Oriental Irritants and Occidental Aspirants: Immigrant Portrayals in Hearst Magazines,1905–1945

A Publisher in Search of Prominence

William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco in 1863 to George and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. George Hearst, who lacked the sophistication of his spouse (Nickliss, 2018), made a fortune in gold mining, ⁵ and he used his wealth to send his wife and WRH, their only child, on expensive tours of Europe (Bernstein, 2021; Nasaw, 2000). International travels led WRH to develop a lifelong fascination with Europe, but they also resulted in a lasting distaste for monarchies and class systems. From an early age, WRH favored Germany among the nations of Western Europe (Procter, 2007; Whyte, 2009), and he also came to support Ireland in its efforts to escape British rule (Mugridge, 1995). WRH learned to read and write in both French and German, and his travels to Europe instilled in him an enduring appreciation for the arts.

WRH entered Harvard University in 1882, but poor academic performance led to his expulsion before the end of his junior year (Nasaw, 2000). While still at Harvard, he served as business manager for the Harvard Lampoon and became familiar with the procedures and costs of running a publication (Creelman, 1906). He also took an interest in daily newspapers, visiting the Boston Globe on more than one occasion and studying the layout and content of the New York World, published by Joseph Pulitzer (Lundberg, 1937). WRH would eventually compete with Pulitzer in New York, although his first foray into the newspaper business was at the San Francisco Examiner.

George Hearst had acquired the San Francisco Examiner in 1880, possibly as payment for a gambling debt or as repayment for money he had previously loaned to the “moribund, Democratic” newspaper (Swanberg, 1961/1996, p. 22). He took advantage of the exposure the Examiner provided and became U.S. Senator from California, first through an appointment and then in 1886 by election in the state legislature (Emery & Emery, 1984). After 1886, he no longer needed what was then a financially strapped newspaper; nevertheless, he hoped “the boy” would take an interest in running it (Nasaw, 2000, p. 40). In 1887, at age 24, WRH became proprietor and editor (Bernhardt, 2011). Despite his distaste for class systems and royalty, WRH added the phrase “Monarch of the Dailies” to the newspaper banner. More to the point, he offered generous salaries to lure reporters and editors away from other San Francisco news outlets (Swanberg, 1961/1996).

Although WRH had been born into wealth, he considered himself a champion of the common man, “intent on alleviating (if not eliminating) the economic, political, and social abuses of capitalism in the United States” (Procter, 2007, pp. 6–7). Like George Hearst, a hardscrabble Missourian who had trekked west to California and taught himself the fundamentals of mining, WRH had what Nasaw (2000) described as “unswerving loyalty to the Democratic party, and undying hostility to the unholy alliance of the Republicans and the railroad magnates” (p. 41). The San Francisco Examiner provided WRH with a platform to attack the Southern Pacific Railroad and its attempts to convince the federal government to forgive its “massive debts” (Nasaw, 2000, p. 116). WRH would also engage in crusades on the East Coast after acquiring the New York Morning Journal in 1895. Shortening its name to the New York Journal, WRH began to compete directly with Pulitzer and the publishers of seven other morning New York City newspapers (Nasaw, 2000). Like the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Journal championed the common man, serving as “a voice against injustice, the protector of the poor and downtrodden, the defenders of the average citizen against corruption and corporate greed” (Procter, 1998, p. 97). As he had done in San Francisco, WRH used handsome salaries to lure talent away from other news organizations, including Pulitzer’s. Notably, WRH hired away Richard F. Outcault, whose “Yellow Kid” cartoons had become popular with readers of the New York World. The Yellow Kid came to symbolize sensationalism in the New York Journal and the New York World, and the term “yellow journalism” followed (Emery & Emery, 1984).

In the final decade of the 19th century, allegations of Spanish misrule in Cuba led to the Cuban War of Independence (Procter, 1998). In 1898, the USS Maine, sent to Cuba to protect U.S. interests there, sank in Havana Harbor following an explosion, killing more than 260 men (Emery & Emery, 1984). Although its exact cause could not be determined, the New York Journal quickly began advocating for war with Spain (Nasaw, 2000; Schudson, 2003), which WRH blamed for the explosion. WRH later took credit for initiating the Spanish-American War (Mugridge, 1995) and driving Spain out of the region; however, Campbell (2001) found little evidence to support such claims.

