, doesn’t it?” Brown concluded. The columnist’s interest in fostering wholesome in-​person relationships bolstered her belief that stable, healthy marriages and families were the bedrock of society.20 Yet the popularity of the print community of “Experience” far surpassed the face-​to-​face experience of the club. As the column’s popularity soared, it became clear that the Get-​Acquainted Club was a salve but not a cure for the particular isolation that Detroiters expressed. By the mid-​1920s, more and more News readers were using the column’s pages to communicate with

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each other rather than to plan to meet in person. Columnites like Hillicon would pen effusive, affectionate letters to Brown and other correspondents, asking not to meet in person but to become “Column Friends.” Hillicon described the effect that the column had had on her life: “I was blue, but not since I read Experience. I just love the column folks—​every doggoned one of them. Experience is my chum ’n’ pal ’n’ everything. Yessir. I’m alone in this big city. Have loads of trouble but am so busy reading of others who seem to have mo’n me I never find time to tell mine. O boy, just wait until I get started. Then, Oh dry them tears!” Hillicon also used the column to communicate directly with other “Experience” pals:  “Nancy, wonder what has become of ‘Hopes.’ Wonder how he is. Hope he gets well and we receive a letter where he and Fannygirl are on a honeymoon trip around the world.” In 1924, Rag Doll expressed a similar devotion to the column. “Nancy,” she wrote, “I love you and the Column folks more and more. Can hardly explain how reading Experience has helped me. I think it takes the place of actual contact with people and events as nothing else could do—​and in some ways it is more helpful than the actual contact could possibly be.” The observations of Hillicon, Rag Doll, and so many others offer essential historical precedent for debates over the impact of digital culture on the social habits of Americans—​ especially young people. Observations about virtual communities replacing in-​person connections, the column shows, have raged for at least a century and demonstrate how citizens have sought out anonymous dialogues and relationships to process rapidly changing economic, political, and social mores—​whether in 1921 or 2021.21 For readers frustrated and alienated by their relationships with husbands, children, parents, friends, relatives, teachers, and co-​workers, the community of “Experience” offered an opportunity to forge idealized virtual relationships and selves. Rather than dealing with the complications or mundane details of everyday life, columnites instead chose to craft dramatic personas under their chosen pen names. The anonymity of the columns fostered candor, but also allowed columnites to blur the line between reality and fiction, to embellish where they sought fit, and to fine-​tune their writing in order to make clear and poignant social critiques or tributes. Sending her first affectionate letter in May 1920, Blossom proved to be one of the most popular, prolific, and long-​participating columnites in “Experience.” Blossom posed herself as an archetypal old-​fashioned woman, a devoted wife, mother, and homemaker. She joined the column at age twenty, describing herself as a young mother who adored her husband and children and lived to serve them and make them happy. Her letters were peppered with

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simple, sentimental observances about the joys of domestic life, and she wrote to Brown and each of her correspondents as if they had known each other intimately for some time. “My dearest Nancy,” her first letter began: Have been sewing all afternoon, Nancy, on the dearest little garments, trying to hustle up before three-​year-​old Tom awakes, ’cause he would want to know all about what I was making and who I was making it for. Big Tom is his daddy and the one I  love with all my heart. He’s everything good that you can imagine, and he’s a musician—​plays the piano beautiful. Oh, that nothing will ever happen! But nothing will, I just know it. Well, Nancy, this is my first letter to you. Blossom regularly expressed concern about the wont of eloquence that her letters displayed. “I cannot write a very good letter—​never had very much education,” she confessed in her first letter. “I wish I were as gifted as some of our lovely folks who write such beautiful things,” she repeated a few years later, “but I simply cannot. Mine are always school girl letters, without any frills—​even then, misspelled words will ‘bob’ up. Oh! Horrors: It makes me feel like begging your all’s pardon and passing out of Column house forever.” Yet Blossom deliberately cultivated this style to reinforce her image as a sweet and guileless wife and mother.22 Blossom wrote extensively about keeping house and found particular pleasure in making dinner for her beloved husband. “Don’t you just love to go out in a cute, clean little kitchen, Nancy, and cook a good, hot, steaming supper for your bestest loved ones, on a cold frosty winter’s night? I do! Then the babies and I will perch up in the window and watch for daddy to come. I always have little surprises—​last night I had his favorite custard cream pie. Oh! You should have heard how I was complimented.” Blossom portrayed herself as a foil to the lonely and despondent “moderns” who wrote to Nancy about their isolation and ennui, and Brown used Blossom as a shining example of the happiness that women could find in embracing traditional gender roles. “I wouldn’t take millions for Tom,” Blossom told the columnites in another letter, “and those sweet little chubby youngsters, our happiness and our happy home. Haven’t I got everything in this world one could wish for? Oh how could anyone that’s married ever want to be single again?” In contrast with modern flappers and divorcées, Blossom reveled in her reliance on her husband and even portrayed that dependence as the source of her marital happiness.23

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Yet Blossom was a talented enough writer to avoid smugness. Her cheerfulness appeared charmingly naïve and eminently sweet. Upon her commencement as a column regular, Blossom elicited a steady stream of letters from young men looking for their own Blossom. Women responded similarly. Awakened reacted to a letter from her column favorite in 1927, writing, “We were so glad to have a letter from Blossom again. She is such a dear woman, I would love to have her for a real good personal friend.” Or, as World’s End described her, “Now Blossom, there’s a girl! If all the women took themselves a man and stuck by him and was as proud of everything that he did as that girl is of her man, what a peach of a world this would be. You’re all right, Blossom, and this world is made the good place that it sometimes is because of you and your kind.”24 Blossom’s column friend, A Sad Old Man, described a life almost completely opposite to Blossom’s and served as a foil to the cheerful young columnite. Another longtime contributor, A Sad Old Man was a lonely widower, broken, alone, and suffering from constant depression. Through his frequent confessions, he became the ultimate symbol of isolation and despair for the Column Family. An elderly, old-​fashioned man, A Sad Old Man felt out of place and left behind, particularly when confronted with the modern industrial cityscape. “There is a difference in people,” he wrote to Brown and the Column Family: On the corner of Grand River and Oakman, I slipped in front of an automobile, the driver stopped just in time. A  young girl in the car hollered, “Oh! Oh!” She jumped out and picked me up. She looked like an angel to me (if she is not now, she will be at some time). On another occasion, a reckless driver knocked my lunch box out of my hand while I was standing in a safety zone, when I hollered at him he looked back and thumbed his nose at me. Oh yes, there is a big difference in people.25 Despite the existence of such angelic girls, A Sad Old Man found himself in a world that had changed rapidly. Automobiles had transformed the streets on which he walked, the pace at which people traveled. The nature of work had changed too; as the Depression progressed, he had trouble keeping a job because of his age. “I have not worked for three weeks,” he wrote sadly, “maybe it will be weeks more I am getting sick of doing nothing it would not be so bad if I had a family to talk to.” “Experience” offered A Sad Old Man many virtual friends who continually expressed their love and admiration for him;

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yet he felt estranged from each of them. Expressing his desire to sit and have lunch with one of his favorite column friends, June, for example, A Sad Old Man then brushed off the idea, afraid that people would laugh at him. He saw himself as “a ‘has been’—​a thing of the past.” For columnites, A Sad Old Man served as a salient symbol of the fallout of the fast-​paced industrial world, a reminder that the loneliness that many contributors felt had become a fundamental part of modern life. Yet he also gave many of his column friends new purpose; alone, with no family to speak of, A Sad Old Man continually stated that he relied on the column for comfort and companionship.26 Despite the emergence of popular columnites like Blossom and A Sad Old Man, columnist Brown continued to play an important role in the column’s transformation from advice column to advice community in the 1920s and 1930s. As the editor of “Experience,” Brown identified certain letters as particularly compelling or pertinent and helped to cultivate the characters whose pseudonyms would become so familiar to News readers. Of course, it was up to letter writers to continue writing, but certainly Brown’s seal of approval must have encouraged many to follow up. Brown even advertised when she would be publishing the letters of the most popular “Experience” columnites days before their printing. “Bulletin: Letter from Jerry’s Sallie Dear, tomorrow, Tuesday. One from Wind Along the Waste, Thursday, October 9,” Nancy informed her readers in October 1930. Brown understood that part of her job was keeping the News’ circulation high by identifying the most fascinating letter writers and turning them into beloved, widely read columnites.27 As the letters of A Sad Old Man demonstrate, loneliness never ceased to be an important theme in “Experience.” But as the columnites found a new kind of home in the pages of the News, they debated a myriad of subjects, from art and poetry to political radicalism. In response to Jawn, a serious and intellectual young columnite who asked other regulars to discuss their favorite kinds of music, Fleur responded, “Like everyone else, I love the music of Victor Herbert—​his meaningful ‘Toyland,’ Cadman’s ‘At Dawning’; the haunting ‘L’Amour Toujours L’Amour.’ ” A few weeks later, Cup O’ Tea wrote in responding to both Jawn and Fleur, offering his favorite classical pieces.28 Some of these discussions developed into long-​term and passionate debates. Nor were columnites squeamish about challenging Brown’s opinions. Jawn, in particular, did not hold back his criticism of Brown—​nor did Brown censor it herself. Writing to June, a close column friend of his, in March 1930, Jawn declared that he had changed his political affiliation from Anarchism to Socialism,

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and I’m sure Nancy has not let me say anything that would indicate the change. She doesn’t like Socialism, I don’t think she even knows what it is—​or cares. Have you noticed how callously she repeats to the unemployed: “Never mind, men have always lost their jobs and had trouble, almost all men lose their jobs at some time or other.” Can you imagine a more terrible indictment of a social system? . . . To Nancy unemployment seems merely a vaguely unpleasant but comfortably unfamiliar incident in the life of someone else. Brown, of course, did publish his letter, responding: Perhaps you are right in your accusation that I do not know what it is. I probably do not, except in general. I have no experience in it, but I  think you are presuming when you state that I  do not care. I  care about everything that is of importance to people, especially to our home people who write me. . . . Certainly I tell men who are out of work that almost all men lose their jobs at some time or another. What would you tell them by way of consolation and encouragement? Brown then turned her criticism toward Jawn’s pessimistic letter. “You will never make a success in writing or anything else,” she insisted, “as long as you continue in the frame of mind and the line of thought which you have used for the last year or more in your letters. No one can ever succeed in any undertaking, handicapped by egotism and a continual grouch against the world in general and particular.” Brown critiqued Jawn’s politics because they reflected hopelessness and disillusionment, feelings that she and the columnites tried to assuage through their close-​knit Column Family. At the same time, she did not censor columnites like Jawn and encouraged those that believed in controversial issues to make their case on the pages of the column. Both “Experience” and its twenty-​ first century counterparts, from Facebook groups to Subreddit threads, demonstrate the role of the virtual community in mediating—​or enflaming—​divisive social and political dialogues among intimate acquaintances.29 “Experience” participants purposely adopted many structural aspects of the traditional family. The column had begun to use the terms “Column Family” and “Column House” by 1924. Many first-​time writers employed the courtesies of a visitor in their letters, asking, “May I come in?” “Darling Miss Nancy, I just had to peep in the doorway and say a cheery ‘Hello’ to you and the Column Family!” wrote Little Dixie in October 1930. Such a greeting was

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typical from a seasoned columnite. Brown even encouraged a columnite to draw renderings of the “column house doors,” which she incorporated into the banner for the daily column.30 Columnites maintained long-​term contact with the Column Family as they might their own relatives and drew on the language of the nuclear family. When Jerry’s Sallie Dear gave birth to twins, for example, she asked Salty Too to be their column godfather. Salty Too proudly took her up on her offer. Jerry’s Sallie Dear responded happily, “Thank you, dear kind man, for answering my request so promptly. I am so pleased with your letter, and my heart just pounded with gratitude. It is so nice to know that Jan and Joan are so well-​related.” Speculating on what her daughters’ new godfather must look like, she asked, “Have you hazel eyes that twinkle, and laugh wrinkles at the corner of your eyes? Everytime I read your letters, I can just see your kind, nice eyes twinkling at me in friendly fashion.”31 Often new columnites expressed their admiration of their favorite “regulars,” demonstrating the level of celebrity that many columnites attained among readers—​and presaging the role of star commenters and moderators, “influencers,” and other prolific online personalities. Princess Pat, a bubbly teenaged letter writer, described her adoration of an older, sophisticated columnite. “Gee, don’t I love Jade, though!” she gushed. “I always think of her as a tall, slender, dark-​haired girl with big, dark eyes full of mystery and a little sadness. Always there is an Oriental perfume about her, and she has a beautiful apartment where she smokes idly in the evening with an occasional friend. There is something vibrant and alive about her in the day-​time when she flashes about in her snappy little roadster, and laughs lightly at her friends.” Princess Pat astutely recognized that “in expressing my dreams of Jade, I  am only expressing the dreams of what I  would like to be.” The

Figure 5.2  This sketch by columnite “Kitten” depicted the Column Family children. “Column Children Sketched from Life,” Detroit News, July 8, 1934, 10. Courtesy of the Detroit News Archive.

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column’s anonymity afforded columnites like Jade the creativity to fashion themselves into compelling characters, inspiring younger contributors like Princess Pat. And Jade, in Princess Pat’s eyes, was no Blossom. As described by the young girl, Jade was thoroughly modern—​an independent career girl, whose eyes full of “a little sadness” reflected some of the ever-​present loneliness of modern life. By 1930, when Princess Pat wrote, loneliness was no longer just a regrettable symptom of modern life. In the column, it also held an essential romantic cachet.32 Other columnites confessed life stories that offered parable-​like lessons or warnings. Jasmin, one of the column’s most popular Family members, first wrote to Brown in 1929. Jasmin sought from Brown “something which I have failed to find any place else—​understanding.” She then pled her “case”: I open it by painting a picture for you: A wide silver ribbon of beach, gently washed by the crystal clear water of a little blue lake. A  deep purple sky overhead, like a canopy of velvet, sprinkled with stars. A great lopsided moon of gold hanging low over the water, reflected in the ripples. A gentle, fitful breeze wafting occasional tantalizing whiffs of wild honeysuckle from the neighboring woods. A boy and a girl—​ breathless, laughing, frolicking in the water, running along the beach, hand in hand, like a couple of children. The girl—​a slim little 16-​year-​ old bundle of conflicting, turbulent emotions. The boy—​tall and lithe, with the red-​gold hair and fearless blue eyes of a young sun-​god. . . . We planned to marry, but one week later he was taken away by God. Now I  see again the velvet blue of that sky in two starry eyes, and the gold of the low-​hung moon caught in the rebellious curls on a beautiful little head. She is a memory of wild honeysuckle, blue waters and “Largo”—​and as wonderfully sweet. How can it be that I have touched the gutter, and my elfin Jeannine a child to be shunned? Nancy and Column-​folk, what is your verdict? Jasmin sought leniency from Brown and the Column Family for her sexual indiscretion, yet  also displayed a willful insistence that she had committed no sin: I am going to raise her to have the same fearless gaze as the sun-​god, the same sweet truthfulness. I am going to tell her the story when she is old enough, and leave it to the pure wisdom of youth to discover that evil exists only in the mind and heart. I know she’ll understand.

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Here, Jasmin all but dared Brown and the other columnites to criticize her decisions and argued forcefully against Brown’s past insistences that happy, healthy families required married parents. Jasmin closed her letter with another plea to Brown:  “Please, Nancy, may my little two-​year-​old enter the nursery with the rest of the Column babies? Even if I have sinned, in your opinion, surely she is untainted.” Brown, of course, informed Jasmin that “Little Jeannine is in our Column nursery, and you, a dear member of our big family,” but her embrace came with a scolding. “That boy and girl whom you describe,” Brown told Jasmin, should not have been permitted frolicking in and out of the lake in the romantic moonlight. You will pay and pay—​and little Jeannine will pay and pay, through all your lives. . . . I know that I am hurting you in saying this, dear Jasmin, and I would leave it unsaid, were it not for the fact that the beauty of your letter will create in the minds of young people a wrong impression of the results of a moral mistake. While the Column Family was elastic enough to welcome members from all walks of life and those who had committed all manner of offenses, Brown had to assert, for the record, that the sins Jasmin had committed were, in fact, sins.33 Yet Jasmin’s life appeared to be looking up. She met another man, whom she called Neal. The two were married less than a year after her first letter. From the start, Jasmin had difficulty adjusting to married life and fretted that Jeannine did not take to Neal. So discontented did Jasmin’s post-​honeymoon letter sound that her column friend Spinning Wheel wrote to her that she had to let go of sun-​god and allow little Jeannine to embrace her new “Daddy.” Six months later, tragedy struck Jasmin’s new family. Jasmin lost Jeannine to an illness, and had become deathly ill herself. Though she was on the mend after a month, she never recovered from Jeannine’s death.34 Less than two years after losing her daughter, Jasmin informed the Column Family that she and Neal had gotten a divorce. “The consensus of Column opinion,” Jasmin noted, “seems to be that I’ve made a colossal mistake. I gather from several letters that probably no other man would have married me and that I should be eternally grateful to have been so honored.” But Jasmin insisted that she would never compromise her heart: I think I’ve been singularly blessed in being permitted to know the heights of mortal ecstasy. I  think every woman in the world should

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have envied me my wonderful child, because I think she was the most beautiful child in the world. I think my lover was perfect, and . . . he’s mine, mine alone, and that’s more than 90 out of every 100 women can say of their husbands! As for Neal—​well, he was a pleasant companion, interesting, but not very stimulating . . . our relations lacked that spiritual spark that is necessary for true mating. . . . I’ve had my fling at conventionality and I find it flat. Brown reminded Jasmin that she had the Column’s unconditional love and support, but noted, “You are wrong, ‘Jasmin,’ in saying that 90 out of every 100 women are disillusioned about their husband. . . . Conventionality is more than just ‘safe,’ dear. It is happiness in the end. The girl who throws herself against it, and defies it, will ultimately be hurt—​sometimes beyond repair.”35 The presentation of Jasmin’s tragic story—​the loss of sun-​god, Jeannine, and eventually Neal—​presented a clear lesson to “Experience” readers. Though Jasmin’s life appeared glamorous, tragically romantic, and exciting, it was also filled with sorrow—​the archetypal modern life. For Jasmin, modern loneliness was painful, but romantic and meaningful; she was not willing to give it up for the stability that Neil represented. By contrast, for Brown—​and the Blossoms of the column—​the “conventionality” of marriage and family offered the only shield from this sort of anguish. Did this sad story actually happen to the author writing as Jasmin? There is no way to know. Because “Experience” protected Jasmin’s true identity, the writer who was Jasmin could fashion her life story in such a way that would dramatize her chosen message. “Experience” was never about representing reality, but rather about constructing a symbol-​laden version of it. Jasmin may have wanted to emphasize the beauty of a passionate yet tragic life. Ultimately, Brown was the final arbiter of lessons learned: through carefully crafted responses, the columnist could manipulate letters to confuse or even change a columnite’s message. Yet Brown was a savvy enough journalist to know not to censor her contributors. After all, it was the language of loneliness that they crafted that kept hundreds of thousands of readers coming back to the pages of the News, day after day.

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By 1930, Brown’s column featured over 100 frequent contributors, along with several hundred more who sent letters on a less consistent but ongoing basis. Some columnites, like Blossom, had been members of the column

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family for almost a decade and were key architects of the advice community. Others, like Princess Pat, represented a new generation of letter writers who had grown up reading the romantic confessions of columnites like Jerry’s Sally Dear, Jade, and Jasmin. The News publishers knew that they had made devoted readers of the columnites, but it was more difficult to determine how exactly non-​ contributing “Experience” readers—​ potentially hundreds of thousands of Detroiters—​interacted with the column. In November 1930, when the column held its first “Experience” gala at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the paper’s publishers were finally able to measure just how far-​reaching and influential the column had become. During the fall of 1930, Brown and several members of the Column Family engaged in a spirited discussion about their favorite works at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Institute had recently moved into a larger and very grand Beaux-​Arts building, and Brown had been encouraging her readers to seek meaning and joy in the treasures at the city’s premier art museum. “Oh Nancy, I made my first trip to the Art Institute this week end,” wrote Joanna in early October 1930, “and I didn’t even begin to see things when it was time to come home. But I’m going again soon, and then again and again!” While there, Joanna made sure to see the “saucy little donkey,” a bronze sculpture in the Institute’s collection that the Column Family had adopted as its mascot.36 That same month, Brown received, but did not publish, a letter from columnite Solveig who suggested the idea of an “Experience” party at the Institute, where the contributors could see in person all of the art that was discussed so enthusiastically in the pages of the column. By October 27, Brown had made the arrangements, and extended an invitation to all members of the Column Family: Dear Column Folks: One of the happiest occasions that has ever come to Column House, I think, is just ahead of us—​with your approval. A  letter from Solveig last week suggested that we have a Column party some evening at the Art Institute. It seemed like a wonderful idea to me, but it seemed best to speak to someone at the Institute about it first. I went over and talked with Dr. Valentiner.37 He thought it a charming idea, and turned the suggestion into an invitation from the Art Institute to the Experience Column members to meet at the Institute on any evening that seemed best fitted to us all. Now isn’t that a happy thing to come our way? I accepted the invitation immediately for myself and for you all.

