World Outlook, June 1920

A very interesting magazine up for your perusal tonight, a missionary/geography type magazine featuring large slick pages, lots of photos, and nice production values. This is my scan but edited by my pal and intrepid explorer of the bones, McCoy666. This magazine was published by the Interchurch World Movement which was a short-lived but ambitious post-war effort to organize the whole spectrum of North American churches to unite in addressing the ills of the world in missionary fashion. Harnessing a sense of cooperation and sense of global interconnectedness, this was called a religious counterpart to the League of Nations. Rich men like John Rockefeller helped in the campaign that was supposed to have raised 336 million (there’s a two page spread in the magazine on these efforts). I’m told rich backers began to pull out after the movement did a report on the woes of steel strikers. I’m not sure how big of a place World Outlook had in their publicity, but it’s most definitely a well done mag.

A fantastic cover from Katherine Van Wyck, an artist I am able to find nothing about:



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EDIT 5/25/2010: I was recently contacted by the grandaughter of this artist, and she let me know a little bit about her:

I was very surprised when I saw your article on World Outlook and the illustration by Katherine Van Wyck. She was a magazine illustrator for several magazines in New York. I have this one and one that she did for Vogue. She moved out West shere she met my step grandfather. She was into watercolors. She had works in the Los Angeles Museum. She won an award for one of her watercolors. She and my grandfather married and she later went under the name of Katherine Spicer. She died in 1929 from cancer. My grandfather was so devastated, he put all her works away, not to be discovered again until 1990 by me. She was truly ahead of her time. So now you know a little something about her. Terri Brooks

I think this is a very touching story, and I can completely understand how Terri's grandfather would put away her paintings. Using the name she went under later, I did find just a little bit more information at Askart here. Thank you very much for writing me, Terri. Perhaps people that come across Katherine's work in magazines will now be able to find out a little bit about her via web-search.

The Contents. Herbert Hoover on America’s relief effort in Europe, the anti-Imperial movement in Japan, the prospects for mission work in China, and more:



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There is a piece of fiction, “Sandy’s Fifty Per Cent” by Alfred MackKinnon featuring illustration by Thomas Fogarty, one of Norman Rockwell’s teachers.



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I couldn’t find much on Fogarty but did find a blog page featuring some of his illustrations for the Century Magazine illustrating an account of Captain Slocum’s maritime journeys

The real draw of this magazine for me, besides the cover, is the article on life in logging camps which is packed with big photographs from the rugged occupation of logging. The centerfold:



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The machinery they used to haul logs from where they fall, to maneuver them from peak to peak, down chutes, and in enormous log rafts that travel by river, what a monumental task.



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Thanks again to McCoy for the fine edit!

Here's the full scan.

Cheers and enjoy,

Darwin