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Ok, onto the good stuff. Today’s news from July 20th, 1926 was littered with political corruption, resignations, the Aimee McPherson disappearance (spoiler alert she ‘abducted’ herself"), and even a graphic depiction of the Hall-Mills saga. Which, I’ve covered all of these before (go watch our videos on YouTube!), so to me much of it felt like old news. Luckily, I found something even better. First, a prediction so wrong I just couldn’t let it slide, and a “Beauty Doctor” that is just pure fun.
The Man Who Was Never Wrong
Halbert Gillette wasn't a crank. By 1926 he was a working engineer with a real reputation, and the papers introduced him as America's most trusted forecaster of the family pocketbook.
He'd built a chart tracking over a century of economic history, wars, gold rushes, wage levels, commodity prices, and from it he pulled a formula. It mixed Money, with wages, velocity of money exchanging hands, and production rates.
"W equals M X V, over P. Looks like some mystic incantation, doesn't it? But it isn't. That combination of figures and mixup of letters spells your bread and butter tomorrow."
His conclusion, delivered with total confidence:
"No panic is due. You may continue to run the family bus with full assurance that there will be enough at hand to meet the last payment whenever it falls due. We're in the pleasant grip of sustained prosperity."
The Springfield paper, running the same wire story three weeks later, added a detail the earlier printing left out. The reporter calls Gillette a man who "never has been wrong in his prosperity predictions," who "utters only facts supported by his unerring figures."
Three years after this ran, the American economy collapsed into the Great Depression.
In Fairness to Gillette
It feels worth saying, because it's true: this was not a man's whole career. Gillette trained as an engineer at Columbia, worked as a New York State engineer, ran a construction firm, and spent decades as one of the most prolific technical authors in American engineering. He wrote well over a dozen handbooks and reference works, on earthwork and excavation costs, road construction economics, cost accounting for contractors, construction management. His 1903 book on earthwork costs was reportedly praised for being genuinely well written, rare for an engineering manual. He later moved on to forecasting the weather using similar statistical methods. The economic prophecy that aged so badly was, by all evidence, a side project from a man who spent most of his working life getting the numbers right.
Elsewhere in the Papers: The Beauty Doctor
Some things need no modern mirror because nothing has changed at all.
The column ran like a real medical case file. Here it is in full:
"CONDITION — Rolls and pads of flesh below the waist about the hips and thighs.
DIAGNOSIS — This unwelcome addition to the anatomy threatens sedentary persons and those who travel via limousine. It requires to be worn down by more vigorous exercising than the ordinary amount of walking or dancing.
TREATMENT — Exercise, exercise, exercise. All kicking and stretching motions are helpful. Particularly this one: Stand with the feet firmly on the floor, then raise one foot, keeping the knee stiff, until your leg is at right angles with your body. Keep the heel of the other foot flat on the floor. Repeat this several times, then rest on the other foot and reverse the action. This makes life so strenuous for the fat cells they just call quits."
"Threatens... those who travel via limousine" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. So is "the fat cells just call quits."
See you tomorrow. – Chris
Sources
Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, July 20, 1926
The Springfield Daily News, August 10, 1926
Staten Island Advance, July 20, 1926