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Brown knew that such an event could compromise the anonymity the column had provided participants for over a decade. Thus she suggested some ground rules for the gathering: It seems to me that it would be wisest and best not to even tell your Column names to each other, and I am asking you now, if any of you know me personally, to please, please not disclose the secret. I  am very much in earnest in my appeal, and I am sure you will respect my wishes.38 Letters of approval poured into the column almost immediately. In the days leading up to the November 14 party, readers turned to “Experience” to see whether their favorite columnite had accepted Brown’s invitation. “Nearly everyone who writes frequently or infrequently to the Column will be present,” the columnist informed readers the Sunday before the party. Columnites like Blossom endorsed Brown’s conditions of anonymity. “I’m not curious to know which one is Jawn, Sad Old Man, Solveig, Anne of Dixie, or any of the rest!” she wrote: Just to know I’m with you all—​that I really and truly and honestly am, is enough happiness for anyone for one time. Oh Nancy, Nancy, I’m trembling all over and I just can’t hardly believe it. Sallie-​Dear, West Virginian, Jade, Spots, Another Mac, Rag Carpet and Crab, and oh, just everyone of you, won’t you please, please be there too? . . . Ho! That’s the beauty of your Column family though, Nancy! We all love each other—​just for what we are. Love and lots of kisses. I’m still your adoring BLOSSOM. Blossom believed so strongly in the bonds that she had forged with her Column Family that she knew she would feel their presence, even if no identities were disclosed.39 Brown also received many letters written by first-​time writers begging to be let into the Column Family so that they, too, could participate in the Art Institute event. Arabesque adopted the chatty tone used by many column regulars. He lamented that he had never written to the column despite his years of faithful reading, and feared that his silence meant he was not invited to the party. “I do want to belong, with all my heart. Can you imagine a child, pressing his nose against a windowpane in the cold and dark while inside, other children happier than he are having a Christmas tree? I  am the

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one outside.” “But you ARE a member of the Column, Arabesque,” Nancy soothed, “and I shall look for you at the party.” In these responses, Brown expanded the boundaries of the Column Family to include not just participants, but faithful, if silent, readers.40 “30,000 Column Folks at Experience Party,” shouted the headline of the Detroit News’ November 15 front page. “Vast throng of Column Folk Overflows Detroit Institute of Arts to Attend Nancy Brown’s Party.” To the delight of the Column Family and Detroit News executives alike, the “Experience” gala elicited a response much larger than anyone had anticipated. “People were surging through the vast halls of the institution,” a reporter observed the next day, “cramming the stairways, loading the basement and the galleries and the little side rooms and everywhere else. . . . Scores and hundreds of automobiles were discharging fresh loads of columnites and their friends. Street cars and buses emptied yet other thousands.” The crowd of tens of thousands served as a stunning visual manifestation of the virtual community, which had before this night had been presumed to be important to a much smaller group of people; originally, the party had been conceived as a gathering of “100 or so.”41 Over the next week, Brown received hundreds of letters from regulars and “silent members” alike, recounting their experiences. Most attendees did not make it inside of the museum and expressed regret that they did not get to greet the saucy bronze donkey or put their column names in the large covered box that Brown had set up to keep track of the columnites able to attend.

Figure  5.3  The November 15, 1930, cover of the Detroit News showed the throngs of readers that attended the Detroit Institute of Arts party. Courtesy of the Detroit News Archive.

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“Well, that’s that!” wrote Solveig, the brainchild of the party. “We got as far as the grilled doors on which were written those famous words: ‘They Shall Not Pass.’ How were we to know that practically all Detroit and suburbs would turn out? Believe it or not I enjoyed myself hugely and think it was a grand ‘shindig.’ ” Solveig also expressed relief that “our precious Column is still intact—​no secrets were spilled—​and everything is on good old footing.”42 Others like A Sad Old Man were less than thrilled about the secrecy that Brown had demanded that night. “I went there to see some of my column friends,” the elderly man wrote afterward. “If I could not know them what good would [the party] do me?” Brown responded, “Why did I want the Columnites to keep their identities secret? Because I  want to keep my Experience Column Family together just as they are. If you had told who you were to perhaps June and Oblivion and Jasmin and Connecticut Yankee and a few others, you would never feel like writing freely again, would you? Now, be honest.” In her playful note to A Sad Old Man, Brown reminded him—​ and other readers—​that the party, while great fun for all, was not worth abandoning the freedom of expression that the everyday anonymity of the column provided.43 Hundreds of correspondents sent Brown their speculations about certain faces and figures at the party, and for the next week, “Experience” letters took on tones of the “missed connections” personal ads often placed in newspapers at the time—​and on digital spaces a century later. Most attendees expressed a blend of excitement and wistful irony about mingling among one’s longtime intimates without being able to recognize them. Wrote contributor Spitfire, “Every dashing girl I beheld (and there were many) I was sure was Jade. Or June. That reddish blond with the good-​natured husband at her side was surely Blossom and Tom.”44 By the week after the party, Brown had to announce a moratorium on party-​related letters so that the column could “return to normal.” “The great event is over,” she told her columnites, “except for the memories which will be with us to the end of time. It accomplished more for the column than we can see just at present,” she concluded. “Not the least among its results is the knowledge of our numbers and our strength. We have proved that material bonds are not necessary to bind together even so great a number.”45 The News’ publishers, in the meantime, declared the event “the greatest party ever held in Detroit.” The paper’s reportage on the party, both in and out of the column, served as a triumphant expression of the powerful loyalty that Detroit News readers displayed toward their newspaper. They quickly disseminated that message to potential advertisers. “Everybody

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Came to Nancy’s Party,” boasted a mailer sent to advertisers in the months after the Institute event. “The amazing popularity of the Detroit News,” the mailer announced, “and the interest it holds for readers exemplified by the astonishing experience described here can be translated into increased sales for your product.” The publishers used photos of seemingly happy and well-​off columnites at the party to show that of all the papers in Detroit, “The News . . . is distinctly the home newspaper, appealing to and liked by the wholesome homemaking, stable element of Detroit’s population.” At a time when the field of demographic research was still young, the Detroit News guaranteed their advertisers an eager, earnest, wholesome, and well-​off reading public.46 The Detroit Institute of Arts party marked a turning point for “Experience.” It gave Brown and the columnites a better sense of their size, influence, and cohesiveness. It brought to the attention of the News publishers the unique marketing possibilities that the column made possible. After the party, the Detroit News column began drawing national attention from periodicals like the Christian Herald and Time. Bolstered with a new sense of confidence in its membership, the Column Family undertook grassroots fundraising and philanthropic projects. Over the course of the 1930s, they funded the reforestation of burned-​out parts of the Michigan State Forests, dedicating 560 acres in honor of Nancy Brown. They started collections to purchase works of art for the Institute of Arts, including a portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They formed the column Friendly Fund, money to be distributed by Brown and the News to the column’s most needy members, especially those hit hard by the Depression. In 1932, the News published the first printed compilation of “Experience” letters. These collections were published annually for the next decade, and the Scripps Company agreed to donate the proceeds from their sale to the column’s Friendly Fund.47 In 1934, the “Experience” folks began planning yet another public gathering for the Column Family. No event would ever recapture the surprising exuberance of 1930—​the legions of “silent” column members had long since made themselves visible at the Institute of Arts gala. But the columnites wanted to conceive an event that would elicit as emotional and joyful a reaction as the previous one did, while the News hoped to capitalize on the column’s growing national fame and to gain compelling marketing material for the newspaper. In early June of that year, Brown published a letter from columnite A Woman Sewing proposing that the Column Family organize a Sunrise Service in Detroit’s Belle Isle Park. Hundreds of letters of endorsement dotted the pages of the column over the next week. Within two weeks,

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Figure 5.4 The News capitalized on the success of the “Experience” events in promotional brochures like this one. “Everybody Came to Nancy Brown’s Party,” Detroit News promotional mailer, circa 1930. Nancy Brown Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections.

the newspaper had arranged transportation, use of the park, musicians, and a roster of multi-​denominational speakers. The first “Experience” Sunrise Vigil took place early in the morning on June 17, 1934. The remarkable speed at which the News arranged the event indicates that publishers might have begun planning such an event before Brown printed A  Woman Sewing’s letter; yet the paper allowed it to appear as if the idea had sprung organically from the conversations carried on by Brown and the columnites in the pages of “Experience.”48 Like the Detroit Institute of Arts gala, the column’s Sunrise Vigil drew an extraordinary crowd:  about 50,000 people gathered in the dark early

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morning to listen to the sermons of Jewish, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, and Congregational leaders and, according to the News, “to lift their voices in simple songs of faith.” The tone of this second major gathering of the columnites proved more serious, reflective, and spiritual than the party at the Institute of Arts. “The sun shone on Belle Isle Sunday,” reported the News the next day, “shone on Nancy Brown’s Experience Column sunrise service, not brilliantly, as had been expected, but warmly and tenderly and with a benediction in its loving smile.” Brown, who of course attended but did not take part in the ceremony to preserve her anonymity, observed an awed reverence in the crowd that replaced the boisterous tone of the Institute of Arts party. “We did not make as much noise as might have been expected of some 40,000 or more people, did we folks? But I guess we sang just the same.”49 Against the fracturing backdrop of the Great Depression, the columnites came together to celebrate a common faith—​not to a particular religion, but to the column itself. The concept of faith articulated at the Sunrise Service was abstract and apolitical enough to encompass each columnite, from socialist Jawn to naïve and cheerful Blossom, because each participant had at one point expressed his or her faith in their Column Family. The service’s speakers spoke not of the specifics of scripture, but of diffuse concepts like “brotherhood” and “a new dawn.” “My friends,” Rabbi David Cedarbaum told the audience, “The thought I wish to leave with you today is that we, too, wishing to convert the darkness of our lives, and the drab and dreary problems of our existence and of the world into a fairyland, may do so by a light which many have been traveling for thousands of years—​the light of truth, and brotherhood, and friendship.” In his remarks, Cedarbaum even took on the expressive tone that had become the hallmark of “Experience” contributors. 50 Despite their sentimental preoccupation with faith, the worldview of the Sunrise Vigil participants was in many ways strikingly modern. Brown and the columnites set aside particular religious strictures and adopted an almost secularized approach to spirituality. The columnites believed optimistically that by finding common ground and common “brotherhood” among very different peoples, they could usher in a world that found beauty in variety and tolerance. Yet their vision of diversity and tolerance was a limited one. It made no mention of the spike in poverty rates and rampant unemployment that shaped so many Detroiters’ lives in the 1930s. It did not acknowledge housing, employment, and educational discrimination and everyday experiences of segregation faced by residents of color. The column’s trope of loneliness—​and its vision of pluralism and community as an antidote—​was

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largely leached of its specificity and its political import in the rhetoric of the Sunrise Vigil.51 The Vigil proved just as effective a marketing tool as the Detroit Institute of Arts party. In the ceremonies that followed—​the Column Family made the Sunrise Vigils a yearly event—​upwards of 100,000 Detroiters attended. After the 1936 Vigil, which gathered the largest audience on record, one of Brown’s columnites proposed the idea of building a bell carillon at Belle Isle Park that would be dedicated to Brown, a place where column contributors could go to reflect on the impact of the “Experience” community on each of their lives. Brown herself discouraged the idea at the outset, believing that to raise the money needed to build such a structure—​well over $100,000—​ would be impossible. When a contributor sent in one dollar to put toward the Carillon, Brown responded, “We cannot build the tower—​it is too great an enterprise. What should I do with the dollar?” Nonetheless, contributions ranging from a few cents to one hundred dollars continued to arrive in the News mailbag, and within a year the Carillon Fund had generated about $8,000. Still, at that rate the project certainly would not be completed in Brown’s lifetime. The project picked up steam in 1939, when columnite Angus proposed substituting lighter and less-​expensive metal chimes for the more traditional cast-​iron bells. The idea prompted a surge of donations, and soon columnite Banker offered to lend the project the remainder of the cost with no interest. By October of that year, Brown found herself at Belle Isle Park, breaking ground on her carillon.52 In light of another world war that was ravaging Europe and increasingly drawing in the United States, Brown and the columnites vowed to dedicate the structure to “peace,” rechristening it the Nancy Brown Peace Carillon. Destructive warfare, it appeared, had become another inevitable and ongoing byproduct of modern times. Longtime readers might have recalled the unforgettable 1919 letter penned by Soldier, who wrote Brown about the traumatic experiences of the front during the First World War. Two decades later, the Column Family had built a permanent structure that represented the virtual community’s commitment to tolerance, empathy, and humanity. Through the carillon, they hoped to assuage the dislocation of modern life for a new generation of readers.53 Brown’s Peace Carillon was dedicated on June 17, 1940, at the sixth annual “Experience” Sunrise Vigil. On that day, more than twenty years after her column first appeared, Brown also made the decision to reveal her face. To a crowd of over 100,000 people, “the diminutive Nancy Brown,” Time magazine reported, “stepped to the lectern, peeped over and in a tremulous voice

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Figure  5.5  Nancy Brown breaking ground on the “Experience” carillon. To maintain her anonymity, she turned her back to the camera. Detroit News, October 31, 1939. Courtesy of the Detroit News Archive.

spoke to her readers for the first time.” Brown used her first public oratory to reflect on the powerful community that she and the columnites had created and maintained over the decades: For 21 years our lives have been wrapped up together in affairs of everyday living. We have worked together and played together. We have shared each other’s love and sorrows. We have comforted and cheered and scolded and prayed over each other. We have discussed and argued with each other, every subject under the sun. When we have fought, we have, in the intimate words of our Connecticut Yankee, “fought nice.” We have worked, are still working, and will continue to work for Peace in Column homes. Column signatures are as familiar in column homes as names of the family. We have shared together our ambitions, our problems, our inspirations and our opinions.

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Brown acknowledged her decision to make herself visible to her columnites after so long a time: Though through these decades of association across the printed page, it has seemed best to me to be known as an impersonality only, in receiving and answering your letters, it gives me greater pleasure—​and moves me more—​than I can tell you, to speak directly to you today. This lovely singing tower which stands here in perfect completion from royal crown to rippling moat is the consummation of our Column relationship.54 Brown recognized that the event served as a fitting climax to the remarkable narrative story that had unfolded in the “Experience” column over the previous two decades—​and a perfect last act for her own journalistic career. Brown announced her retirement in early January 1942 and penned her last column on January 31. In the weeks after the announcement, tributes to Brown poured into the column—​poems, memories, well wishes, and money to help pay off the Carillon’s outstanding debt. “Nancy,” wrote Sharlie, “I wanted to tell you how terribly I’ll miss you. You’ve been a part of my life since I was a wee Inexperience writer . . . but I can’t make the words go together right now. Anyhow you know how we all love you.” Other columnites acknowledged that Brown’s work had come to a natural end. The Calico Cat wrote the columnist “to say ‘Congratulations’ on the completion of a grand job.” For her part, Brown expressed sadness yet relief at her retirement. “I loved it,” she wrote later to a friend, “and hesitated to retire ‘til I knew I must. It had worn me out. The publisher, Mr. Scripps, and the editor, Mr. Gilmore, tried to persuade me to stay, but I knew my workdays were over.” To thank her for her tenure at the News, the newspaper’s board of directors voted to give her a monthly stipend for the rest of her life. “It was not necessary,” she confessed to her friend, “but oh, how it lifted me up!”55 On February 1, 1942, the “Experience” column appeared almost completely the same, except that contributors’ letters were addressed to Jane Lee, Brown’s chosen replacement, drawn from the several assistants she had employed throughout the years to handle the column’s copious mail. The column continued on much the same for the next decade. Columnites continued to keep in touch via the column, though many of the first generation had ceased their correspondence by 1948, when the News announced the sad news of the death of Annie Brown Leslie, the woman who had for so many years been

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Figure 5.6  A rendering of the “Experience” Peace Carillon used in a Detroit News promotional brochure, June 1940. Nancy Brown Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections.

known as Nancy Brown. While tributes to Brown had lined the “Experience” column for weeks in January of 1942, they barely took up two issues at the time of her death.56

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The “Experience” column remained a part of the Detroit News until March 1985, but its heyday ended upon Brown’s retirement. Throughout its years, several different staffers wrote the column as Jane Lee, and their desire to maintain a common in-​print voice made the post-​1942 columns seem more formal and homogenous. The Jane Lee “Experience” style, moreover, was derivative. To ensure a smooth transition after Brown’s retirement, the columnist’s replacements sought to emulate Brown’s signature flowery style, but could never quite capture the original Column Mother’s familiar warmth and the playful way she could cajole columnites like A  Sad Old Man and Jawn. Brown’s retirement also signaled the decline of national press coverage

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of the column. By the 1950s, “Experience” was a long-​running local institution but had lost its reputation as a pathbreaking and powerful community.57 Nevertheless, the “Experience” advice community left a much more significant legacy, one that would not come to fruition until the end of the twentieth century. While countless interactive advice columns that flourished in early twentieth-​century newspapers served as virtual communities in different ways, Brown’s Column Family was the most direct precursor to those that have come to dominate public life today: online forums, chat rooms, blogs, social media groups, and so many others. Observers have rightly referred to the late twentieth-​century rise of digital and networked forms of media as a revolution.58 But columns like “Experience” demonstrate that this revolution had deep roots and important precedents. By establishing a new way for Americans to communicate with each other via mass-​circulation newspapers, advice communities proved just as revolutionary as the rise of the digital. Examining columns like “Experience” helps to explain how Americans came to value and use such virtual sites, and how they developed an emotional and evocative language to describe their lives and troubles.

