Issues, 1936 Style (Vol. 2, Issue 3)

When we studied history, a pet exam question always was to discuss the issues of a political campaign of historical importance. Problems such as monetary stabilization, foreign policy, states’ rights, the Constitution, all had their day as questions in campaigns. These were weighty. matters, and gave historians no little concern, much less history students on surprise quizzes. 

Envy, then, the pupil of the future, who will have so many clearly defined issues to pick from in the 1936 election. He will, no doubt, go to the newspapers of the day for his sources. 

An important issue, he will find, is the celebrated question of the Maine pigs and the Passamaquoddy engineers. Passing over the question of just what Passemaquoddy engineers may be—a troublous question in that enlightened era—the question will resolve itself into this: Did they, or did they not feed perfectly good pies of divers contents to the local pigs. 

Another weighty matter stressed in the election propaganda, he will discover, is the question of the sinister betrayal, of the Democratic party into the hands of Union Square. That should be an easy one, in view of all the documentary, evidence in the papers.

One of the national problems of the period, the future history student will laboriously copy as part of his exam cribs, is the vital question as to whether college professors made better economists than housewives drafted to remedy “cockeyed legislation.”

And, coming to class, our future scholar will bear his instructor lecture somewhat didactically about how 1932 marked the complete decay of the Republican party.