In 1900, at the request of (unsuccessful) Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, WRH introduced an afternoon newspaper, the Chicago American, and became president of the National Association of Democratic Clubs (NADC; Nasaw, 2000). He began publishing a morning newspaper, the Chicago Examiner, in 1902, and a short time later, formed the International News Service, a news wire that enabled his newspapers in San Francisco, New York and Chicago to share content (Nasaw, 2000). The wire service would prove important and beneficial for Hearst’s empire by distributing the newspapers’ short news stories about magazine articles and thus promoting both the features and the magazines themselves.

In November 1902, WRH was elected U.S. congressman from New York; he was re-elected in 1904. He also ran unsuccessfully for president in 1904, but during that election year, as president of the NADC, he outlined his issue stances in a letter to A.D. Hendry, president of the Kansas chapter. Theodore Roosevelt had offended WRH by calling Democrats “hypocrites and time-servers” (Hearst, 1904) and accusing them of improvising their convictions based on circumstance. In his correspondence, WRH promoted the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy, “unlike the type of Republican represented by the trust owners and apologists” (Hearst, 1904). Democrats believed in freedom of the press, he wrote, and stood firmly against Republican judges who silenced communication on behalf of corporations. The party also supported national expansion efforts, although it opposed imperialism. WRH wrote that Democrats had an obligation to restore “the government of this country to the hands of the people for whom and by whom the Government was created.” That lengthy missive emphasized issue positions and convictions WRH hoped would lead to higher office.

But as Sarasohn (1976) explained, while WRH helped to liberalize the Democratic party, his “vitriolic style” undercut his political ambitions. Although he craved power and spent considerable sums of money pursuing it, the sensationalism in his newspapers prevented him from earning enough respect to attain it. People enjoyed the newspaper content, but, as indicated, they did not support him in 1904 as a presidential candidate, in 1906 as a gubernatorial candidate in New York, or in 1905 and 1909 as a candidate for mayor of New York City. WRH may have recognized this lack of popular support when he purchased Cosmopolitan, then a general-interest magazine, in 1905.

Hearst intended Cosmopolitan to be an orator for him. A national publication, Cosmopolitan could shout his ideals and ideology, his invective and spite to a readership generally unaware of its connection to Hearst. The publisher whose newspapers were known for sensationalism and vitriol had astutely decided to separate Cosmopolitan from the Hearst brand, aware that not everyone admired or liked his journalism and politics, especially the American middle class. (Landers, 2010 p. 125) ⁶

Along with his 1905 purchase of Cosmopolitan, WRH established the International Magazine Company, Inc., under which Cosmopolitan and future Hearst magazines would operate. WRH bought Cosmopolitan, then in a “downward spiral” (Landers, 2010, p. 124), from John Brisben Walker for US$400,000. Walker had acquired Cosmopolitan in 1889 from Joseph N. Hallock and had developed the publication into a popular general-interest magazine with a circulation of 400,000 in the 1890s (Peterson, 1964). Walker also became interested in automobiles, and as the first president of the American Manufacturers Association, he had little time for Cosmopolitan (Sumner, 2010). WRH bought the magazine and moved quickly to increase its circulation. The 1906 series “The Treason of the Senate,” by David Graham Phillips, excoriated both Republican and Democratic senators who had profited from their positions in government. WRH actually removed some of the most acerbic content from the first installment, which focused on Republican Senator Chauncey M. Depew of New York. ⁷ After Hearst executive George d’Utassy wired the initial article to WRH, d’Utassy received a 2:00 a.m. telegram containing the following message from WRH:

Violence is not force. Windy vituperation is not convincing. I had intended an exposé. We have merely an attack. The facts, the proof, the documentary evidence are an important thing, and the article is deficient in them. For instance, there is one thing mentioned in the article which should be elaborated. The Albany capital is a great scandal. It is now falling to pieces. . . . We should have a picture and some quotations from reports, etc. showing the immense rottenness of the building and of the building board. We want more definite facts throughout. Supply them where you can. Then run the article if you want, and we will try to get the others later. (Quoted in Older, 1936, pp. 257-258)

WRH then phoned d’Utassy and instructed him to stop the presses. About 300 issues of the magazine had been printed and had to be scrapped. WRH rewrote parts of the article and sent edits to d’Utassy by telegram, the last arriving 3 hr after the phone call. The editorial control WRH assumed in that situation supported an assertion from Landers (2010): “Although he was not editor of the magazine, Hearst approved for publication every article in Cosmopolitan and closely edited each month’s issue, sending his critiques to an editor” (p. 128).