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Conclusion

In 1933, Nathanael West’s sardonic novella Miss Lonelyhearts hit bookstore shelves. In it, West turned the popular image of the advice columnist on its head by making his “Miss Lonelyhearts” a hard-​drinking, masochistic newspaperman. Tortured by the despondent and hopeless letters he was forced to answer and by his boss’s desire to raise the paper’s circulation at any cost, Miss Lonelyhearts descended into a life of alcoholism and failed sexual encounters. West was ruthless in his portrayal of the newspaper advice columnist, column contributors, and the genre itself. When Miss Lonelyhearts told one of his lovers about his job, his description oozed with despair and cynical hatred: Let’s start from the beginning. A  man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He welcomes the job, for it might lead to a gossip column and anyway he’s tired of being a leg man. He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, and they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator.1 Hailed as a graphic and honest critique of modern society in Depression-​era America, Miss Lonelyhearts’ critical reception outshone its lukewarm book sales. But the images West drew—​of the newspaper advice column as a “joke,” of the columnist as a (male) wolf in sheep’s clothing, and of the reading public

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as “inarticulate” dupes manipulated by power-​hungry publishers—​resonated long after the book’s publication date. Though West’s rendering was not the only public image of the newspaper advice column in the early twentieth century, it was an enduring one. West’s novel, for all of its literary merit, fundamentally mischaracterized the advice column. He ignored the genre’s transformative impact on the form and business of American media, as well as the fact that advice columns revolutionized how readers understood and used newspapers. West’s portrayal of Miss Lonelyhearts as a jaded male journalist distorted public perceptions of the innovative female journalists who ran the columns and who carved out a new, thoroughly female profession. Miss Lonelyhearts’ description of advice column missives as “inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering” disregarded the power wielded by vocal and thoughtful readers who helped create a vibrant cultural dialogue in the pages of mass-​circulation newspapers. In the decades to come, perspectives like West’s and many others, shaped by a misogynistic dismissal of the “soft news” genre and a feminized media culture, obscured and distorted the influential cultural contributions of advice columns and their participants. Interestingly, West’s novella was published at the height of advice columns’ popularity and at the peak of their interactivity. In that same decade, the Defender’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” came to its dramatic conclusion, while in Detroit, the “Experience” columnites were holding Sunrise Vigils for audiences of 100,000. Across the country, hundreds of columns featured daily debates and conversations between columnists and participants on topics ranging from Depression-​era household budgeting to methods of childrearing. The advice columnists who had defined and shaped their profession leveraged their celebrity as national news outlets profiled them and their advice communities. At the end of the 1930s, the “grand dames” of advice giving—​Elizabeth Gilmer (Dorothy Dix), Marie Manning (Beatrice Fairfax), and Annie Leslie (Nancy Brown)—​found themselves at the pinnacle of their careers. But both Manning and Leslie were approaching seventy, and Dix was almost eighty. The labor-​intensive work of answering hundreds of letters each day, combined with the constant pressure of representing themselves and the column publicly, took their toll. By 1940, major cultural changes also affected these columnists’ careers and their ability to dole out relevant advice to new generations, especially in light of the public’s increasing acceptance of frank discussions about sex and intimacy. During World War II, long-​established columnists received a great number of letters from unmarried women who had gotten pregnant by American

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soldiers shipping off to Europe and Asia. Gilmer, who had considered herself the cutting edge of modern practicality at the beginning of her career, expressed horror at the perceived jump in unplanned pregnancies among her readers. This new generation of young women, she wrote to her niece in 1945, were “damn fools. It is hard to believe,” she continued, “but it is the truth, that a . . . large portion [of my correspondents] are 16 and 17 year old girls who are going to have illegitimate babies and want to know how they can find out the name of the soldier or sailor whom they think is the father, but who has disappeared, leaving no address behind him, not even his name.”2 Gilmer’s private correspondence with her niece revealed how out of touch she had become with American advice-​seekers. Desperate and confused correspondents were not looking for judgment, but, as generations had before them, empathy and counsel. Annie Leslie retired in 1942, while both Marie Manning and Gilmer worked until the end of their lives; the former died 1945, the latter in 1951. Meanwhile, a new generation of column participants looked to younger, savvier advice givers who proved more tolerant and forthright about sexual behavior and changing social mores. In the fall of 1955, a young housewife named Esther Lederer, nicknamed “Eppie,” finagled herself a job as “Ann Landers,” the resident advice columnist at the Chicago Sun-​Times. Lederer replaced the original Ann Landers, a journalist and registered nurse named Ruth Crowley, who had died suddenly earlier that year. The new columnist approached the job with determination but was quickly overwhelmed by the volume of letters she received daily. For several months, she enlisted the help of her twin sister, Pauline Phillips, or “Popo,” who rushed to Chicago from her home in San Francisco to serve as deputy advice giver. The sisters were quite close, and Phillips proved capable of writing smart, pithy responses similar in tone to her sister’s. Within a few months, the Sun-​Times provided Lederer with several assistants, and Phillips returned to San Francisco. But Popo Phillips could not forget the enjoyment she took from her advice-​giving stint. Only a few months after her sister’s career commenced, Phillips was hired as the advice columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, writing under the pen name “Abigail Van Buren.” The reputable McNaught Syndicate quickly picked up her column, which soon rivaled her sister’s in circulation and popularity. Almost overnight, “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby” had launched their monumental careers.3 In their empathetic yet no-​nonsense approaches to advice giving, both Lederer (Ann Landers) and Phillips (Abigail Van Buren) drew on and updated the techniques honed by their predecessors. Like Elizabeth Gilmer, Marie Manning, and Annie Leslie, the sister columnists emphasized that

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their experiences as mothers and wives prepared them for their roles as lovelorn columnists. But Phillips and Lederer were able to manipulate their celebrity far beyond that of the early twentieth-​century columnists—​in part because by the 1950s, celebrity journalism, and the investigatory techniques associated with it, had advanced significantly since the genre’s birth at the turn of the century. Rather than offering hagiographic portrayals of American heroes, mainstream magazines sought to reveal the most intimate details of celebrities’ lives, using them as representations of archetypal human flaws and attributes. The prospect of competitive twin advice columnists—​who were white, middle-​class, and attractive—​made them especially alluring human interest stories. 4 “Twin Lovelorn Advisors Torn Asunder by Success,” declared the April 1958 issue of Life magazine. The article was one of the first to focus less on the advice given by the two columnists and more on the fractious nature of their relationship. Yet even as reporter Paul O’Neil portrayed the cattiness of the sisters’ feud—​the two, he claimed, were “tireless as tigresses”—​he also acknowledged their keen talent as advice givers and as public figures. “Their effect upon the problem-​ridden American,” he wrote, “is electrical, even in an age when every second davenport seems to be a couch, and every other bartender an amateur head shrinker.” Both had an almost photographic knowledge of circulation numbers, corresponded regularly with publishers and editors across the country, and were candid about their need to “sell their personalities” to the general public. O’Neil framed these qualities as something completely new, and he made no mention of the pioneering journalists or the millions of column participants that had given shape to the genre in the previous half-​century. In less than a decade, the remarkable legacies of early twentieth-​century advice columns had fallen off the radar of the American press.5 “Dear Abby” and “Ann Landers” came to prominence during a time when the concept of psychological therapy had become central to many Americans’ lives. In the 1958 Life article that covered the rivalry between the sister columnists, the reporter gave a nod to the “amateur head shrinkers” that abounded in postwar America. Ann and Abby inherited a readership that had been thoroughly exposed to the vernacular and experience of many forms of popular therapy, from marriage counseling to postwar psychological treatment of returning veterans. Portrayals of the confessional experiences of therapy permeated films, novels, and other aspects of popular culture. Public figures like actor Humphrey Bogart popularized the icon of the brooding and neurotic modern American.6

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Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren were able to wield the language of popular therapy so effortlessly because of the practices established in participatory advice columns in the early twentieth century. In the decades before, columnists like Dix, Fairfax, Laura Jean Libbey, Marion Holmes, Princess Mysteria, Nancy Brown, and millions of column correspondents instilled in generations of newspaper readers the importance of confession and catharsis in solving their problems. By encouraging their readers to confess their troubles not to a loved one, but to a faraway columnist and a rapt mass audience, the advice columnists of the early twentieth century transformed the nature and practice of advice giving and receiving in the United States in ways that their successors benefited from immensely. Well before the advent of Ann and Abby, early columnists taught Americans that advice was a fundamentally subjective and interactive process, one that drew on and informed an increasingly ubiquitous therapeutic culture in twentieth-​century America. Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren also took up advice giving at a time when local columns were on the decline. While syndicated columns did make up the majority of advice columns in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, local columns were often more innovative and interactive. The Detroit News’ “Experience,” the Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat,” the Chicago Defender’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” and other columns crafted influential virtual communities rooted in specific cities. “Experience” and “Chat” received national recognition, and observers often compared them favorably with the mass of sometimes-​homogenous syndicated lovelorn columns. By the 1950s, however, these local models faded from the national purview, crowded out by the boisterous feud between Abby and Ann and by the increasing dominance of feature content disseminated by national syndicates and national newspaper chains. The triumph of syndicated columns was certainly connected to the expansion of national news conglomerates in the late twentieth century. At the end of World War II, newspaper chains owned about 40 percent of the newspapers in the United States; by the 1970s, they owned over 70 percent. These corporations streamlined their production and content distribution by creating their own syndicated material that could be used interchangeably in each of their newspapers, whether in San Francisco, Boise, or Atlanta. As independent newspapers became rarer, publishers and journalists came to see advice columns like “Experience” and “Confidential Chat” as relics of a bygone age of journalism that could no longer thrive in a thoroughly corporate newspaper market. Changes in the newspaper business, then, precipitated the

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decline of the most interactive and community-​oriented columns of the early twentieth century.7 Of course, the question-​and-​answer exchange that structured advice columns meant that some level of interactivity would remain in post-​1950s columns. Ann and Abby, Life reported, received as many as 9,000 letters a week within the first few years of the commencement of their respective columns, indicating that readers were still itching to seek advice and empathy from these newspaper counselors. And Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren did conceive of the advice column as a place where people could seek help, but also where they could chime in with their own opinions. As they did with Dix, Fairfax, Brown, Libbey, Holmes, and Princess Mysteria, readers wrote to the Dear Abby and Ann Landers columns with their own takes on particular issues, often disagreeing with the columnist. Yet because the columns of Ann and Abby had such a sizable national and, later, international readership, they could not accommodate the kind of intense, extended virtual relationships featured in local columns. Ironically, as the columns of Ann and Abby became increasingly widespread, their ability to serve as interactive advice communities waned. Popular syndicated advice columns proved unable to foster and maintain the kind of collective community spirit that existed among Nancy Brown’s “Column Family” or among the Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat” sisters.8 On the other hand, Ann Landers and Dear Abby espoused worldviews that were far less rigid than that of their predecessors. As a new set of fracturing social transformations shook Americans in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—​changing race relations, the rise of youth movements, second-​wave feminism, evolving family structures, deindustrialization, gay rights, the HIV/​AIDS epidemic—​both Ann and Abby remained flexible in their beliefs. They featured the letters of a much more diverse group of readers and demonstrated greater empathy toward those feeling alienated or disenfranchised—​people of color, poor people, gays and lesbians, and many others. They faced their fair share of scandals but found ways of leveraging both positive and negative press to the benefit of their careers. Most important, Abby and Ann helped normalize key cultural values taken for granted today, most notably pluralism and tolerance. These reasons help explain the enduring impact of their columns; a form of the Ann Landers feature ran until 2016, while Dear Abby continues as a syndicated column, now penned by Phillips’s daughter Jeanne.9

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In the 1960s and 1970s, amid an intellectual milieu quite different from the chatty counsel of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, another communications revolution was taking place. Engineers and data communications experts in government and in private research and development firms began devising the architecture for a global system of interconnected computer networks that would eventually become the Internet. In the 1980s, a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-​Lee created an information structure connecting billions of documents via hyperlinked text; soon, the World Wide Web was born, along with protocols like URLs and the language of HTML. Over the next several decades, the Internet gave rise to a dizzying array of communication mediums that allowed people across the world to make contact instantaneously: email, instant messaging, video calls, and on the Web, discussion forums, chat rooms, social media platforms, comment sections on websites, and much more. In early twentieth-​century advice columns, the wide audience and daily frequency of the mass-​circulation newspaper allowed Americans to anonymously communicate via the media with unprecedented regularity, giving rise to the earliest virtual communities. With the development of the Internet, those exchanges could take place with a rapidity that would have been unimaginable to column participants decades before.10 Internet-​based communications prompted a new generation of interactive communities that served similar cultural purposes as early twentieth-​century advice columns. In 1985, for example, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant, both active participants in the 1960s counterculture, established the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link, shortened to “the WELL”—​the forum in which Tom Mandel posted his heartfelt goodbye shortly before his death. Before the protocols of the Web had been established, the WELL was initially a dial-​up bulletin board system, with a few dozen early participants whose profiles resembled those of its founders—​left-​leaning, highly educated men whose outlooks were shaped by the social movements of the 1960s. The WELL charged a small subscription fee for participation, but the cost did not deter the community’s rapid growth. A decade in, the WELL hosted thousands of discussions, or “conferences,” as participants called them, covering topics mundane and sublime. The WELL was a passionate, sometimes fractious place that fostered deep connections and prompted long-​standing feuds. In the years that followed, WELL participants and other early Internet users proudly touted the rich interactive potential of online communities and the role they played in shaping a new interpersonal virtual space. “It became clear to me,” observed WELL contributor Harold Rheingold, “that I was participating in the self-​design of a new kind of culture.” Unbeknownst to Rheingold and so many others, this

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culture was not new. The structures and the language of the online virtual community had been laid out decades before in columns like “Confidential Chat” and countless others.11 More so than advice columns, online communities like the WELL truly transcended the limits of geography, allowing the formation of meaningful connections between remote users anywhere in the world. The most prolific newspaper advice communities—​“Experience” in the Detroit News, for example—​were local columns that often touched on regional issues and discussed nearby civic institutions. By contrast, Internet communities like the WELL valued the ability of users with like-​minded interests and motivations to form relationships regardless of location. This valuing of common interest over common place continues to resonate with participants in online conversations. A  recent contributor to a Web forum about Remember WENN, a short-​lived television show from the 1990s, remarked that the site was the only place she could find to talk about her obscure passion. In her real life, she reported, “there were no other like-​minded folks that I knew.”12 The WELL’s bulletin board structure was only the first of countless iterations of online communication that emerged, evolved, and faded into obsolescence at a remarkable pace. By the 1990s, with the advent of the World Wide Web, the growing popularity of blogs allowed anyone with a username and an opinion to design his or her own catalog of musings and advice, and to solicit the reactions of strangers in comments sections. The Web also gave rise to chat rooms and discussion boards, forums on which Internet users could exchange thoughts and information with countless anonymous people. Forums on sites like Virtual Tourist, Television Without Pity, and others allowed readers to give and seek perspectives on interpersonal issues, travel, niche professions, popular culture, and so much more. Many users of these sites became frequent contributors for years, even decades, building relationships similar to those of the Detroit News “columnites.” “We have aged and matured along with [the site],” one current-​day participant in Everyday Should Be Saturday (EDSBS), a community blog and forum dedicated to college football and related humor, observed. “When I discovered the site I had been living in Brooklyn for three weeks. I’m now on my second city, fourth address and sixth job since then.” The EDSBS community remained a touchstone amid these changes.13 While the original contributors to the WELL may have skewed male, by the early 2000s, growing numbers of women were using the Internet and making it their own; some scholars even declared the phenomenon “the feminization of the Internet.” Sites dedicated to pregnancy and childcare like

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Babble and Baby Center, wedding planning and marriage like The Knot, and fashion and beauty like Man Repeller and Makeup Alley allowed women to draw on the expertise and advice of other women. Like advice communities, these sites also sparked personal, intimate, and ongoing conversations that went far afield of the specific topic of the website. Not unlike the early twentieth century, the growing focus on female Web users was tied to the increasing ubiquity and ease of online commerce and the rise of targeted digital advertising, demonstrating the endurance of the notion of women as consumers of both media content and disposable goods. Many conversations on female-​centered sites flowed seamlessly between personal advice and product recommendations, making them particularly attractive to online advertisers.14 Meanwhile, the early 2000s also saw the birth of social media platforms that would come to dominate online interactions. The experimental structures of Napster, Myspace, and Friendster gave way to the behemoths of Facebook, launched in 2004; Twitter, founded in 2006; and Instagram, which went live in 2010. Each platform fostered different kinds of conversations and relationships. Twitter served as the digital embodiment of the public square, hosting spontaneous and often fractious conversations with little visible mediation. Instagram’s image-​heavy interface prompted connections based on both interests and aesthetics; by the mid-​2010s, it had become the premier site for social media advertising and spawned a generation of social media “influencers,” predominantly female, who blurred lines between their curated personal lives and their “sponcon,” or product endorsements. While Facebook at first gave a digital dimension to in-​person relationships—​often (but not always) Facebook friends were also friends “IRL”—​by the 2010s, the growing popularity of topical Facebook groups brought strangers together to bond over shared passions and lifestyles. Today, closed Facebook groups prompt some of the most bonded and cohesive virtual communities on the Internet. Described one current participant in a Facebook group about sex and body positivity: “the group is [our] bar, [our] water cooler, [our] front porch.”15 As it did in early advice columns, the promise of anonymity certainly has shaped online interactions, but anonymity in the digital age has had different applications and meanings. When it was established in 1985, the WELL founders insisted that subscribers’ profiles be linked to their real names to hold people accountable for the topics and tone they used. Chat rooms and discussion forums have afforded users the ability to hide their true identities, donning usernames both clever and pedestrian, just as “Experience” columnites had decades earlier. Various social media platforms have been

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built around different modes of anonymity; Facebook users, for example, by and large disclose their identities—​though when interacting with strangers in conversations or group settings, many participants report that this transparency of identity does not factor into their participation or candor. A present-​ day Facebook group participant reported that the question of identity disclosure is not necessarily a salient issue. “I register that there is a [user] name,” she observed, but that’s not what I’m looking for.” Of course, while different online communities allow various levels of obscurity, across the Web the question of anonymity and identity is clouded by the specter of online surveillance and the data-​gathering practices of Internet service providers. The technological advances that made the Internet possible have also allowed the tracking of users’ browsing history, behaviors, and contributions in ways unthinkable to advice column participants of the early twentieth century.16 Participatory online communities reflect another important practice established in early twentieth-​century advice columns—​the use of contributors’ unpaid or invisible intellectual and editorial work to serve the bottom lines of media companies. The contributors to Laura Jean Libbey’s “First Aid to Injured Hearts,” to Princess Mysteria’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” and many other advice columns offered compelling serialized narratives to the newspaper without being paid for their writing. In the case of the “Experience” column in the Detroit News, some columnites sent hundreds of letters over years and even decades. Their contributions and loyalty fueled massive marketing campaigns by publishers to draw more and more advertising revenue. Similarly, countless online contributors, some anonymous, draw interested readers to online forums and comments sections on websites in ways that raise readership and draw advertising money. Popular commenters on sites like Jezebel or Brownstoner spark conversations, driving clicks to particular stories. Other sites like Reddit rely on volunteer moderators to create rules of conduct, oversee conversations, root out harassers and trolls, and troubleshoot systemic problems. Likely both “Experience” columnites and Reddit moderators would agree that the value they drew from creating and contributing to their virtual communities made their free labor worthwhile—​a testament to the power of participatory dialogue.17 Despite the often noticeable lack of editorial voice, online communities did not usher in an era of democratic conversation, free from the manipulation of editors, publishers, or advertisers. A century ago, newspaper publishers came to understand the power of the female reader-​purchaser in the minds of advertisers. Today, participatory websites and social media platforms draw on this lesson, leveraging their users as a product they can sell to advertisers to

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draw revenue. While in the early 1900s, advertisers sought to tap into a mass market of women consumers, today the focus has shifted to the crafting of niche campaigns. Ads traffic on websites covering specific topics or demographics, targeting young, fashion-​conscious women on New York Magazine’s The Cut or media-​savvy sports aficionados on The Ringer—​or on popular social media platforms by drawing on user data volunteered by billions of users.18 On social media sites and online forums, just as in the Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat” in the early twentieth century, an absence of editorial voice represents an editorial decision in and of itself. On platforms like Instagram, popular posters, or “influencers,” often play a key role in obscuring the editorial influence informing the content they produce. Advances in popular photography, from camera phones to “filters” to Photoshop, allow well-​ known users to present highly edited, stylized depictions of their “authentic lives,” often obscuring the influence of advertisers who pay them to endorse their products. Yet these influencers themselves are often unpaid or underpaid for their online professional endeavors.19 While many online communities offer the (misleading) illusion of an unmediated marketplace of ideas, the age of expert advice givers has certainly not ended. Advice giving itself has made its way online, as digital media companies dominate so many users’ daily media consumption. Slate launched its “Dear Prudence” column in 1997; for a short time, it was penned by Margo Howard, the daughter of Esther Lederer, known to the world as Ann Landers. In addition to its publication on Slate, the column is syndicated in over 200 print publications. Other names that dominate the market include Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post, “Ask Polly” in New York Magazine, and “Dear Sugar” on The Rumpus. These columns, modernizations of “lovelorn” columns, have adopted a corporate publication model similar to columns in early twentieth-​century newspapers—​but adapted to a new digital world. Another strain of specialized advice has also emerged on the Internet—​one influenced by market segmentation and by the online tendency for users to gravitate toward niche interests and like-​minded audiences. Chowhound’s “Table Manners,” The ArtBlog’s “Ask Dave,” Dan Savage’s “Savage Love,” and countless other niche columns offer advice aimed at groups with focused and passionate identities: foodies, aesthetes, or sex-​positive readers. Yet regardless of the issues they take on, the advice flourishing on the Internet reflects a key legacy of early twentieth-​century advice columns: the questions posed continue to center on and analyze pressing issues related to modern change. Both the topics and the context have changed significantly,

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of course. Most mainstream advice columns today tend not to shy away from issues like racism and poverty, nor do they edit out the experiences of gay and trans people. The tone of advice exchanges, too, reflects a new set of rhetorical values; while columns like “Experience” allowed average Americans to dabble in popular literary styles of the time, from Lost Generation literature to middlebrow romance novels, today many mainstream advice columns reflect a now-​ubiquitous appreciation of irony, sarcasm, and skepticism. Nonetheless, online advice—​and online interactions more broadly—​continue to be framed around paradigmatic issues: parenting, interpersonal relationships, identity, the threat of economic instability, the search for meaning, and of course, the lonely nature of modern life. “The site offered me friendship at a point in time in my life when I was struggling,” observed another participant in Everyday Should Be Saturday. “When I really started commenting, I was working in a city where the only people I knew were my coworkers. I wasn’t close to family, and I  had moved away from [in-​person] friendships.” The commenter’s circumstances reflect striking similarities to so many early twentieth-​century advice contributors who felt lost and alone in bustling cities.20 Virtual communities on the Internet offer many of the promises of participatory democracy, while still demonstrating the invisible and hegemonic influence of corporate capitalism. Nonetheless, participants today express a confident sense of ownership over the process of building and maintaining online communities, much as advice contributors did a century ago in newspapers. Current-​day online users emphasize the positive emotional impact that participation in an Internet community affords. One member of a Facebook closed group about body positivity observed that, while many of his fellow participants posted negatively on their main Facebook feeds, they were strikingly upbeat when sharing with the private group. The difference? “They feel seen and heard,” he concluded. Another community “felt like family” to a longtime contributor. While she acknowledged that negative interactions and disagreements occurred—​as they did in “real-​life” families—​ she concluded that her online family afforded her a sense of acceptance that was unprecedented. “The community provided me a place where it didn’t matter what I looked like, what I did for a living, where I lived.”21 As advice participants did decades before, online users still find relief from the feelings of alienation or un-​belonging they may experience in their everyday lives. Observed an active participant in an online forum about the musician Prince:

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To be a Prince fan [in the 1990s and 2000s] was to be on the margins of popular culture. Being a part of these forums alleviated the sense . . . that somehow my tastes were not in line with the cultural mainstream. . . . [It] helped me feel that it was completely okay to have my own tastes, that there was a community out there somewhere for my particular interests. It was affirming and emboldening. Reported a cancer survivor who still participates in a closed Facebook cancer support group post-​remission, “Now that treatment is over (knock on wood), I see it as a way to give back, so folks can gain comfort from my experience.” That same user also valued the anonymity that the closed group afforded. “For me, some of the questions/​conversations are not necessarily ones I’d want to have with folks [I]‌know IRL,” she observed. “Luckily I don’t know many people IRL who are dealing with precisely what I went through, but the folks on the Facebook page have. It’s nice to have that in common.” These Internet-​age reflections appear uncannily similar to the affirming letters and astute observations that Nancy Brown received from Detroit News columnites decades earlier.22 It was that sense of agency, positivity, solace, and belonging that drew millions of readers to woman’s sections in newspapers across the country as they participated in the making of a vibrant interactive advice culture in the pages of American newspapers. Participants in today’s online communities corroborate these sentiments and, without knowing it, draw on and advance a century-​long tradition of virtual community building established in American mass-​circulation newspapers. Today, in an age where many citizens and pundits point to the Internet as a divisive and fracturing force in public discourse, such connective, even nurturing online experiences often go unacknowledged or lost. These contributors recognize one of the most important functions of advice columns in the twentieth century and of Internet communities today: a desire to confess one’s problems and to seek empathy from a body of equally troubled, equally flawed, and equally human strangers.

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Notes

Introduction 1. “AITA for being furious with my husband for getting the Sublime sun tattooed on his arm?,” thread started by u/​1231aa1999 on January 24, 2020, accessed January 27, 2020, https://​www.reddit.com/​r/​AmItheAsshole/​comments/​cmlpso/​aita_​for_​ being_​furious_​with_​my_​husband_​for/​. “AITA Because My Wife Has To Work A Job,” thread started by u/​RaymondRoche on January 10, 2020, accessed January 27, 2020, https://​www.reddit.com/​r/​AmItheAsshole/​comments/​emw6xl/​aita_​because_​my_​wife_​has_​to_​work_​a_​job/​. 2. “Experience,” Detroit News, February 2, 1927, 28. 3. My definition of the “commercialization of news” draws on Gerald Baldasty’s book of the same name. Gerald Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 3–​10. 4. Julie A. Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers:  The Woman’s Page and the Transformation of the American Newspaper, 1895–​1935,” Journal of American History 103, no. 3 (December 2016): 606–​628; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News:  A Social History of American Newspapers (New  York:  Basic Books, 1978), 3–​120; David Paul Nord, Communities of Journalism:  A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 133–​ 151; Andie Tucher, Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 1–​25; Kevin G. Barnhurst and John Nerone, The Form of News:  A History (New York: Guilford Press, 2001), 1–​28, 68–​108. For this study, I examined women’s content in a sample of thirty-​one American newspapers between the years of 1895 and 1940. I explain my sample in more detail at the end of this introduction. I  uncovered ninety-​three advice columns in my sample newspapers, indicating that likely thousands of advice columns ran in American newspapers each day.

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Notes to pages 4–6

5. On the quantification of women readers, see Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers,” 606–​628; Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American:  Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2007), 12–​20; Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington, DC:  Smithsonian Press, 1989), 89–​162. On twenty-​ first-​century interactive media, see Glen Creeber and Royston Martin, Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media (New York: McGraw-​Hill, 2009), 1–​45, 76–​ 91; Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2017), 136–​ 184; Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 118–​184. 6. Julia Guarneri, Newsprint Metropolis:  City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 26–​27, 131. Ellen Gruber Garvey, Writing with Scissors:  American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 133–​135. 7. My analysis of the concept of modernity in advice columns is informed by following works:  Warren I. Susman, Culture as History:  The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New  York:  Pantheon Books, 1973), xxiii; Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 13–​14; Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1995), 1–​7l; Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes:  Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1–​19; Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism:  American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). 8. The 1920 federal census revealed for the first time that the majority of Americans lived in urban areas. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995), 11; Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–​1920 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1992); Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1977–​1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1966); James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 9. “Humanity as It Appears in the Experience Column” The Blue Triangle, January 1921, 10, from the Nancy Brown Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, Holyoke, MA; “Experience,” Detroit News, October 2, 1930, 36; Katie Hafner, “The Epic Saga of the Well: The World’s Most Influential Online Community (And It’s Not AOL),” Wired Magazine, May 1, 1997. On defining “community” as a historical concept, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:  Verso, 1991), 1–​8; Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1973); Anthony P. Cohen,

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The Symbolic Construction of Community (New  York:  Routledge, 1985), 11–​38, 70–​118; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 1–​29; Caroline Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920–​1930:  A Comment on American Civilization in the Postwar Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), 3–​8. On the notion of the “virtual community,” see Johnny Ryan, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 74–​94; Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electric Frontier (Boston: Addison-​Wesley, 1993), 1–​144; Felicia Wu Song, Virtual Communities:  Bowling Alone, Online Together (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2009), 1–​132; Andrew Feenberg and Darin Barney, eds., Community in a Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 1–​67; Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 10. “Dorothy Dix—​Herself,” Public Ledger Syndicate, circa 1920s, from Dix Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, Austin Peay State University Special Collections, Clarksville, Tennessee; Charles Ponce De Leon, Self-​Exposure:  Human Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890–​1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 1–​10, 76–​105. 11. Anne Danahy, “Nancy Brown’s ‘Experience’:  The Role of an Advice Column during the Great Depression” (master’s thesis, Media Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 2005); George Gerbner, “The Social Role of the Confession Magazine,” Social Problems VI (Spring 1958): 29–​40; Walter Gieber, “The ‘Lovelorn’ Columnist and Her Social Role,” Journalism Quarterly 37 (1960): 499–​514; David Gudelunas, Confidential to America: Newspaper Advice Columns and Sexual Education (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 5, 82; W. Clark Hendley, “Dear Abby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and the Eighteenth Century: The Origins of the Newspaper Advice Column,” Journal of Popular Culture 11, no. 2 (Fall 1977): 345–​352; Sarah Huebsch, From the “Housekeeper’s Column” to the “Confidential Chat”: Letters to the Boston Globe, 1900–​1970, Boston Studies in Urban Political Economy (Waltham, MA:  Brandeis University, 1971); Valerie Matsumoto, “Desperately Seeking ‘Deirdre’: Gender Roles, Multicultural Relations, and Nisei Women Writers of the 1930s,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12, no. 1 (1991): 19–​32. 12. A full list of newspapers included in the sample can be found in the bibliography. The sample includes daily newspapers from all regions of the country based in cities of different sizes. The one exception to this was the Chicago Defender, one of the most influential African American weeklies of the early twentieth century, because almost all African American newspapers were weekly publications. All newspapers in the sample maintained circulations of above 20,000 by the 1910s, or, in sparsely populated areas, were the highest-​circulating newspaper in that state. I focused on larger urban newspapers that aimed to reach a broad demographic readership, that had enough capital to be able to enact content and style changes if they chose to, and that had circulations large enough to allow for a level of anonymity among

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reader-​correspondents writing in to advice columns. To compare newspapers within cities and to chart how newspapers behaved within the same market, I sometimes examined several newspapers based in one location. The sample included publications with different party affiliations, and those that identified as politically independent; publications of varying lengths, production costs, subscription costs, and duration of publication; independently owned newspapers and those owned by large conglomerates; and “yellow” journals and those that focused more on commerce and business. To determine my sample newspapers, I examined circulation and publication data for all American daily newspapers in cities with populations above 20,000 (or the state’s two largest cities, if population was below 20,000) using N. W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory, years 1894, 1912, and 1934. I excluded foreign-​language publications because I lacked the language skills to examine such a diverse array of newspapers properly. After my review of the Annual Directories, I compiled a list of 331 possible newspapers that met my regional and circulation requirements and selected my sample papers based on the criteria laid out above, but also by what newspaper collections I could access. To look at each paper over such a long period of time, I chose to examine anywhere from a week to a month of each newspaper every year, dates chosen randomly for variation. Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory (New York: Geo. P. Rowell & Co., 1894); N. W. Ayer & Son’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer, 1912 and 1934). 13. The seven columns examined as case studies are the Boston Globe’s “Confidential Chat”; Dorothy Dix’s “Dorothy Dix Talks” (syndicated); Beatrice Fairfax’s “Advice to the Lovelorn” (syndicated); Marion Holmes’ Household Forum (Chicago Daily News); Laura Jean Libbey’s “First Aid to Injured Hearts” (syndicated); Nancy Brown’s “Experience” column (Detroit News); and Princess Mysteria’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” (Chicago Defender). 14. Charles H.  Dennis Papers, Field Enterprises Records, Midwest Manuscript Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; Confidential Chat Records. Boston Globe Headquarters, Dorchester, MA. C h a p t er   1 1. Helen Berry, Gender, Society, and Print Culture in Late-​Stuart England:  The Cultural World of the Athenian Mercury (Hampshire, UK:  Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), 9. W. Clark Hendley, “Dear Abby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and the Eighteenth Century: The Origins of the Newspaper Advice Column,” Journal of Popular Culture 11, no. 2 (Fall 1977): 345–​352. 2. Karin Wahl-​Jorgensen, Journalists and the Public: Newsroom Culture, Letters to the Editor, and Democracy (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007), 29–​35. 3. C. Dallett Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities:  A History of Manners in America, 1620–​1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–​64; Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South (Ithaca,

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NY:  Cornell University Press, 2005), 34–​104; Sarah Emily Newton, “Wise and Foolish Virgins:  ‘Usable Fiction’ and the Early American Conduct Tradition,” Early American Literature 19 (September 1990): 139–​167. 4. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women:  A Study of Middle-​ Class  Culture in America, 1830–​1870 (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1982), 1–​32; Judy Arlene Hilkey, Character Is Capital:  Success Manuals and Manhood in the Gilded Age (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 1–​54; Allan Stanley Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes:  The Social Control of Young Men in New  York (Lewisburg, PA:  Bucknell University Press, 1975); Rodney Hessinger, “‘The Young Man’s Friend’:  Advice Manuals and the Dangerous Journey to Self-​Made Manhood,” in Hessinger, ed., Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn:  Visions of Youth in Middle-​Class America, 1780–​1850 (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 125–​147; Nazera Sadiq Wright, Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century (Champaign:  University of Illinois Press, 2016), 146–​178. 5. Patricia Okker, Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth-​ Century American Women Editors (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008). 6. Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings:  The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New  York and London:  Routledge, 1995), 2–​5,  17–​48. 7. Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill & Wang), 73–​95 and 172–​197; Gerald Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 11–​35; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New  York:  Basic Books, 1978), 60–​81; Andie Tucher, Froth and Scum:  Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 1–​ 25; Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash:  Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 46–​81. 8. Schudson, Discovering The News, 3–​ 120; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution:  Jacksonian America, 1815–​ 1846 (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1991); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream:  Making Way for Modernity, 1920–​1940 (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1985), 66; Julie A. Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers:  The Woman’s Page and the Transformation of the American Newspaper, 1895–​1935,” Journal of American History 103, no. 3 (December 2016): 609–​610; 619–​620; Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century, 81–​148. Newspaper startup cost figures come from Baldasty, 5. 9. Many historians including pioneering newspaper scholar Frank Luther Mott have portrayed yellow papers like Pulitzer’s New  York World and Hearst’s New  York Evening Journal as unethical, manipulative, and jingoistic. Yet more recent scholarship led by historian W. Joseph Campbell has suggested that the criticism of yellow journalism stemmed from the ultimate success of its opposite, a model of supposedly

16

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Notes to pages 14–19

“objective,” detached, apolitical news embodied most thoroughly by the New York Times. Campbell has characterized yellow journalism as the “journalism of action” and recast its publishers, editors, and reporters as advocates on behalf of local causes, from labor unionism to municipal reform. Yellow newspapers established a legacy of advocacy upon which advice columns would draw. W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2003); Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years, 1690 to 1950 (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 519–​545; Schudson, Discovering the News, 88–​120. On Nellie Bly’s life and career, see Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (New York: Random House, 1994). See also Chapter 3 of this book. 10. I examined thirty-​one American newspapers over a period of sixty years for this study. See this book’s introduction for a more detailed explanation of my newspaper sample. In 1895, 56  percent of my sample newspapers published content aimed at women. By 1925, 100  percent offered daily women’s content, of which 89 percent separated it into woman’s pages. 11. Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers,” 608–​619. 12. “Women in Journalism,” Editor and Publisher, October 26, 1901, 2; Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 2. 13. “At Last the Facts,” Chicago Daily News advertisement, Printers’ Ink, October 19, 1933, 16; “Into Homes Where You Can Sell,” Indianapolis News advertisement, Printers’ Ink, April 2, 1936, 14; “And we’re to be married in June,” New York Sun advertisement, Printers’ Ink, May 21, 1936, 13; “We Furnish the Bride,” Chicago American advertisement, Printers’ Ink, November 30, 1933, 15–​16. For further analysis of newspaper ads in advertising trade journals, see Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers,” 622–​627. 14. “Baltimore a Fine Field,” Baltimore News advertisement, Printers’ Ink, February 20, 1919, 34–​35. On the making of the African American market in the post–​ World War II era, see Adam Green, Selling the Race:  Culture, Community and Black Chicago, 1940–​1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 129–​178; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic:  The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2003), 324–​331. 15. “Territory of Jewish Papers,” Editor and Publisher, August 20, 1904, 5. On the foreign-​language press, see Mott, American Journalism, 588–​589 and Isaac Metzker, A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward (New York: Doubleday, 1971). On the diversity of early twentieth-​century newspaper readership, see Julia Guarneri, Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 26–​27. 16. Harland F. Manchester, “Some Aspects of Newspaper Work: VII—​The Woman’s Page,” The Writer 44, no. 4 (April 1932): 101. 17. Marie Manning Gasch, “Beatrice Fairfax Is Launched,” unpublished typescript, circa 1940, 3–​4, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 10, Folder 6, Sophia

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Notes to pages 19–21

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Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA; Marie Manning, Ladies Now and Then (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1944), 33–​34. Because of the sheer volume of newspaper content in the late nineteenth century, it is difficult to locate the first advice column featured in an American newspaper. The New York World ran an etiquette column as early as 1883, which functioned as an exchange of letters between a “city cousin” named Edith and her “country cousin,” Bessie. The Boston Globe began featuring an interactive housekeeper’s exchange called “Confidential Chat” in 1884. And the New  York Freeman, a popular African American newspaper, launched “Our Woman’s Department” in 1886, addressing issues related to race, relationships, and citizenship. But each of these early examples was short-​lived and discrete. Advice columns did not flourish as a genre until the establishment of the woman’s page as a standard convention in American newspapers. Schudson, Discovering the News, 101; Wright, Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century, 93–​117. 18. Manchester, “Some Aspects of Newspaper Work,” 101. Determining the number of advice columns bring printed during the early twentieth century is particularly difficult because the advice column market was ever-​changing. Some columns ran for decades, while others lasted only a few weeks. Syndicates regularly tweaked the tone of columns or replaced one columnist with another. Over the course of several decades, I uncovered at least ninety-​three advice columns in my analysis of thirty-​ one newspapers, making my estimate of hundreds of columns a conservative one. 19. All of my sample newspapers featured at least one syndicated advice column during the period I  studied. Newspaper syndicates had existed since the mid-​ nineteenth century, spurred by the founding of the Associated Press in 1846 and by advancements in telegraph, typesetting, and distribution technology. By the 1870s, almost a third of rural newspapers in the United States used syndicate services, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the trend had caught on among larger metropolitan newspapers, particularly in features and women’s departments. Elmo Scott Watson, A History of Newspaper Syndicates in the United States, 1896–​1935 (Chicago: Publishers’ Auxiliary, 1935), 6–​8; Mott, American Journalism, 690. 20. Manchester, “Some Aspects of Newspaper Work,” 98–​101. On the nationalization of cultural standards and ideals in early twentieth-​century America, see Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Lary May, Screening Out the Past:  The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1983); Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings, 1–​10; Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat:  Courtship in Twentieth-​Century America (Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 1–​56; Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American:  Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 12–​20. 21. Trade journal advertisements often highlighted the central role that advice columns played in marketing and audience outreach. “History More Than Repeats,” Boston

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Notes to pages 21–27

American advertisement, Printers’ Ink, October 26, 1933, 42–​43; Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers,” 621–​622. 22. The Boston Globe began printing its “Household Department” in 1884, making it, in my estimation, the earliest form of the modern advice column. This example was taken from “Household Department,” Boston Globe, July 14, 1912, 38. 23. It is likely that the term “lovelorn” became synonymous with advice columns because Beatrice Fairfax included it in the title of her pioneering column, “Advice to the Lovelorn,” launched in 1898. C h a p t er   2 1. “Miss Laura Jean Libbey’s Advice to Love Lorn Inquirers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 24, 1910, 8. 2. This chapter’s analysis is based on case studies of two household-​ related columns:  “Confidential Chat” (Boston Globe) and Marion Holmes’s “Replies” (Chicago Daily News); and four lovelorn columns: Laura Jean Libbey’s “First Aid to Broken Hearts” (syndicated), Dorothy Dix’s “Dorothy Dix Talks” (syndicated), Beatrice Fairfax’s “Advice to the Lovelorn” (syndicated) and “Experience” (Detroit News). While the chapter does not examine columns dedicated solely to etiquette and beauty questions, it does touch on etiquette and beauty questions discussed in the household and lovelorn columns. 3. Very few records of original letters sent to advice columnists exist. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw clear conclusions about the editorial decisions of advice columnists—​particularly how columnists selected letters, how much they edited them, and whether they enhanced or fabricated letters. Only a small group of highly successful advice columnists have extant manuscript collections. Of those, only Beatrice Fairfax’s papers included thirty original letters, by no means a representative sample of the hundreds of thousands of letters that columnist received over the course of her career. 4. “Laura Jean Libbey Greets Tribune Readers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 23, 1910, H1. 5. “The Danger of Romance,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1919, II2. On the changing nature of twentieth-​century courtship, see Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat:  Courtship in Twentieth-​Century America (Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 6. “Experience,” Detroit News, June 4, 1919, 24. 7. “Kissing Not Real Affection,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 26, 1910, 8; “He Who Comes A-​Courting,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1910, 12. 8. “Grandma and Flapper Same at Heart,” Boston Globe, March 14, 1927, 16; “Men are Old Fashioned,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1934, 16. On the New Woman, see Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper:  American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New  York:  Hill and Wang, 1995), 98–​144; Estelle B. Freedman, “The New

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Notes to pages 27–33

169

Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s,” in Decades of Discontent: The Women’s Movement, 1920–​1940, eds. Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1983); Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895–​1915 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005). 9. “Experience,” Detroit News, August 23, 1919, 14; “Experience,” Detroit News, September 8, 1919, 18. 10. Beatrice Fairfax, “Playing With Fire,” typescript article for “Petting” series, n.d. from Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 19, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA (hereafter SSC). On petting and changing sexual practices in the 1920s, see Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 260–​290. 11. Letter, Anxious and Not so Prudish to Beatrice Fairfax, August 25, 1938; letter, Man-​Hater to Beatrice Fairfax, July 28, 1938, from Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 18, SSC. 12. Letter, Betty to Beatrice Fairfax, May 9, 1938; letter, Margaret to Beatrice Fairfax, May 12, 1938, from Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 18, SSC. 13. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements:  Working Women and Leisure in Turn-​of-​the-​ Century New  York (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 1986), 34–​55; Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions:  A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 107–​131; “Girls who Choose the Primrose Path,” Boston Globe, January 7, 1927, 28. 14. “Likes Column Because It Prints Opinions of All,” Boston Globe, May 4, 1919, 50. 15. On the ubiquity of racial bias in American newspapers, see Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race and American Media (London: Verso, 2011), 1–​136. 16. “Experience,” Detroit News, June 7. 1919, 14; “Experience,” Detroit News, June 21, 1919, 14. I have found only one exception: in July 1919, a reader asked whether it was customary for black men in the South to tip their hats at white women when they passed them on the street. Brown confirmed that it was “custom,” but not “general practice.” “Experience,” Detroit News, July 21, 1919, 19. 17. On black urban life and modernity, see Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes:  Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1–​19. On changing notions of respectability in the black press, see Kim T. Gallon, “Between Respectability and Modernity: Black Newspapers and Sexuality, 1925–​1940” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009). See Chapter 4 for a detailed analysis of the advice given in African American newspapers. 18. On companionate marriage, see Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 107–​ 131; Christina Simmons, Making Marriage Modern:  Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). According to historian Elaine Tyler May, the percentage of divorces in the United

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Notes to pages 33–40

States rose by 2,000  percent between 1867 and 1929, while the population only grew by 300  percent. By 1930, one in six marriages ended in divorce. Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations:  Marriage and Divorce in Post-​Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2, 27–​49. 19. “Dorothy Dix’s Letter Box,” Boston Globe, July 10, 1934, 24. 20. Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 1–​108, 169–​228. 21. On the history of marriage counseling, see Kristin Celello, Making Marriage Work:  A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-​ Century United States (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and Rebecca L. Davis, More Perfect Unions:  The American Search for Marital Bliss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 1–​135. Both Celello and Davis agreed that marriage counselors put much of the responsibility for the maintenance of marriage on women. 22. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 31, 1919, 14; “Time the Adjuster,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1919, II2; “The Tie That Binds,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1919, II2; “Dorothy Dix’ Letter Box,” Boston Globe, July 3, 1934, 24. 23. Beatrice Fairfax, “Classics Scrapped by School Board in the Interests,” Typescript, November 30, 1936; “Should Boys and Girls Marry, and Go to School Afterwards?,” Typescript, December 28, 1936, from the Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 9, SSC. 24. Jill Benton, Naomi Mitchison: A Biography (Norfolk, UK: Pandora, 1992). 25. “Experience,” Detroit News, April 20, 1920; April 26, 1920, reprinted in Nancy Brown, ed., Dear Nancy: A Pattern of American Life Revealed in Letters (Detroit: The Detroit News, 1933), 1–​3. 26. “Marion Holmes,” Chicago Daily News, August 23, 1928, 14. 27. May, Great Expectations,  1–​14. 28. Letter, Worried Doris to Beatrice Fairfax, April 30, 1938, from the Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 13, SSC. 29. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (50th anniversary edition), (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013). 30. Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 107–​131; May, Great Expectations, 1–​14,  27–​49. 31. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 3, 1919, 14. 32. “Time the Adjuster,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1919, II2. 33. “Experience,” Detroit News, July 3, 1919, 9. 34. “Dorothy Dix’ Letter Box,” Boston Globe, January 4, 1927, 27. 35. “Confidential Chat,” Boston Globe, August 3, 1919, 25; “Confidential Chat,” Boston Globe, August 17, 1919, E4. 36. Letter, Revolting Child to Beatrice Fairfax, February 11, 1937, from the Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 10, SSC.