In 1911, after taking over as their publisher, WRH also kept a close watch on the World To-Day and Good Housekeeping. He bought the former, a somewhat unknown current-events publication with a circulation of 80,000, for US$25,000 (Older, 1936). Investigative series and added photography advanced the circulation to 175,000 in 1912; 250,000 by the end of 1913; and 317,000 at the beginning of 1917 (Landers, 2013). WRH bought Good Housekeeping from the Phelps Publishing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, for US$300,000 in bonds, with 10% to be redeemed each year (Older, 1936). Phelps had acquired the magazine in 1898 following the death of Clark Bryan, who had founded it in 1885 as a “family journal conducted in the interests of the higher life of the household” (Tebbel & Zuckerman, 1991, p. 102). When WRH purchased it, Good Housekeeping was more established than the World To-Day, but like the less-popular magazine, which WRH sought to transform into a more personal (i.e., overtly Hearst) version of Cosmopolitan (Mott, 1957), it sought to influence public opinion “whenever possible to support issues of importance to its publisher” (Pizzitola, 2002, p. 350). This proved especially true in the 1920s and 1930s when Good Housekeeping published articles about immigration (Coolidge, 1921) as well as legislation aimed at curbing the use and sale of dangerous drugs (Bigelow, 1927; Connolly, 1935).

Few issues appeared more important to WRH than avoiding military entanglements overseas. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, his opposition led to allegations of sedition (Emery & Emery, 1984). “He fought for American neutrality at a time when that was considered little short of treason. He defended the Germans. He assailed the British. He was called pro-German and anti-English” (Swanberg,1961/1996, p. 294). WRH (1919) lamented in an editorial,

The war is attributable to the survival in Europe of mediaeval institutions long outgrown by modern society. . . . This is a war of kings, brought on by the assassination of a king’s nephew, who is of no more importance to modern society than the nephew of any other individual, citizen or subject in all Europe. (p. 8)

WRH defended his views in a letter published in the New York Times on December 13, 1918. He wrote the letter to editor and confidante Arthur Brisbane at the New York Evening Journal ⁸ who sent it to other news outlets. In the letter, WRH intimated that a U.S. Senate committee had distorted his views of war by publishing a limited number of his telegrams about Germany and Great Britain: “I have no objection to my telegrams of instruction to editors being printed—in fact, I am glad to have them printed. There is never a telegram of instruction to any of my newspapers or to any editor that cannot be given the fullest publicity” (Hearst, 1918, p. 16). WRH reiterated his policy of “America first” and railed against the Espionage Act of 1917, “which I consider now, just as I considered it when it was first presented, to be unwise, unnecessary, undemocratic, and unconstitutional” (p. 16).

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, WRH came to regard the communist state in Russia as a red peril, adding to the yellow peril about which his publications continued to warn (Carlisle, 1974; Procter, 2007). His media outlets contained articles supporting the Immigration Act of 1924, which placed rigid restrictions on individuals from Southern and Eastern Europe and banned Japanese immigrants entirely.

In 1924, with US$40 million in total assets and US$6.5 million in yearly earnings, WRH incorporated 22 newspapers and 4 magazines into Hearst Publications, Inc. (Procter, 2007). The August 15, 1927 cover of Time, shown in Figure 1, showed a drawing of the media baron and a quote, “Let us not be too hard on fools.” The quote came from a profile of WRH by Arthur Brisbane. Shortly after taking over the San Francisco Examiner, WRH had lamented to his father that many men were fools. His father responded: “That’s true, Willie. But let us not be too hard on fools. If there were not so many of them life would be less easy for you, for me and for some others” (quoted in “Progress of Hearst,” 1927, p. 20). As Time noted, WRH heeded that advice, earning great sums of money, but at the cost of being taken seriously as a potential leader.

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Figure 1.

William Randolph Hearst on the cover of Time in 1927.