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37. “Delinquent Parents,” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1919, II2. On changing patterns of parenting and the emergence of a modern youth culture, see Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 3–​12, 119–​364. 38. “Dorothy Dix’s Letter Box,” Boston Globe, January 11, 1927, 17. 39. “Experience,” Detroit News, April 19, 1919, 25. 40. “Dorothy Dix’ Letter Box,” Boston Globe, July 7, 1934, 20. 41. “The Superfluous Girl,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1919, II2; “Fooling Away Her Time,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1913, 11. Alice Kessler-​Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-​E arning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 217–​319; Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–​1994 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 142–​210. 42. “Marion Holmes,” Chicago Daily News, June 2, 1932, 12. Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston: Twayne, 1982). 43. Rarely if ever did anyone comment on the irony of a working journalist insisting that career women led unhappy, meaningless lives. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 1, 1927, 11. 44. “Dorothy Dix’ Letter Box,” Boston Globe, January 13, 1927, 29. 45. “An Anchor to Windward,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1919, II2. On housework and the ethos of household efficiency in the early twentieth century, see Janice Rutherford, Selling Mrs. Consumer:  Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency (Athens:  University of Georgia Press, 2003), especially 36–​85; Susan Strasser, Never Done:  A History of American Housework (New York: Macmillan, 2000). 46. On the Progressive ethos prioritizing knowledge, fact, and scientific expertise, see Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2003), especially 221–​247; Daniel Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10, no. 4 (December 1982): 113–​132; Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order: 1877–​1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). 47. “Household Department,” Boston Globe, July 7, 1912, 42; “Marion Holmes,” Chicago Daily News, August 20, 1928, 14. 48. “Household Department,” Boston Globe, April 20, 1919, 50. 49. “Household Department,” Boston Globe, April 16, 1919, 15. While it is difficult to determine how non-​contributing readers used and interpreted the columns, letters from first-​time writers indicate that many contributors read the column regularly prior to their correspondence and took emotional sustenance from the women’s correspondences and advice. 50. “Grandma and Flapper Same at Heart,” Boston Globe, March 14, 1927, 16; “Thrift the Fortune Teller,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1919, II2. 51. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 7, 1927, 30. 52. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 21, 1930.

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Notes to pages 48–56

53. Letter, Heartbroken and Desperate to Beatrice Fairfax, May 9, 1937, from Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 5, SSC. 54. “Marion Holmes,” Chicago Daily News, July 16, 1930, 13; “Marion Holmes,” Chicago Daily News, July 17, 1930, 12. On the limits of private aid in Depression-​era Chicago, see Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–​1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 213–​250. 55. “The Better Part,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1919, II2; “Beware of the Sloppy Girl,” typescript article, n.d., from the Marie Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 20, SSC. 56. “Dorothy Dix Tells the Real Truth about Feminine Charm,” advertisement, Good Housekeeping, July 1930; “Broken Illusions Can Never Be Mended Says Dorothy Dix. . .” Lux advertisement, n.s., n.d., from Dorothy Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 17, Austin Peay State University Special Collections, Clarksville, TN. 57. “From ‘Land Sakes’ to ‘My Gawd,’” Detroit News, May 3, 1919, 14; “Experience,” Detroit News, April 26, 1919, 15. 58. “Experience,” Detroit News, March 10, 1930, 28; “Experience,” Detroit News, April 1, 1930, 30; “Experience,” Detroit News, November 21, 1930, 42. C h a p t er   3 1. “Dorothy Dix—​Herself,” Public Ledger Syndicate, n.d., from the Dorothy Dix Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, Austin Peay State University Special Collections, Clarksville, TN (hereafter APSU). 2. There were very few male advice columnists in early twentieth-​century newspapers. Three exceptions are the “Bintl Brief ” in the Yiddish Jewish Daily Forward, helmed by the paper’s longtime editor Abraham Cahan; Angelo Patri, an educator who wrote the long-​running syndicated column “Our Children”; and medical advice columns, which were usually written and edited by male doctors. See Howard J. Faulkner and Virginia D. Pruitt, eds., Dear Dr. Menninger: Women’s Voices from the Thirties (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 1–​14; Ralph LaRossa, The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), 145–​170; Isaac Metzker, A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward (New York: Schocken Books, 1971). 3. Because this chapter addresses the “behind-​the-​scenes” decisions of the women who were employed as advice columnists, it uses their real names rather than their pseudonyms. 4. Charles Ponce de Leon, Self-​ Exposure:  Human Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890–​1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 1–​75. 5. See, for example, Kathleen A. Cairns, Front-​Page Women Journalists, 1920–​1950 (Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 2003); Marion Marzolf, Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977). This negative portrayal of soft news has been particularly prevalent among women

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writers who have served as journalists themselves. For example, Kay Mills, A Place in the News:  From the Women’s Pages to the Front Pages (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1990). 6. Recent scholarship by Brooke Kroeger, Charles Ponce de Leon, Kathleen Feeley, and Jean Marie Lutes has analyzed turn-​of-​the-​century “front page girls,” stunt reporters, sob sisters, gossip columnists, and celebrity reporters, revealing the far-​reaching impact of soft news reportage on the profession of journalism and on American popular culture. Kathleen A. Feeley, “Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood:  The Rise of the Celebrity Gossip Industry in Twentieth-​ Century America, 1910–​1950” (PhD diss., City University of New  York, 2004); Jean Marie Lutes, Front-​Page Girls:  Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–​1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (New York: Random House, 1994); Ponce de Leon, Self-​Exposure,  1–​75. 7. Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” in Toward an Intellectual History of Women: Essays (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 159–​199; Lori D. Ginzburg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the 19th-​Century United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 1–​97; Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–​1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3–​92. 8. Agnes Hooper Gottlieb, Women Journalists and the Municipal Housekeeping Movement, 1868–​1914 (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 2001), 1–​18, 91–​105. On Ida Tarbell, see Kathleen Brady, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (New York: Seaview/​ Putnam Publishing, 1984); Cecelia Tichi, Exposés and Excess:  Muckraking in America, 1900–​2000 (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). On the Children’s Bureau and maternalist legislation, see Molly Ladd-​Taylor, Mother-​ Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–​1930 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 74–​103; Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1994); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers:  The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 9. Marie Manning, Ladies Now and Then (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1944), 11. 10. Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1987), 224–​225; Alice Kessler-​Harris, Out to Work:  A History of Wage-​ Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 112–​119. 11. Nellie Bly’s career predated the use of the term “yellow journalism,” which did not become part of the popular vernacular until the end of the 1890s. Nonetheless, publishers like Pulitzer had been experimenting with this style of entertainment and activist journalism since the 1880s. Pulitzer purchased the New  York World in 1883.

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Notes to pages 58–62

12. Interestingly, one of Bly’s last journalistic endeavors was to pen an advice column in 1917. Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 79–​201; Lutes, Front-​Page Girls,  12–​38. 13. Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 61–​159. W. Joseph Campbell, The Year That Defined American Journalism:  1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (New  York:  Routledge, 2006),  1–​30. 14. The term “sob sister” was coined disparagingly by reporter Irvin S.  Cobb. Most scholars have characterized sob sister reportage as problematic by modern standards of objectivity. Phyllis Abramson’s analysis is representative: she described the sob sisters’ stories as “so mawkish and so soppy that only those who were unusually stalwart or unconscionably insensitive could keep from shedding a tear.” Phyllis Abramson, Sob Sister Journalism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 1–​ 48, quoted from 2; Marzolf, Up from the Footnote, 32–​34; Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 60–​73. 15. W. Joseph Campbell, The Year That Defined American Journalism, 6–​7; W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003), 1–​50, 151–​192. On William Randolph Hearst, see David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). The most thorough biography of Joseph Pulitzer remains W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst:  A Biography of William Randolph Hearst (New  York:  Scribner, 1961). See also Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, Trust: The Private and Powerful Family behind the New  York Times (Boston:  Little, Brown, 1999) and David R. Spencer, The Yellow Journalism:  The Press and America’s Emergence as a World Power (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007). 16. Schudson, Discovering the News, 3–​11; 61–​159; Lutes, Front-​Page Girls, 5–​6; Julie A. Golia, “Courting Women, Courting Advertisers:  The Woman’s Page and the Transformation of the American Newspaper, 1895–​1935,” Journal of American History 103, no. 3 (December 2016): 627–​628. 17. Annie Leslie could be viewed as an exception here. She shaped the “Experience” column around the theme of anonymity and exposed few explicit details from her life. She did, however, highlight her motherly personality traits through the column, perhaps more so than Gilmer and Manning. By emphasizing the theme of anonymity in the “Experience” column, Leslie imbued the few details she offered about her personal life with significant value. 18. See, for example, Arthur Brisbane, “Dorothy Dix, wise young woman. . .,” clipping, Herald Examiner, n.d., most likely 1890s or early 1900s, from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 1, APSU. I have been able to locate only a few articles on Gilmer’s early career, and none on Manning’s before the 1920s. Annie Leslie’s career only took off after her husband’s death and the commencement of her position at the Detroit News in 1918. 19. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown:  Fame and Its History (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1986), 3–​18; Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London:  Reaktion Books,

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Notes to pages 62–66

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2001), 9–​ 49; Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame:  Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1994), 1–​56; Ponce de Leon, Self-​Exposure,  1–​75. 20. George W. Stark, “Visiting Nancy Brown at Home,” Detroit News, March 1, 1942, 10, from Brown Collection, Series II, Box 12, Folder 4, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, Holyoke, MA (hereafter MHC); “Nancy Brown to Retire,” Detroit News, January 9, 1942, from Brown Collection, Series II, Box 12, Folder 4, MHC. Dorothy Dix, “Woodstock,” typescript article, circa 1936, 102, from The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Louisiana. Harnett Kane, Dear Dorothy Dix:  The Story of a Compassionate Woman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952), 15–​20. 21. Marie Manning Gasch, “Child Story,” Unpublished book, Chapter 1, n.d., 3, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 8, Folder 8, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA (hereafter SSC). “Miss Lizzie Meriwether . . .,” circa 1878, source unknown, probably the Tobacco Leaf, Clarksville, TN, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 9, APSU; Kane, Dear Dorothy Dix,  30–​35. 22. “Dorothy Dix—​Herself,” Public Ledger Syndicate, n.d., from Dix Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, APSU. Marie Manning Gasch, “Child Story,” Unpublished book, Chapter 1, n.d., 4, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 8, Folder 8, SSC. 23. On nostalgia as a category of historical analysis, see Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 3–​73; and Lawrence W. Levine, “Progress and Nostalgia: The Self-​Image of the Nineteen Twenties,” from The Unpredictable Past:  Explorations in American Cultural History (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1993), 189–​205. On Lost Cause and Reunion literature, see David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 211–​254; Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–​1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 1–​12, 93–​123. On sentimental literature see Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), 3–​43; Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1–​41. 24. Marie Manning Gasch, “Beatrice Fairfax Is Launched,” unpublished typescript, circa 1940, 3–​4, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 10, Folder 6, SSC; Manning, Ladies Now and Then, 33–​34. “Dorothy Dix,” promotional ad for the Dorothy Dix Talks syndicated column, n.d., from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 17, APSU. 25. “Dorothy Dix Her Dramatic Life Story,” New Orleans Times-​Picayune, July 6, 1936, 15, from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 1, APSU. 26. Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, “Woodstock,” unpublished article, 1936 from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 6, APSU. 27. “Dorothy Dix Made Doctor of Letters,” Oglethorpe University, May 25, 1931, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 10, APSU. The Meriwether family made much of

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their “faithful slaves,” African Americans who remained with the family in the decades after the Civil War. See “Beautiful Tribute to Black Mammy,” Clarksville Leaf Chronicle, December 9, 1913, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 11, APSU, and Mrs. Harriett Parks Miller, “Black Mammy Emily:  A Tribute to a Passing Type,” n.s., n.d., from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 11, APSU. 28. Blight, Race and Reunion, 211–​254; Silber, The Romance of Reunion,  1–​12. 29. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “Do You Remember,” Detroit News, September 18, 1919, 25; Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “Mother’s Scrap Book,” Detroit News, June 11, 1919, 17. 30. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “The Age of Rapid Changes,” Detroit News, June 12, 1919, 14. 31. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “The Age of Rapid Changes,” Detroit News, June 12, 1919, 14. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “The Soldier Boy’s Mother,” Detroit News, May 24, 1919, 14. 32. Kane, Dear Dorothy Dix, 59; “Dorothy Dix Her Dramatic Life Story,” New Orleans Times-​Picayune, July 6–​7, 1936 (Chapters  1 and 2), from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 1, APSU; Marie Manning Gasch, “Beatrice Fairfax Is Launched,” unpublished typescript, circa 1940, 13–​15, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 10, Folder 6, SSC (emphasis in original). 33. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, “20th Century or Victorian Age?,” Detroit News, October 5, 1918, from Brown Collection, Series I, Box 5, Folder 1, MHC. 34. Elna Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 1–​29, 127–​177. 35. Manning and her close friend Olivia Torrence discussed the suffrage movement extensively in their letters to each other. See, for example, Olivia Torrence to Marie Manning Gasch, October 14, 1909; November 9, 1909; December 3, 1909, from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 4, Folder 11, SSC. On her approach to her autobiography, see Marie Manning Gasch to Elliott Macrae, Esq., November 11, 1943, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 5, Folder 3, SSC. On the educational use of her book, Marie Manning Gasch to Lillian D. MacLaren, June 30, 1944, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 5, Folder 4, SSC. On her relationship with the National Women’s Party and the ERA, Marie Manning Gasch to Elliott Macrae, November 11, 1943 [second letter], from Manning Papers Series III, Box 5, Folder 3, SSC. 36. Elizabeth Petersen MacDonald, “Dear Miss Fairfax,” ns., circa 1935, from Manning Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC. 37. Letter, Marie Manning Gasch to Father John K. Cartwright, June 22, 1944, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 5, Folder 8, SSC. 38. Stuart Robertson, “Beatrice Fairfax: Heart Specialist,” The Woman with Woman’s Digest, September n.d., circa 1940s, 29–​31, from Manning Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC; Virginia Stafford, “Dorothy Dix, to many people, is only a name . . .,” newspaper clipping, n.s., February 18, 1941, from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 4, APSU. 39. Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, “What Women Like Best to Read in Newspapers,” address at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 21, 1939, from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 13, APSU. Beatrice Washburn, “Is There a Real Dorothy

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Notes to pages 73–76

177

Dix?,” Everybody’s Magazine, October 1925, 24, from Dix Collection, Folder 2, Box 1, APSU. 40. Marie Manning Gasch, “Beatrice Fairfax Is Launched,” unpublished typescript, circa 1940, 29–​30, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 10, Folder 6, SSC. 41. “Mothers Thousands from All Over the Land,” Detroit News Notes, December 1920, no. 2, from Brown Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, MHC; “Nancy Brown to Retire,” Detroit News, January 9, 1942, from Brown Collection, Series II, Box 12, Folder 4, MHC. 42. Stuart Robertson, “Beatrice Fairfax: Heart Specialist,” The Woman with Woman’s Digest, September n.d. (circa 1940), 29–​30, from Manning Papers, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC, “The Soldiers Told Beatrice Fairfax,” Pic Magazine, June 23, 1942, 40–​42, from Manning Papers, Series I, Box 2, SSC. Very few physical descriptions exist of Annie Leslie because her identity was shrouded during her tenure at the News. 43. Elizabeth Petersen MacDonald, “Dear Miss Fairfax,” n.s., circa 1935, from Manning Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC; Manning, Ladies Now and Then, 165. 44. Elizabeth Petersen MacDonald, “Dear Miss Fairfax,” n.s., circa 1935, from Manning Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC; Lynne Olson, “Dear Beatrice Fairfax . . .,” American Heritage Magazine, May/​June 1992, 90–​97, from Manning Papers, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC; Marie Manning to Herman E. Gasch, August 9, 1943, from Manning Collection, Series II, Box 3, Folder 1, SSC. On son Oliver commenting on Manning’s writing when he was a young man, see Oliver Gasch to Marie Manning, February 26, 1924, from Manning Collection, Series II, Box 3, Folder 5, SSC; Manning, Ladies Now and Then, 164; Georgina Campbell, “Marie Manning Makes Merry,” typescript article to print in The Hobo News, May 1944, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 5, Folder 8, SSC. 45. Elizabeth Petersen MacDonald, “Dear Miss Fairfax,” n.s., circa 1935, from Manning Collection, Series I, Box 1, Folder 1, SSC; Marie Manning to Herman E. Gasch, August 21, 1943, from Manning Collection, Series II, Box 3, Folder 1, SSC. 46. Oliver Gasch, “Washington Now and Then,” speech at the Columbia Historical Society, September 25, 1985, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 12, Folder 17, SSC. 47. On Manning’s financial support of her husband, see Marie Manning to Herman E. Gasch, August 24, 1943, and August 26, 1943, from Manning Collection, Series II, Box 3, Folder 1, SSC. On Gasch’s senility and his country boarding, see Marie Manning to Oliver Gasch, February 12, 1945, from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 3, Folder 7, SSC: “The Admiral is getting rather groggy in the head, and I can’t have him here very conveniently as we can’t let him go out alone.” Marie Manning to Oliver Gasch, June 5, 1945, from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 3, Folder 7, SSC: “He seems much older than his years. It’s the lonesome, speechless, cut-​off life he leads at the Camp [the country boarding house], that’s accountable. No interest in anything.” She made no arrangements for him to return home because she was

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Notes to pages 76–81

so overrun with work. Georgina Campbell, “Marie Manning Makes Merry,” typescript article to print in The Hobo News, May 1944, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 5, Folder 8, SSC. 48. Manning was clearly closer to her son Oliver than to her son Manning: see Marie Manning to Oliver Gasch, September 14, 1943, from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 3, Folder 5, SSC, and Marie Manning to Herman E. Gasch, August 16, 1943 from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 3, Folder 1, SSC, in which she claimed that Manning had no “ideals.” The Manning Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection contain only one rather cold letter written by Marie Manning to her son Manning, compared to the almost one hundred warm missives she wrote to her eldest son, Oliver, but that may be partly a result of Oliver’s being stationed outside of Washington during World War II. Marie Manning to Manning Gasch, May 24, 1944, from Manning Papers, Series II, Box 3, Folder 2, SSC. 49. William G. Nott, “Famous Writers Who Have Lived in New Orleans,” New Orleans Item-​Tribune, February 6, 1927, from Louisiana Scrapbook no. 6, Tulane University Archives and Special Collections, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (hereafter TU). “Miss Dix—​When Arthur Brisbane died . . .,” The Literary Digest 123, April 17, 1937, from Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 4, APSU; Albert Goldstein, “Adviser to the Lovelorn,” n.s., n.d., from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 5, APSU. 50. “Dorothy Dix:  Interesting Sketch of a Brilliant Newspaper Woman,” n.s., circa 1902, from Dix Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, APSU. Untitled document chronicling members of Meriwether family, n.s., n.d., circa 1915, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 11, APSU. 51. Whitney R. Mundt, “Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (Dorothy Dix),” Dictionary of Louisiana Biographies, 118, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 5, APSU. Albert H. Morehead, “Meet the Confidante,” New Orleans Times-​Picayune clipping, December 24, 1944, from Dix Collection, Box 2, Folder 5, APSU. Both Marie Manning and Elizabeth Gilmer fabricated their ages. The article claims she was married in her teens, but she was actually in her early twenties. “The World’s Most Famous Woman Writer,” n.s., n.d., from Dix Collection, Box 5, Folder 2, APSU. 52. Manning, Ladies Now and Then, 36–​ 40; Frances C.  Faulkner, “Dorothy—​ Plantation—​Riding Thoroughbreds and Being ‘Tomboy’ Her Delights. Delighted to Read—​Always Had Number of Men Admirers,” n.s., n.d., from Dorothy Dix Collection, Box 7, Folder 8, APSU. 53. Faulkner, “Dorothy—​Plantation—​Riding Thoroughbreds and Being ‘Tomboy’ Her Delights”; Manning, Ladies Now and Then, 40. 54. Besse Toulouse Sprague, “Adventures of a ‘Lovelorn’ Editor,” The American Magazine 93, no. 6 ( June 1922): 31. 55. Marie Manning Gasch, “Beatrice Fairfax Is Launched,” unpublished typescript, circa 1940, 16, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 10, Folder 6, SSC.

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56. For Manning’s entire subject file research library, see Manning Papers, Series IV, especially Folders 4–​7, 9, SSC. 57. “Experience,” Detroit News, June 19, 1919. 58. Quoted from Maud Morlock, “Letters from Unmarried Mothers—​What Answer?” Washington, DC:  US Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, December 29, 1941, from Manning Papers, Series IV, Box 13, Folder 4, SSC; see also Maud Morlock et  al., Various Children’s Bureau Reports, US Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, March 1939–​January 1943 from Manning Papers, Series IV, Box 13, Folder 4, SSC; Agnes K. Hanna, “Maternity Homes,” Social Services Division, Children’s Bureau, US Department of Labor, Reprinted by Permission from THE MOTHER, April 1942 and “Socially Handicapped Children, Foster-​Home Care for Unmarried Mothers,” The Child Monthly News Summary 3: no. 3 (September 1930), from Manning Collection, Series IV, Box 13, Folder 5, SSC. 59. “What would you do if—​?” pamphlet, Florence Crittenton Homes, n.d.; “The Florence Crittenton Home is an institution  .  .  .” pamphlet, Florence Crittenton Homes, n.d.; “Program of the Florence Crittenton Home” pamphlet, Florence Crittenton Homes, n.d., from Manning Papers, Series IV, Box 13, Folder 6, SSC. 60. On the racial and gender inequities inherent in New Deal entitlements, see Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 1–​14, 111–​144, 287–​306; Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-​ Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 25–​52; Alice Kessler-​Harris, In Pursuit of Equity:  Women, Men, and the Pursuit of Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-​Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3–​18. 61. On Manning’s collection of information on military branches, recruitment, and requirements see Manning Collection, Series IV, Box 13, Folders 11–​14, SSC. Walter A. Cullen, CWO, AUS, Army Ground Forces to Marie Manning Gasch, April 1, 1943, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 1, SSC. 62. Marie Manning Gasch to Office of Public Relations, Navy Department, August 20, 1943, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 1, SSC; Marie Manning Gasch to Commander W.  Marvin McCarthy, U.S.N.R., October 19, 1943, November 2, 1943, November 17, 1943, February 18, 1944, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 1, SSC; Marie Manning Gasch to Public Relations Branch, Navy Department, March 11, 1944, through July 5, 1944 [15 letters], from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 1, SSC. 63. Marie Manning Gasch to Commander W. Marvin McCarthy, U.S.N.R., February 18, 1944, and Commander McCarthy to Marie Manning Gasch, February 29, 1944, from Manning Papers, Series III, Box 10, Folder 1, SSC. 64. Marie Manning Gasch, “Some Further Newspaper Adventures,” typescript article, n.d., 2, from Manning Collection, Series III, Box 11, Folder 31, SSC.

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Notes to pages 87–89 C h a p t er   4

1. On the contours of black modernity, see Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes:  Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1–​120; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New  York:  Knopf, 1981), 25–​197; Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty:  Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New  York:  The Noonday Press, 1995), 3–​30, 167–​178; Michael Hanchard, “Afro Modernity:  Temporality, Politics and the African Diaspora,” Public Culture 11, no. 1 (1999): 245–​268. On the Chicago School of sociology see Touré F. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League & the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910–​1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 1–​12. 2. Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States (College Park, MD: McGrath Publishing Company, 1968, orig. 1922), 5. See, for example, Dorothy Dix, Mirandy (New York: Hearst’s International Library, 1914). Robert T. Kerlin, The Voice of the Negro, 1919 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919), ix–​x ; also quoted in Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States, 18. More recently, Kim T. Gallon has pointed out the importance of black papers as a place for African Americans to debate standards of sexual behavior and sexuality free from the judgment of white readers. Kim T. Gallon, “Between Respectability and Modernity: Black Newspapers and Sexuality, 1925–​1940” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009). 3. Patrick S. Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 73–​112; Catherine Squires, “The Black Press and the State: Attracting Unwanted (?) Attention,” in Counterpublics and the State, eds. Robert Asen and Donna Brouwer, 111–​136 (Albany:  State University of New  York Press, 2001), 118. Squires has noted that because so many African Americans read the Defender by borrowing passed-​around copies, its actual circulation was probably closer to one million in the 1920s. 4. My analysis of Princess Mysteria’s vision of black feminism is informed by the following studies: Elsa Barkley Brown, “Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke,” Signs 14 (1989):  610–​633; Sumi K. Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies:  Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs:  Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 4 (2013):  785–​803; Gallon, “Between Respectability and Modernity,” especially 1–​ 61; Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–​1994 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994); Ange-​Marie Hancock, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). I have assembled a case study of Princess Mysteria’s column using years 1921, 1924, 1927, and 1930. The column ceased in 1930 with the unexpected death of Mysteria. While the columns are rich texts, there exists very little primary source material to address the behind-​the-​scenes story of the column. Outside of the coverage of

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Notes to pages 89–93

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Mysteria’s life and vaudeville career in the Defender and other black newspapers, there are no historical records of Princess Mysteria’s life. Additionally, I have found almost no sources that can address the editorial decisions of Defender publishers and staff, especially concerning women’s features like Mysteria’s column. 5. Mysteria’s real name was not revealed to readers until after her death. Her obituary identified her as Mrs. Vauleda Strodder. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph D. and Frances (Harris) Hill. “Princess Mysteria Pens Last ‘Advice to the Wise,’” Chicago Defender, March 22, 1930, 1. 6. “Princess Mysteria Pens Last ‘Advice to the Wise,’ ” 1.  Vaulleda (Hill) Strodder, “Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916–​1947,” Ancestry.com. 1920 Federal Census, Chicago Ward 32, Cook (Chicago), Illinois, Roll T625_​351, Page  8A, Enumeration District 2037, Ancestry.com. 1910 Federal Census, Chicago Ward 2, Cook (Chicago), Illinois, Roll T624_​242, Page 13B, Enumeration District 0198, Ancestry.com. 7. “Returns to Stage,” Chicago Defender, January 19, 1929; “The Koppin,” Chicago Defender, May 9, 1925, 6. 8. “Princess Mysteria,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1917, 3. 9. Review reprinted in “The Mysterias,” Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, 9. On the history of vaudeville, race, and gender, see Andrew L. Erdman, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895–​ 1915 ( Jefferson, NC:  McFarland, 2004), 1–​20; Nadine George-​Graves, The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, and Class in African American Theater, 1900–​1940 (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 1–​50. 10. “Princess Mysteria Co.,” Chicago Defender, September 21, 1918, 7; “Happenings at Local Theaters,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 4, 1925; “Princess Mysteria,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1917, 3; “PRINCESS MYSTERIA,” Chicago Defender, August 25, 1923. 11. “Princess Mysteria Co.,” 7.  Mirror review reprinted in “The Mysterias,” Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, 9. Natalia Molina, How Race Is Made in America:  Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 49–​54. 12. “Back Home,” Chicago Defender, September 11, 1920, 4. See, for example, “Mysterias Resting,” Chicago Defender, July 5, 1919, 8; “Tells It All,” Chicago Defender, June 9, 1917, 9. Quote from the Dramatic Mirror review, reprinted in “The Mysterias,” Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, 9. 13. Edward E. Curtis, Islam in Black America:  Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-​American Islamic Thought (Albany:  State University of New  York Press, 2002), 1–​ 20, 45–​ 62, quoted from 45–​ 46; Michael Angelo Gomez, Black Crescent:  The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 203–​275; Jacob S. Dorman, The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America (Boston:  Beacon Press, 2020); Liz Mazucci, “Going Back to Our

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Notes to pages 93–97

Own: Interpreting Malcolm X’s Transition from ‘Black Asiatic’ to ‘Afro-​American’,” Souls 7 (Winter 2005): 66–​83. 14. Curtis, Islam in Black America, 1–​20,  45–​62. 15. Curtis, Islam in Black America,  45–​62. 16. On respectability and racial uplift, see August Meier, Negro Thought in America 1880–​1915:  Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T.  Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963); Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), xi–​xxi; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent:  The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–​ 1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 185–​230. 17. James R. Grossman, Land of Hope:  Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1989), 80–​81; Alan Douglas DeSantis, “Selling the American Dream:  The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915–​1919” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1993), 1–​30, 83–​115; Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 1–​16. 18. Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Who Set You Flowin’?”:  The African-​American Migration Narrative (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1995), 5; Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, 1–​16, 223–​432; Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes, 5–​9, 244; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal:  Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–​1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11–​52; Grossman, Land of Hope, 123–​245. The 1919 riot began when a young African American bather found himself too close to an area designated a “white beach” on the South Side of Chicago. Five days of violent encounters between black and white Chicagoans resulted in a staggering number of casualties:  seven black men died at the hands of police officers, another sixteen blacks and fifteen whites had been killed by mobs or other individuals, and over 500 Chicagoans were injured. Despite the trauma of the “red summer of 1919,” most African Americans chose to remain in Chicago rather than to return home to the South. The most thorough study of the riot remains William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1970). On the changing nature of marriage, courtship, and sexuality, see Gallon, “Between Respectability and Modernity,” especially 1–​14. Christina Simmons, “Modern Marriage for African Americans, 1920–​ 1940,” Canadian Review of American Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 273–​300. 19. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, November 5, 1921, 5. For examples of penmanship analysis, see “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, January 19, 1924, 5, and March 29, 1924, 8. On denouncing astrology: “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, June 11, 1921, 5. On endorsing Christianity:  “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 15, 1924, 8. 20. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, April 30, 1921, 5.

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Notes to pages 97–106

183

21. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, September 24, 1921, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 20, 1927, 8. 22. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1921, 5. 23. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1921, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, January 12, 1924, 5. 24. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 16, 1921, 5. 25. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 9, 1927, 5. 26. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 15, 1924, 8. 27. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 22, 1924, 8. On the dual racial and gender struggles of African American women, see Brown, “Womanist Consciousness,” 610–​633; Tera W. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom:  Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1997), 44–​ 186; White, Too Heavy a Load, 13–​141. On the black family in post–​Civil War American, see Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–​1925 (New  York:  Pantheon Books, 1976); Michele Mitchell, “Silences Broken. Silences Kept: Gender and Sexuality in African American History,” Gender & History 11, no. 3 (November 1999): 433–​444; Simmons, “Modern Marriage for African Americans,” 273–​300. 28. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 1924, 9; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 1, 1924, 8. 29. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 1, 1924, 8. 30. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, September 10, 1921, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, June 11, 1921, 5. 31. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, June 18, 1921, 5. 32. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 20, 1921, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, January 19, 1924, 5. 33. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 9, 1924, 8. 34. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 9, 1927, 5. 35. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 27, 1927, 10; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 23, 1924, 9. 36. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, May 14, 1921, 5. 37. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 13, 1927, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, June 4, 1921, 4. 38. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 20, 1927, 8; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 15, 1930, 6. 39. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 9, 1927, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, April 5, 1924, 8. 40. Kim Gallon has examined how black newspapers became sites of debate about sexual behavior and sexualized public depictions. Mysteria’s column served as one of several sites within the newspaper where black readers could debate the changing nature of sex and sexuality in modern society—​and its role both within the black

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Notes to pages 106–117

community and outside of it. Gallon, “From Respectability to Modernity,” 1–​61, especially  1–​13. 41. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 15, 1924, 8; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1921, 5. 42. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 23, 1927, 5; White, Too Heavy a Load, 110–​141. 43. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 9, 1924, 8. 44. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 23, 1927, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921, 5. 45. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1921, 5. 46. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 15, 1930, 6. 47. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, February 9, 1924, 8; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 22, 1924, 8. 48. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, August 13, 1927, 5; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, July 16, 1927, 5. Anastasia Carol Curwood, Stormy Weather: Middle-​Class African American Marriages between the Two World Wars (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 1–​158. 49. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, March 8, 1924, 8; “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” Chicago Defender, September 3, 1927, 5. 50. “PRINCESS MYSTERIA,” Chicago Defender, August 25, 1923. Bernard L. Peterson Jr., A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage Works by, about or involving African Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 51; Untitled ad, Amsterdam News, September 8, 1926, 11; “Calvin’s Weekly Diary of the New York Show World,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 25, 1926, 10. 51. “Princess Mysteria Pens Last ‘Advice to the Wise,’” Chicago Defender, March 22, 1930, 1; “Princess Mysteria Buried after Impressive Services,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 29, 1930, 16. 52. Ruby Marie Wilson, “Princess Mysteria,” Chicago Defender, April 26, 1930, 14. C h a p t er   5 1. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 29, 1924, 20. 2. The use of the term “columnite” to describe a regular reader-​contributor is not unique to the Detroit News column. The earliest use of the word that I have found was in the Boston Globe’s “Household Department” in 1904. No other column, however, employed the term so regularly and incorporated it into the newspaper’s vernacular more thoroughly than “Experience.” “Household Department,” Boston Globe, June 14, 1904, 10. 3. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 25, 1919, 15. 4. The question of the column’s veracity prompts an inevitable question: how can we be certain that columnist Nancy Brown did not fabricate the columnites’ letters?

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Notes to pages 117–120

185

Over the 1920s and 1930s, the column featured hundreds of regular columnites, each of whom maintained complex relationships with many other “Experience” correspondents, employed particular writing styles, and addressed their own life stories or “pet” subjects. It would have been nearly impossible for Brown, even with her staff of assistants, to keep track of the labyrinthine relationships carried on in the column. Though no handwritten letters from columnites exist in Nancy Brown’s archival papers, I have been able to identify one contributor. “Hibiscus,” who wrote several letters to “Experience” in 1939 and 1940, was actually Brownie Wise, who would go on to serve as the vice president of sales for the Tupperware Company during the 1950s. See Brownie Wise Collection, #509, Series I, Boxes 1 and 32, Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 5. Experience ad, Detroit News, April 17, 1919, 25; Experience ad, Detroit News, April 18, 1919, 25. 6. William W. Lutz, The News of Detroit: How a Newspaper and a City Grew Together (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 3–​16; Gerald Baldasty, E. W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers (Champaign:  University of Illinois Press, 1999), especially  1–​8. 7. Lutz, The News of Detroit, 26. 8. On the expansion of corporate newspapers in the mid-​and late twentieth century, see James L. Baughman, “Wounded but Not Slain:  The Orderly Retreat of the American Newspaper,” in A History of the Book in America, Volume Five, ed. David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 119–​134. 9. Mrs. J. E. Leslie, scrapbook, “Editorials . . . Vol. 1, 1918–​1919,” Nancy Brown Papers, Box 5, Folder 1, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, MA (hereafter MHC). In her scrapbooks, Leslie’s first editorial is dated July 8, 1918. Lutz, The News of Detroit, 111; Margaret Culley, “Sob-​Sisterhood: Dorothy Dix and the Feminist Origins of the Advice Column,” Southern Studies 16, no. 2 (1997): 201–​210. 10. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 24, 1919, 14. The column went from a weekly to a twice weekly on June 4, 1919; on June 12, 1919, the News made “Experience” a daily column, minus Sunday; by June 18, 1919 it took up almost a page of the Women’s Section. By October 19, 1919, “Experience” expanded into the Sunday edition as well. 11. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 17, 1919, 14; M. E., “Experience,” Detroit News, June 12, 1919, 14; Disappointed, “Experience,” Detroit News, August 23, 1919, 14; Just a Man, “Experience,” Detroit News, September 12, 1919, 28; Katie, “Experience,” Detroit News, May 24, 1919, 14; Ella and A Dream Girl, “Experience,” Detroit News, August 15, 1919, 27. 12. “In the effort to cope and make [their lives] meaningful,” Warren Susman argued, people living in a world of rapid modern change “create culture, a set of forms, patterns, symbols with which to deal with experience.” The “Experience”

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Notes to pages 120–130

community did just that by crafting a narrative of the lonely urban lifestyle. Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 185. 13. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 8, 1919, 28–​29; “Experience,” Detroit News, December 23, 1919, 22; “No Faith—​No Hope,” Detroit News, January 12, 1921, 23. 14. “Experience,” Detroit News, June 23, 1919, 20. 15. “Experience,” Detroit News, September 25, 1919, 24. David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 228. 16. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 13, 1919, 29; “Experience,” Detroit News, January 25, 1921, 21. 17. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 11, 1921, 22. 18. “Quaffed a Poison Draught Because She Had No Boy Friend,” Detroit News, January 8, 1930, 26; “Experience,” Detroit News, January 3, 1924, 28. 19. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 10, 1924, 28. 20. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 11, 1919, 15; “Experience,” Detroit News, October 13, 1919, 21; “Experience,” Detroit News, October 19, 1919, section 4, 16. Brown insisted that she could not give out letter writers’ addresses to each other. Instead, she suggested contributors attend the Get Acquainted Club meetings in hopes that they would meet their column friends. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 30, 1919, 27. 21. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 1, 1921, 11; “Experience,” Detroit News, February 18, 1924, 24. 22. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 6, 1920, reprinted in Nancy Brown, ed., Experience: Pages from Lives of Busy Men and Women (Detroit: The Detroit News, 1932), 13–​14; “Experience,” Detroit News, February 7, 1924, 34. 23. “Experience,” Detroit News, February 7, 1924, 34; “Experience,” Detroit News, February 23, 1921, 27. 24. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 30, 1921, 10; “Experience,” Detroit News, January 4, 1927, 28; “Experience,” Detroit News, November 2, 1930, section 3, 14. 25. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 17, 1930, 36. 26. “Experience,” Detroit News, March 3, 1930, 28; “Experience,” Detroit News, November 3, 1930, 28, 31. 27. Beatrice Plumb, “Nancy Brown and Her Acres of Friends,” Christian Herald, April 1936, 12–​14, 43, Nancy Brown Papers, Box 12, Folder 1, MHC. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 6, 1930, 28. 28. “Experience,” Detroit News, February 18, 1930, 20; “Experience,” Detroit News, February 22, 1930, 8; “Experience,” Detroit News, March 23, 1930, section 3, 14. 29. “Experience,” Detroit News, March 22, 1930, 8. 30. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 19, 1930; quote from “Experience,” Detroit News, October 6, 1930, 28.

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Notes to pages 130–140

187

31. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 6, 1930, 26; “Experience,” Detroit News, January 10, 1930, 32. 32. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 15, 1930, 28. 33. “Experience,” Detroit News, May 29, 1929, reprinted in Nancy Brown, ed., Experience: Pages from Lives of Busy Men and Women, 183–​185. 34. “Experience,” Detroit News, February 3, 1930, 28; February 16, 1930, section 3, 16; “Experience,” Detroit News, October 28, 1930, 28. 35. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 20, 1932, reprinted from Brown, “Dear Nancy,” 112–​115. 36. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 3, 1930, 44. The donkey, a 1927 bronze sculpture by Renée Sintenis, is still part of the DIA’s collection. 37. W. R. Valentiner was the longtime director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and one of the country’s premier arts administrators. 38. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 27, 1930, 24. 39. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 7, 1930, 46; “Experience,” Detroit News, November 9, 1930, women’s section, 8; “Experience,” Detroit News, November 3, 1930, 28. 40. “Experience,” Detroit News, October 30, 1930, 32. 41. “30,000 Attend Column Party,” Detroit News, November 15, 1930, 1. 42. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 17, 1930, 24. 43. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 19, 1930, 22. 44. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 20, 1930, 34. On romantic ads in nineteenth-​ century newspapers, see Pamela Epstein, “Selling Love: The Commercialization of Intimacy in America, 1860–​1910” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2010). 45. “Experience,” Detroit News, November 22, 1930, 12. 46. “Everybody Came to Nancy Brown’s Party,” Detroit News promotional mailer, circa 1930, Brown Collection, Series IV, Box 12, Folder 4, MHC. Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 1–​22. 47. Beatrice Plumb, “Nancy Brown and Her Acres of Friends,” Christian Herald, April 1936, 12–​14, 43, Nancy Brown Papers, Box 12, Folder 1, MHC; “Dear Nancy,” Time, December 16, 1935; “Bells for Nancy,” Time, November 13, 1939; Clyde H. Burroughs, “Portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Rembrandt Peale,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts of the City of Detroit (December 1935): 39–​41. 48. Plumb, “Nancy Brown and Her Acres of Friends,” 12–​14. 49. Peace Carillon Rotogravure Insert, Detroit News, June 16, 1940, from Nancy Brown Papers, Series IV, Box 12, Folder 4, MHC; George W. Stark, “30,000 of Nancy’s Folk Sing Hymns at Sunrise,” Detroit News, June 18, 1934, 1; “Experience,” Detroit News, June 18, 1934, 22. Later, the Detroit Police confirmed the crowds to be much closer to 50,000. 50. “Experience,” Detroit News, June 18, 1934, 22.

18

188

Notes to pages 141–149

51. On Detroit in the 1930s, see Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 17–​31; Herb Boyd, Black Detroit:  A People’s History of Self-​Determination (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 127–​174. 52. George W. Stark, “30,000 of Nancy’s Folk Sing at Sunrise,” Detroit News, June 18, 1934, 1; “Experience,” Detroit News, June 18, 1934, 22; Nancy Brown, “Story of Myself and the Carillon Tower,” Detroit News, December 11, 1939, newspaper insert from Nancy Brown Papers, Series IV, Box 12, Folder 1, MHC; “Bells for Nancy,” Time, November 13, 1939. The Detroit News itself very publicly opted out of donating a significant amount of money to the project, arguing that it would “rob other contributors of a degree of the glory that was due to them” in the grassroots generation of funds they had undertaken throughout the 1930s. Later, publisher Scripps donated a set of bronze doors to the carillon. 53. “Built for Peace amid War,” Detroit News, December 8, 1941, editorial page. From Nancy Brown Papers, Series II, Box 12, Folder 2, MHC; George W. Stark, “Peace Tower Is Clear of Debt; Dedication Is Held Quietly,” Detroit News, December 8, 1941, Nancy Brown Papers, Series II, Box 12, Folder 2, MHC. 54. “Bells Unveiled,” Time, June 24, 1940; “Experience,” Detroit News, June 17, 1940, 16. 55. “Experience,” Detroit News, January 31, 1942, 11. Christmas card, Annie Brown Leslie to Sarah French Lee, n.d., circa 1945, Nancy Brown Papers, Series III, Box 12, Folder 3, MHC (emphasis in original). 56. Lutz, The News of Detroit, 123; “Experience,” Detroit News, October 12, 1948, 18. 57. Excerpts, Detroit News employment records, Detroit News Archives, Detroit, Michigan. “Last Column Ends 66  years of Advice,” Detroit News, March 29, 1985, B 2–​1. 58. See, for example, Tim Berners-​ Lee with Mark Fischetti, Weaving the Web:  The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), vii. C o n c lus i o n 1. Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1962, orig. 1933), 6. 2. Letter, Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer to Mrs. [Bee] Huntington Patch, June 15, 1945, from the Dorothy Dix Collection, Dorothy Dix Collection, Box 8, Folder 1, part  3, Austin Peay State University Special Collections, Clarksville, TN; “The Soldiers Told Beatrice Fairfax,” Pic Magazine, June 23, 1942, 40–​42, from the Marie Manning Collection, Series I, Box 2, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 3. Jan Pottker and Bob Speziale, Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), 102–​146.

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Notes to pages 150–155

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4. Charles Ponce de Leon, Self-​ Exposure:  Human Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890–​1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 1–​41. 5. Paul O’Neil, “Twin Lovelorn Advisors Torn Asunder by Success,” Life 44, no. 8 (April 7, 1958): 100. 6. Joel Pfister and Nancy Schnog, Inventing the Psychological:  Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 167–​213. 7. James L. Baughman, “Wounded but Not Slain:  The Orderly Retreat of the American Newspaper,” in A History of the Book in America, ed. David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 122–​123. 8. O’Neil, “Twin Lovelorn Advisors Torn Asunder by Success,” 100; David Gudelunas, Confidential to America: Newspaper Advice Columns and Sexual Education (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 129. 9. Richard Weiner, “An Ode to Ann Landers and Dear Abby,” Public Relations Quarterly 47, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 7–​14. 10. Johnny Ryan, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 11–​ 119; Tim Berners-​ Lee with Mark Fischetti, Weaving the Web:  The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web (New  York:  HarperCollins, 1999), 1–​89; John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet (New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 13–​45. 11. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electric Frontier (Boston: Addison-​Wesley, 1993), 2–​4; Katie Hafner, “The Epic Saga of the WELL,” Wired Magazine, May 1, 1997, accessed April 9, 2018, https://​www.wired.com/​ 1997/​05/​ff-​well/​; Ryan, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future,  74–​87. 12. Contributor #2, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 28, 2018. 13. Felicia Wu Song, Virtual Communities:  Bowling Alone, Online Together (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2009), 1–​120; Marc Andrejevic, “Watching Television without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans,” Television and New Media 9, no. 1 ( January 2008): 24–​46; Contributor #7, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, April 12, 2018. 14. Leslie Regan Shade, “Gender and the Commodification of Community: Women. com and gURL.com,” in Andrew Feenberg and Darin Barney, eds., Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 143–​160; Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 1–​ 184; Katie Allen, “It’s Arrived: The Feminisation of the Net,” Guardian, August 23, 2007, accessed April 26, 2018, https://​www.theguardian.com/​media/​2007/​aug/​ 23/​digitalmedia.radio; Mia Consalvo, “Selling the Internet to Women: The Early

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Notes to pages 155–159

Years,” in Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency and Identity, ed. Mia Consalvo and Susanna Paasonen (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 111–​138. 15. Jose van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity:  A Critical History of Social Media (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2013), 45–​ 88; Christian Fuchs, Social Media:  A Critical Introduction (London:  Sage, 2017), 182–​250; Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 185–​215. Contributor #3, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 26, 2018. 16. Contributor #4, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 12, 2018. Hafner, “The Epic Saga of the WELL.” 17. Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 45–​97; Minh-​Ha T. Pham, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2015), 129–​191. Andrejevic, “Watching Television without Pity,” 24–​46; David Hesmondhalgh, “User-​Generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries,” Ephemera 10, nos. 3–​4 (2010): 267–​284. 18. Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 152–​184. 19. Hesmondhalgh, “User-​ Generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries,” 267–​284; Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 45–​97; Pham, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet, 167–​191. 20. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New  York:  Simon & Schuster, 2001), 15–​28; 148–​180; Sherry Turkle, Alone Together:  Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New  York:  Basic Books, 2011), 1–​ 20; Claude S. Fischer, “The Loneliness Scare:  Isolation Isn’t a Growing Problem,” The Boston Review, April 23, 2012, accessed April 14, 2018, http://​bostonreview.net/​Fischer-​loneliness-​modern-​ culture; Contributor #9, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, April 13, 2018. 21. Contributor #3, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 26, 2018; Contributor #9, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, April 13, 2018. 22. Contributor #5, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 28, 2018; Contributor #2, “Online Communities Questionnaire,” administered by author, March 28, 2018.

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206

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Index

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Figures are indicated by italic f. Abbott, Robert S., 87–​89, 92–​93 abortion, 106, 107–​8, 109 adoption, 81 advertising endorsements, 49–​50, 51f female market, 3 newspaper ads in trade journals, 15–​18, 17f, 166n.13, 167–​68n.21 advice black feminist tradition, 86–114 meanings, 22–53 advice columnists, 6–​7, 54. see also specific columnists by name as celebrities, 60 behind-​the-​scenes tasks,  79–​83 daily schedules, 79–​80 mail sorting practices, 79–​80 men, 172n.2 professional emergence, 56–​61 public personas, 61–​79, 89–​94, 96 research,  80–​83 self-​branding,  61–​79 successors,  84–​85 women,  56–​79 advice columns, 2–​3, 22. see also specific columns

in African American newspapers, 86–114 birth of, 9–21 cultural purpose, 22–53 history of, 3–​5 interactive exchanges, 21, 39–​40, 45–​46,  109–​10 key traits, 20 legacy, 52–​53, 147 letters sent to, 79–​80, 95, 119–​22, 138, 168n.3 local, 21, 151 “lovelorn,” 21, 24–​25, 119, 157 medical, 49, 172n.2 newspaper, 9–21 niche, 157 online or Internet-​based, 153–​59 power of, 23–​24 precedents,  10–​13 as public forum, 5–​7, 23–​24, 106, 183–​84n.40 readers, 22–53, 162n.5 regular reader-​contributors (columnites), 115–​16, 118–​21, 124–​34, 156, 184n.2, 184–​85n.4, 186n.20

208

208

Index

advice columns (cont.) retractions, 81 as social safety nets, 48 standardized responses to popular questions,  79–​80 syndicated, 151, 152, 167n.19 topics of concern, 5–​7, 24–​32, 49, 119–​20,  157–​58 “Advice to the Lovelorn” column (Fairfax), 29–​30, 73, 164n.13, 168n.23, 168n.2 birth and establishment, 18–​19, 62 on budgeting and money management,  47–​48 on courtship and marriage, 28–​29, 34–​ 35, 36–​37, 40–​41,  47–​48 on housekeeping and motherhood,  75–​76 on modern women, 68 on personal upkeep, 49 on women’s rights, 70–​72, 79 “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” column (Princess Mysteria), 86–​ 87, 114, 151, 156, 164n.13, 180n.4, 183–​84n.40 on abortion, 107–​8 on astrology, 96 audience, 112 criticism of neglectful husbands, 103 on extended families, 98–​99 featured letters, 95 financial advice, 104–​5 on homosexuality, 106–​7 last installment, 112, 148 on marriage and relationships, 95, 96–​105,  108–​9 messages and meanings, 94–​112 no-​kissing policy, 97 reader exchanges, 109–​10 on respectable behavior and familial authority,  99–​100 on sexual assault, 106, 108

African Americans advice columns, 32, 169n.17. see also specific columns black family, 95, 183n.27 black feminist advice tradition, 86–114 black modernity, 32, 86–​87, 180n.1 conduct books, 11 enslaved, 65–​67, 103–​4, 175–​76n.27 newspaper customers, 4 newspapers, 4, 86–114, 163–​64n.12, 169n.17, 180n.2 see also specific papers racism towards, 17–​18, 23, 31–​32, 34–​35, 52–​53, 65–​67, 81–​82, 87, 88f, 95, 179n.60, 183n.27 respectability and uplift, 94–​95, 99–​100, 182n.16 in trade journal newspaper ads, 17–​18 urban life, 32, 86–​87, 169n.17 women, 17–​18, 95, 183n.27 afternoon editions, 4 Alaskan Indians, 52 Ali, Noble Drew, 92–​94, 94f Am I The Asshole (AITA) forum, 1 Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (Shriners),  92–​93 “Ann Landers” column (syndicated), 149–​52,  157 anonymity, 2, 115–146, 155–​56 The ArtBlog, 157 Asian mysticism, 92–​93 “Ask Dave” column, 157 “Ask Polly” column, 157 Associated Press, 167n.19 astrology, 93–​94, 96, 182n.19 Athenian Mercury,  10–​11 Babble parenting blog, 154–​55 BabyCenter,  154–​55 Baltimore News,  17–​18 beauty standards, 50–​52 beauty tips, 49, 52

209

Index Belle Isle Park Nancy Brown Peace Carillon, 141–​43, 142f, 144f, 188n.52 Sunrise Vigils, 138–​42, 148 Berners-​Lee, Tim, 153 “Bintl Brief “ (Cahan), 172n.2 birth control, 34–​35 Black, Winifred, 59–​60 black Americans. see African Americans black feminism, 86–114, 180n.4 Bly, Nellie, 14, 58–​59, 59f, 60–​61, 165–​66n.9, 173n.11, 174n.12 Bogart, Humphrey, 150 Boston Globe, 7 “Confidential Chat” column, 5–​6, 21, 31, 39–​40, 45–​46, 151, 164n.13, 166–​67n.17,  168n.2 “Household Department,” 45–​46, 168n.22, 184n.2 Brand, Stewart, 153–​54 Brilliant, Larry, 153–​54 Brisbane, Arthur, 73 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 51f Brown, Nancy (pen name), 151. see also Leslie, Annie Brown as Column Mother, 115–​16 “Experience” column, 1–​2, 5–​6, 25–​28, 31–​32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 46–​47, 50–​53, 63, 67, 68–​69, 115–​17, 118f, 118–​34, 138, 151, 156, 164n.13, 168n.2, 169n.16, 174n.17, 184n.2, 184–​85n.4, 185n.10, 186n.20 Nancy Brown Peace Carillon, 141–​43, 142f, 144f, 188n.52 philanthropy in honor of, 138 retirement, 143, 144–​45 Brownstoner, 156 Buddhism,  92–​93 budgeting,  46–​48 Cahan, Abraham, 172n.2 cancer survivors, 159

209

capitalism, media, 33 career women. see working women Cavalieri, Lina, 20 Cedarbaum, David, 140 celebrity culture, 2–​3, 6–​7, 55, 60–​79 Chicago, Illinois, 86–​87 1919 Chicago Race Riot, 95–​96, 182n.18 black population, 95 Moorish Science Temple, 92–​93 Chicago Daily News, 7, 36, 48 Household Forum (Holmes), 164n.13 “Replies” column (Holmes), 36, 43, 45–​46, 48, 168n.2 Chicago Defender, 11–​12, 86–​89, 90–​92, 93–​94, 163–​64n.12 “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” column (Princess Mysteria), 86–​ 87, 88–​89, 94–​114, 148, 151, 156, 164n.13, 180n.4, 183–​84n.40 circulation, 88–​89, 180n.3 Chicago News, 43 Chicago School of Sociology, 86–​87 Chicago Sun-​Times, 149 Chicago Tribune,  24–​25 Child Welfare League of America, 81 childcare, 81 children, 44 out of wedlock, 107–​8 raising, 41–​42, 45, 80–​81 Children’s Bureau, 57–​58, 79, 80–​81,  173n.8 Chowhound, 157 Christian Herald, 138 Christianity, 96, 182n.19 classism, 41–​42,  50–​52 Cobb, Irvin S., 174n.14 Colliers, 54 “columnite” (term), 184n.2 columnites (regular reader-​contributors), 115–​16, 118–​21, 124–​34, 156, 184n.2, 184–​85n.4, 186n.20

210

210

Index

commercialization, 13–​14, 161n.3 community(-​ies). see also specific advice columns anonymous, 2, 115–146, 155–​56 online,  153–​59 of readers, 2, 6, 44, 48, 52–​53, 109–​10, 115–146, 153–​59, 162n.9 virtual, 6, 44, 48, 52–​53, 109–​10, 115–146, 153–​59, 162n.9 companionate marriage, 32–​34, 38, 169–​70n.18 Comstock, Anthony, 68 conduct books, 10–​13 “Confidential Chat” column (Boston Globe), 5–​6, 21, 31, 39–​40, 45–​46, 151, 164n.13, 166–​67n.17, 168n.2 cooking, 81 corporate newspapers, 118–​19, 151–​52,  185n.8 courtship advice, 24–​39, 40–​41, 47–​48, 49, 96–​105, 108–​9, 182n.18 Croly, Jane Cunningham, 57 Crowley, Ruth, 149 Cullen, Walter A., 82 cultural archetypes, 27 The Cut, 156–​57 dating. see courtship “Dear Abby” column (syndicated), 149–​52 “Dear Prudence” column (syndicated), 157 “Dear Sugar” column, 157 Des Moines Evening Tribune, 80 Detroit, Michigan, 52 Nancy Brown Peace Carillon (Belle Isle Park), 141–​43, 142f, 144f, 188n.52 postwar, 188n.51 Detroit Institute of Arts collections to purchase works of art, 138 “Experience” party, 134–​40, 136f, 139f

Detroit News “20th Century or Victorian Age?” (Leslie),  68–​69 ad for “Experience Column” questions, 117, 118f circulation, 116–​17, 118 content,  118–​19 contribution to Nancy Brown Peace Carillon (Belle Isle Park), 188n.52 “Do You Remember?” (Leslie), 67 “Experience” column (Brown), 1–​2, 5–​6, 25–​28, 31–​32, 34, 50–​52, 63, 67, 68–​69, 115–146, 151, 164n.13, 168n.2, 169n.16 “Mother’s Scrap Book” (Leslie), 67 ownership,  117–​19 discrimination, 52–​53. see also race and racism diversity, 18, 23, 166n.15 divorce, 32–​33, 36, 38, 40–​41, 101–​2, 169–​70n.18 Dix, Dorothy (pen name), 151. see also Gilmer, Elizabeth Meriwether copyright ownership, 62–​63 “Dorothy Dix Talks” column (syndicated), 5–​7, 25–​27, 30–​31, 32–​34, 37–​39, 40–​43, 44, 46, 49–​52, 59–​60, 68–​70, 148–​49, 164n.13, 168n.2 endorsements, 49–​50, 51f “Mirandy” column, 87, 88f domestic violence, 38 “Dorothy Dix Talks” column (syndicated), 5–​7, 25, 30–​31, 59–​60, 164n.13, 168n.2 on childrearing, 41–​42, 44 on courtship and marriage, 32–​34, 37–​ 39, 40–​41, 49 on housewifery, 44 on modern women, 27, 68 on money management, 46 on personal upkeep, 49–​50

21

Index on unplanned pregnancies, 148–​49 on woman’s behavior, 50–​52 on women’s rights, 69–​70 on working women, 42–​43, 44 Dorr, Rheta Childe, 57 Drew, Timothy, 92–​93 Dunton, John, 10 Editor and Publisher, 7, 18 endorsements,  49–​50 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 70, 176n.35 ethnicity,  52–​53 etiquette, 12, 49, 50–​52, 166–​67n.17 Everybody’s Magazine,  72–​73 Everyday Should Be Saturday (EDSBS) community blog and forum, 154, 158 “Experience” column (Brown), 1–​2, 5–​6, 34, 35, 68–​69, 151, 168n.2, 169n.16, 174n.17, 184n.2 advice for loneliness, 120–​21 annual compilations of letters, 138 after Brown’s retirement, 144–​45 on budgeting and money management, 47 Carillon Fund, 141, 143 “Column Children Sketched from Life” (Kitten), 130f Column Family community, 115–​42, 130f, 145 contributors and columnites, 115–​16, 118–​21, 124–​34, 156, 184–​85n.4, 186n.20 on courtship and marriage, 25–​28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 119–​21, 122–​23 Detroit Institute of Art gala, 134–​40, 136f, 139f on etiquette, 50–​52 expansion, 185n.10 on extramarital affairs, 27–​28 Friendly Fund, 138 Get-​Acquainted Club,  124–​25

211 launch, 116–​17, 119 letters about loneliness, 119–​24 Nancy Brown Peace Carillon, 141–​43, 142f, 144f, 188n.52 Sunrise Vigils, 138–​42, 148 topics of concern, 119–​20

Facebook, 129, 155, 158, 159 Fairfax, Beatrice (pen name), 72, 151. see also Manning Gasch, Marie “Advice to the Lovelorn” column (syndicated), 18–​19, 28–​30, 34–​35, 36–​37, 40–​41, 47–​48, 49, 62, 68, 70–​72, 73, 75–​76, 79, 164n.13, 168n.23, 168n.2 copyright ownership, 62–​63 letters sent to, 168n.3 “Playing with Fire,” 28–​29 family life black families, 95, 183n.27 childrearing, 41–​42, 45, 80–​81 extended families, 98–​99 familial authority, 99–​100 post–​Civil War, 95, 183n.27 fashion, 49 Faulkner, Frances, 79–​80 feminism,  49–​50 black, 86–114, 180n.4 intersectional, 89, 114 second-​wave,  56 white,  34–​35 financial advice, 46–​48, 104–​5 “First Aid to Broken Hearts” column (Libbey), 168n.2 “First Aid to Injured Hearts” column (Libbey), 156, 164n.13 Florence Crittenton Home, 81–​82 foreign-​language newspapers, 18 Frazier, E. Franklin, 86–​87 Freemasonry,  92–​93 Friedan, Betty, 36–​37 Friendster, 155

21

212

Index

Gasch, Herman E., 75, 177–​78n.47 Gasch, Manning, 76, 178n.48 Gasch, Oliver, 75–​76, 177n.44, 178n.48 gender politics, 68, 179n.60, 183n.27 gender roles, 44 Gibson Girl, 28f Gilmer, Elizabeth Meriwether (Dorothy Dix), 54–​56, 59–​65, 77f, 84–​85, 148 age, 178n.51 on childrearing, 41–​42, 44 on courtship and marriage, 32–​34, 37–​ 39, 40–​41, 49 daily schedule, 79–​80 death,  148–​49 on Dorothy Dix, 72 “Dorothy Dix Talks” column (syndicated), 5–​7, 25–​27, 30–​31, 32–​34, 37–​39, 40–​43, 44, 46, 49–​52, 59–​60, 68–​70, 148–​49, 164n.13, 168n.2 endorsements, 49–​50, 51f on housewifery, 44 marketing,  72–​73 “Mirandy” column, 87, 88f on modern women, 27, 68 on money management, 46 on personal upkeep, 49–​50 private life, 62–​66, 76–​79 professional career, 62–​63, 76–​79 public persona, 63–​67, 72, 76–​78, 84, 178n.51 racism, 65–​67, 87 staff, 79 “Sunday Salad” column, 68 on unplanned pregnancies, 81–​82,  148–​49 on woman’s behavior, 50–​52 on women’s rights, 69–​70 on working women, 42–​43, 44 Gilmer, George O., 76–​79 Godey’s Ladies Book, 12 government benefits, 80–​81, 82, 179n.60

Great Depression, 47–​48 Great Migration, 86–​87, 89–​90, 95 Greeley-​Smith, Nixola,  59–​60 Hale, Sarah Josepha, 12 hard news, 56 Harland, Marion, 20, 43 Harper’s, 75 Hax, Carolyn, 157 health topics, 49 Hearst, William Randolph, 59–​60, 62–​ 63, 165–​66n.9, 174n.15 Hen Coop, 18–​19, 19f Hill, Espanola, 89–​90 Hill, Frances, 89–​90 Hill, Joseph D., 89–​90 Hill, Vauleda, 89–​90, 113f Hollywood, 62 Holmes, Marion, 151 on budgeting and money management, 48 Household Forum (Chicago Daily News), 164n.13 “Replies” column (Chicago Daily News), 36, 43, 45–​46, 48, 168n.2 on working women, 43 home papers, 15, 38 homosexuality,  106–​7 “Household Department” (Boston Globe), 45–​46, 168n.22, 184n.2 Household Forum (Holmes), 164n.13 household forums, 21, 45–​46 household management, 44, 47, 56–​57, 171n.45 Howard, Margo, 157 humor, racist, 87 icons, advice columnists as, 54–85 immigrants, 4 Immigration and Naturalization Services, 81 Indianapolis News,  15–​17

213

Index Indianapolis Star, 16f industrialization, 5–​6,  13–​14 influencers, 130–​31,  156–​57 Instagram, 155, 156–​57 interactive media, 153–​59, 162n.5 Internet-​based communities, 8, 153–​59 interracial relationships, 31–​32 investigative journalism, 57 Islam,  92–​93 Jewish Americans, 31–​32 Jewish Daily Forward, 172n.2 Jewish newspapers, 18, 172n.2 Jezebel, 156 Jones, John George, 92–​93 journalism celebrity, 55 hard news, 56 investigative, 57 reform, 57 sob sister, 59–​60, 174n.14 soft news, 9, 56, 60, 172–​73n.5, 173n.6 stunt reporting, 58–​60 women in, 15, 19f, 54–85, 173n.6 yellow, 14, 56, 58, 165–​66n.9, 173n.11 June, Jenny, 25 Kerlin, Robert, 87 kissing and petting, 25–​27, 29, 30, 97 The Knot, 154–​55 Ladies’ Home Journal, 12 Ladies Now and Then (Manning),  74–​75 Landers, Ann (pen name), 149–​52, 157 Laurie, Annie (Winifred Black), 59–​60 Lederer, Esther Pauline “Eppie” (Ann Landers), 149–​52, 157 Lee, Jane, 143–​45 legislation maternalist, 57, 173n.8 New Deal, 48, 79, 81–​82, 179n.60

213

Leslie, Annie Brown (Nancy Brown), 6, 54–​56, 60–​65, 69f, 81–​82, 84–​85, 148, 174n.17, 174n.18, 177n.42 “20th Century or Victorian Age?,”  68–​69 on budgeting and money management,  46–​47 celebrity status, 119 on childrearing, 41–​42 on courtship and marriage, 25–​27, 34, 35, 37, 38 death,  143–​44 “Do You Remember?,” 67 editorials, 67 on etiquette, 50–​52 “Experience” column (Detroit News), 1–​2, 5–​6, 25–​28, 31–​32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 46–​47, 50–​53, 63, 67, 68–​69, 115–​17, 118f, 118–​34, 138, 151, 156, 164n.13, 168n.2, 169n.16, 174n.17, 184n.2, 184–​85n.4, 185n.10, 186n.20 on extramarital affairs, 27–​28 Get-​Acquainted Club, 124 on modern women, 68 “Mother’s Scrap Book,” 67 private life, 63–​64 public persona, 63–​65, 72, 73–​74, 84 retirement,  148–​49 on ways to lighten darker skin, 52 on woman’s behavior, 50–​52 on working women, 43–​44 writing style, 67 Leslie, Mrs. J. E. see Leslie, Annie Brown (Nancy Brown) letters to advice columnists, 79–​80, 168n.3 annual compilations, 138 correspondence from, 40 featured letters, 95 lonely letters, 119–​22 reasons readers write, 22–​23 sorting practices, 79–​80 letters to the editor, 10–​11

214

214

Index

Libbey, Laura Jean, 5–​6, 22–​23, 24–​25, 26f, 151 “First Aid to Broken Hearts” column (syndicated), 168n.2 “First Aid to Injured Hearts” column (syndicated), 156, 164n.13 on working women, 42–​43 Life magazine, 54, 150, 152 Literary Digest, 54 local columns, 21, 151 loneliness, 115–146 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 138 Lost Cause, 65, 175n.23 Lost Generation, 121, 158 “lovelorn” (term), 168n.23 “lovelorn” columns, 21, 24–​25, 119, 157 Lux detergent, 49–​50, 51f Makeup Alley, 154–​55 male advice columnists, 172n.2 Man Repeller, 154–​55 Manchester, Harland F., 18 Mandel, Tom, 6, 153–​54 Manning Gasch, Marie (Beatrice Fairfax), 5–​6, 19f, 54–​56, 60–​65, 71f, 83–​85, 148, 176n.35 “Advice to the Lovelorn” column (syndicated), 18–​19, 28–​30, 34–​35, 36–​37, 40–​41, 47–​48, 49, 62, 68, 70–​72, 73, 75–​76, 79, 164n.13, 168n.23, 168n.2 advocacy,  83–​84 age, 178n.51 on budgeting and money management,  47–​48 correspondence with War and Navy Departments,  82–​83 on courtship and marriage, 28–​29, 34–​ 35, 36–​37, 40–​41,  47–​48 death,  148–​49 financial difficulties, 62–​63, 75–​76, 177–​78n.47

on housekeeping and motherhood,  75–​76 Ladies Now and Then,  74–​75 mail sorting practices, 79–​80 on modern women, 68 on personal upkeep, 49 “Playing with Fire,” 28–​29 private life, 62–​63, 64–​65, 74–​76 professional career, 57, 62–​63, 177n.44 public persona, 63–​65, 71–​72, 74, 76, 84, 178n.51 research, 80–​83, 84, 179n.63 staff assistant, 79 on women’s rights, 70–​72, 79 marriage advice on, 32–​36, 49, 80–​81, 95, 103, 170n.21 changing nature of, 95, 182n.18 companionate, 32–​34, 38, 169–​70n.18 extramarital affairs, 27–​28 modern, 38, 49 neglectful husbands, 103 soldiers’,  80–​81 matchmaking,  110–​11 maternalist legislation, 57, 173n.8 maternity options, 81 McCall’s, 54 McNaught Syndicate, 149 media interactive, 162n.5 social media platforms, 153–​59 media capitalism, 33 medical advice columns, 49, 172n.2 mentalism,  93–​94 Meriwether family, 175–​76n.27 Michigan State Forests, 138 military benefits, 82, 179n.63 Miller, Irvin C., 112 “Mirandy” column (Dix), 87, 88f misogyny, 148 Miss Lonelyhearts (West), 147–​48 “missed connections” ads, 137

215

Index Mitchison, Naomi, 34–​35 modern era, 28–​29, 37, 115, 162n.7, 169n.17 black modernity, 32, 86–​87, 180n.1 money management, 46–​48, 104–​5 monogamy, 35 Moorish Science Temple, 92–​93, 94f Morlock, Maud, 81–​82 motherhood, 42 muckrakers, 57, 58–​59 Muhammad, W. D. Fard, 92–​93 municipal housekeeping, 56–​57 Myspace, 155 Mysteria, Prince, 90, 91f, 91 Mysteria, Princess, 151. see also Strodder, Vauleda Hill on abortion, 107–​8 “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” column (Chicago Defender), 86–​87, 88–​89, 94–​112, 148, 151, 156, 164n.13, 183–​84n.40 on astrology, 96 on courtship and marriage, 96–​105,  108–​9 criticism of neglectful husbands, 103 death, 112–​14, 113f, 180n.4 educational activism, 106 on extended families, 98–​99 feminist worldview, 99–​100, 104–​6,  114 financial advice, 104–​5 on homosexuality, 106–​7 as matchmaker, 110–​11 no-​kissing policy, 97 public persona, 89–​94, 96 real name, 181n.5 on respectable behavior and familial authority,  99–​100 on sexual assault, 106, 108 stage career, 89–​94, 112 mysticism,  92–​93

215

Napster, 155 Nation of Islam, 92–​93 National Women’s Party, 70, 176n.35 nationalization, 5–​6, 13–​14, 167n.20 Nesbit, Evelyn, 59–​60 New Deal, 48, 79, 81–​82, 179n.60 New Era Club, 111 New Orleans Picayune, 68, 76–​77 New Woman, 27, 28f New York Daily Mirror, 90 New York Dramatic Mirror,  91–​92 New York Evening Journal, 14, 165–​66n.9 “Advice to the Lovelorn” column (Fairfax), 18–​19,  62–​63 woman’s department, 18–​19, 19f New York Freeman, 166–​67n.17 New York Herald, 57 New York Magazine,  156–​57 New York Sun,  15–​17 New York Times, 60, 165–​66n.9 New York Tribune, 57 New York World, 14, 58, 165–​66n.9, 166–​ 67n.17, 173n.11 newspapers. see also specific papers ads in trade journals, 15–​18, 17f, 166n.13, 167–​68n.21 advice columns, 9–21. see also specific columns, columnists African American, 4, 86, 163–​64n.12, 169n.17, 180n.2 afternoon editions, 4 chains,  151–​52 commercialization,  13–​14 corporate, 118–​19, 185n.8 early twentieth-​century, 166n.15 feminization of, 3 foreign-​language,  18 home papers, 15, 38 letters-​to-​the-​editor sections,  10–​11 question-​and-​answer columns,  10–​13 readership, 18, 166n.15 romantic ads, 187n.44

216

216 newspapers (cont.) rural, 167n.19 soft news features, 60 soft news sections, 9 startup costs, 13–​14 syndicates, 20, 167n.18, 167n.19 woman’s pages, 4–​5, 13–​18, 16f, 60, 166n.10, 166–​67n.17 yellow, 14, 56, 58, 165–​66n.9, 173n.11 niche columns, 157 Nicholson, Eliza Poitevent, 76–​77 nostalgia, 65, 175n.23 old-​fashioned girls,  27–​28 O’Neil, Paul, 150 online forums, 153–​59 “Our Children” (Patri), 172n.2 “Our Woman’s Department” (New York Freeman), 166–​67n.17 parenting, 41–​42, 45, 80–​81 Patri, Angelo, 172n.2 Patterson, Ada, 59–​60 pen names, 1–​2, 65 penmanship analysis, 182n.19 periodicals, 12 personal ads, 137 personal relationships advice on, 24–​53, 103 courtship, 24–​39, 40–​41, 47–​48, 49, 96–​105, 108–​9, 182n.18 divorce, 32–​33, 36, 38, 40–​41, 101–​2, 169–​70n.18 extramarital affairs, 27–​28 interracial,  31–​32 marriage, 32–​36, 38, 49, 80–​81, 95, 169–​70n.18, 170n.21, 182n.18 monogamy, 35 neglectful husbands, 103 parenting, 41–​42, 45, 80–​81 soldiers and their sweethearts, 121–​22 soldiers’ marriages, 80–​81

Index personal upkeep, 49–​50 petting,  28–​30 philanthropy, 138 Phillips, Jeanne, 152 Phillips, Pauline “Popo” (Abigail Van Buren),  149–​52 Pittsburgh Courier, 91 pluralism, 52–​53, 152 politicians, women, 13 pregnancy, unplanned, 81–​82, 148–​49 Prince,  158–​59 Printers’ Ink, 7, 15–​18, 17f professionalization, 45 Progressive Era, 2–​3, 45, 56–​61, 81–​82, 171n.46 public debate in advice columns, 5–​7, 23–​24, 183–​84n.40 about sex and sexuality, 106, 183–​84n.40 Public Ledger Syndicate, 79 Pulitzer, Joseph, 4, 59–​60, 165–​66n.9, 173n.11, 174n.15 question-​and-​answer columns,  10–​13 race and racism 1919 Chicago Race Riot, 95–​96, 182n.18 Dorothy Dix’s “Mirandy” columns, 87, 88f interracial relationships, 31–​32 in New Deal entitlements, 81–​82, 179n.60 in newspaper ads, 17–​18 respectability and racial uplift, 94–​95, 99–​100, 182n.16 segregation, 23, 31–​32, 81–​82, 95–​96 struggles of African American women, 81–​82, 95, 179n.60, 183n.27 white silence about, 31 white supremacy, 34–​35, 52–​53, 65–​67

217

Index readers of advice columns, 22–53, 81–​82, 162n.5 correspondence from. see letters to advice columnists interactive exchanges, 39–​40, 45–​46,  109–​10 newspaper readership, 18, 166n.15 reader-​contributors, 1–​2,  23–​24 reasons to write into advice columns,  22–​23 regular reader-​contributors (columnites), 115–​16, 118–​21, 124–​ 34, 156, 184n.2, 184–​85n.4, 186n.20 women, 9, 18, 162n.5 recipe exchanges, 21, 45 Red Summer of 1919 (Chicago), 95–​96, 182n.18 Reddit.com, 156 Am I The Asshole (AITA) forum, 1 Redditers, 1, 2 Subreddit threads, 129 reform journalism, 57 relationship advice. see personal relationships relativism, 35 Remember WENN, 154 “Replies” column (Holmes), 36, 43, 45–​ 46, 48, 168n.2 respectability, 94–​95, 99–​100, 169n.17, 182n.16 retractions, 81 Rheingold, Harold, 153–​54 The Ringer, 156–​57 Robertson, Stuart, 72 romance, 25, 122, 187n.44. see also personal relationships Ross, Ishbel, 15 The Rumpus, 157 rural newspapers, 167n.19 San Francisco Chronicle, 149 Sanger, Margaret, 34–​35

217

Saturday Evening Post, 75 Savage, Dan, 157 “Savage Love” column (Savage), 157 Schultz, Charles, 36 Scripps, E. W., 4, 117–​18, 188n.52 Scripps, James E., 117–​19 secularization,  122–​23 segregation, 23, 31–​32, 95–​96 self-​branding,  61–​79 self-​help programming,  52–​53 self-​made women,  63–​65 sentimental literature, 65, 175n.23 sex and sexual behavior, 148–​49 advice on, 106, 157, 183–​84n.40 changing nature of, 95–​96, 106, 182n.18, 183–​84n.40 homosexuality,  106–​7 kissing and petting, 25–​27, 29, 30, 97 premarital sex, 107–​8 public debate about, 106, 183–​84n.40 sexual frustration, 29–​30 sex education, 81, 108–​9 sexual assault, 106, 107–​9 Shriners,  92–​93 Sintenis, Renée, 187n.36 Slate, 157 slavery, 65–​67, 103–​4, 175–​76n.27 sob sisters, 59–​60, 174n.14 social media platforms, 153–​59 social services, 80–​81 soft news, 9, 56, 60, 172–​73n.5, 173n.6 soldiers and their sweethearts, 121–​22 soldiers’ marriages, 80–​81 Sprague, Besse Toulouse, 80 Stafford, Victoria, 72 Standard Oil, 57 stereotypes, 87, 88f. see also race and racism Strodder, Vauleda Hill, 89–​90, 113f. see also Mysteria, Princess stunt reporters, 58–​60 suffrage,  68–​69

218

218

Index

suicide, 123 “Sunday Salad” column (Gilmer), 68 Sunrise Vigils (Belle Isle Park), 138–​42,  148 support groups, 159 syndicated columns, 151, 152, 167n.19 syndicates, 20, 167n.18, 167n.19 “Table Manners” column, 157 Taoism,  92–​93 Tarbell, Ida, 57 technology,  13–​14 teen pregnancy, 81–​82 Television Without Pity, 154 Thaw, Harry, 59–​60 Thind, Bhagat Singh, 91–​92 Time magazine, 54, 138 tolerance, 152 Torrence, Olivia, 176n.35 trade journals: newspaper ads in, 15–​18, 17f, 166n.13, 167–​68n.21 Twitter, 155 United States advice columns and their readers, 2–​5, 22. see also specific columns divorce, 32–​33, 36, 38, 40–​41, 101–​2, 169–​70n.18 Great Depression, 47–​48 Great Migration, 86–​87, 89–​90, 95 maternalist legislation, 57, 173n.8 military benefits, 82 newspapers, 3, 166n.10, see also newspapers; specific papers, post–​Civil War, 95, 183n.27 urban, 162n.8 Urban League, 88–​89 urban life, 5–​6, 32, 86–​87, 162n.8, 169n.17 US Armed Forces, 80–​81 US Department of Agriculture, 81 US Navy Department, 82–​83

US Public Health Service, 81 US v. Bhagat Singh Thind,  91–​92 US War Department, 82–​83 Valentiner, W. R., 187n.37 Van Buren, Abigail (pen name), 149–​52 vaudeville,  93–​94 veracity, 184–​85n.4 Victorian gender politics, 68 violence domestic, 38 sexual assault, 106, 107–​9 virtual community(-​ies), 6, 44, 48, 52–​53, 109–​10, 115–146, 162n.9. see also specific advice columns Internet-​based,  153–​59 Virtual Tourist, 154 Walker, Madame C. J., 86–​87 Washington, Booker T., 89 Washington Post, 157 Web forums, 154 West, Nathanael, 147–​48 White, Stanford, 59–​60 white feminism, 34–​35, 68–​72 white supremacy, 34–​35, 52–​53, 65–​67 whiteness, 11, 32, 84, 91–​92 Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (“the WELL”), 6, 153–​56 Winslow, Helen M., 57 Wise, Brownie, 184–​85n.4 woman suffrage, 68–​71 woman’s pages, 4–​5, 13–​18, 16f, 60, 166n.10, 166–​67n.17 women in advertisements, 17–​18 advice columnists, 54–85 African American, 17–​18, 86–114, 183n.27 front page girls, 173n.6 in journalism, 15, 19f, 54–85, 173n.6 maternalist legislation, 57, 173n.8 modern, 27–​28, 35, 50–​52, 68

219

Index motherhood, 42, 45 New Woman, 27, 28f old-​fashioned girls,  27–​28 pregnant, 81–​82,  148–​49 self-​made,  63–​65 working, 15, 19f, 42–​44, 54–85, 171n.43, 173n.6 Women’s Lunatic Asylum (Blackwell’s Island), 58

219

women’s magazines, 10–​13, 60 women’s rights, 34–​35, 68–​71 working women, 42–​44, 171n.43 in journalism, 15, 19f, 54, 173n.6 World War II, 148–​49 World Wide Web, 153 yellow journalism, 14, 56, 58, 165–​66n.9, 173n.11

20