In the early 1930s, WRH supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) for president. A few years later, when WRH’s newspapers began to lose large sums of money, however, his support for FDR waned. WRH thought FDR favored internationalism and viewed a taxation plan Roosevelt proposed as akin to communism (Procter, 2007). WRH came to believe that “communists were indoctrinating students with Marxist philosophy through the public school system and higher education. Hearst therefore worked assiduously to blunt such un-American activities” (Procter, 2007, p. 195). The United States needed to fend off communism and Marxist philosophy, WRH argued, and in keeping with Jeffersonian democracy, it needed to avoid military involvement overseas.

Also in the 1930s, the increasingly conservative WRH supported the efforts of Harry Anslinger, the first U.S. “drug czar,” to rid society of hazardous substances. When Anslinger targeted marijuana, Hearst newspapers perpetuated hysteria surrounding “reefer madness.” The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 allowed the federal government to tax (and essentially regulate) marijuana. WRH welcomed the law, as he feared hemp would threaten his lumber interests. Scholars have written at length about the alleged threat of Mexican workers who smoked marijuana (Armstrong & Parascandola, 1972; Ferraiolo, 2007; Gerber, 2004; Luginbuhl, 2001; Morgan, 1981; Musto, 1972, 1991; Provine, 2007; Rasmusson, 2014), and Hearst newspapers heightened fears surrounding the substance and the Mexican laborers who allegedly introduced the drug to unassuming White adolescents.

As the 1940s approached, WRH continued to oppose U.S. military involvement in other parts of the world. But patriotism took precedence over isolationism following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 (Carlisle, 1974). WRH subsequently wrote in favor of the involvement of the United States in World War II, showing he did not hold categorically isolationist views. In fact, Carlisle noted that many of the foreign-policy positions WRH advanced became “internationalist” stances of both Democratic and Republican presidents in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Cold War, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) engaged in a nuclear arms race amid an atmosphere of mutual distrust. The military intervention in Vietnam sought to keep another domino from toppling in the direction of communism. WRH used his newspapers and magazines to endorse political candidates who aimed to keep the United States out of wars, but he also knew when military involvement became a necessity, and his publications supported U.S. troops once committed.

WRH lost much of his wealth in the Great Depression, although not entirely because of it. His increasingly conservative politics, denouncement of the New Deal, and vehement anti-communism alienated working-class audiences (Nasaw, 2000; Swanberg, 1961/1996). In 1937, following company restructuring, WRH lost control of his holdings and began to recede from public life. WRH did contribute articles to his media outlets, but his columns often lacked cohesion and incisiveness. At age 88, he died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1951, 10 years after Charles Foster Kane, a character based loosely on William Randolph Hearst, expired in Citizen Kane.

Conceptual Framework

I draw conceptually on the hierarchy of influences model proposed by Shoemaker and Reese (2014). Before I discuss their model, it is important to note that research has shown media portrayals to influence audience perceptions about immigrants (Eberl et al., 2018; Haynes et al., 2016; Schemer, 2012), in some instances through heightened emotional response (Lecheler et al., 2015; Oliver et al., 2012; Seate & Mastro, 2017; Wirz et al., 2018). Depending on the strength and duration of cognitive and emotional reactions, reports that disparage or dehumanize immigrants (Esses et al., 2018) may contribute to hostile or confrontational attitudes and behavior. This may be especially problematic when reports lead individuals to draw “cognitive comparisons to other physical or social ills” (Cisneros, 2008, p. 573). For example, Heber (2020) studied media allegations that immigrants in Sweden polluted that nation with sex-trafficking operations, and Aguirre (2012) observed portrayals of Mexicans as narco-terrorists. Indeed, immigrants from Mexico, like those from nations in Central and South America, have been stereotyped as criminals and violent drug traffickers. Such stereotypes may contribute to perceptions that by their very nature, individuals from those regions pose a threat (Mastro et al., 2007; Valentino et al., 2013). Media portrayals may even lead to physical aggression. Muller and Schwarz (2021) recently found an association between anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook and crimes against refugees.

In their hierarchy of influences model, Shoemaker and Reese (2014) explained media content as a function of the characteristics of individual journalists, media routines, organizational imperatives, extra-media influences, and cultural considerations. If one positions WRH at the individual level, media content would stem, in part, from his upbringing, his travels to Europe, and the time he spent at Harvard. Like many young people, WRH sought approval from his father, and he likely resented the way in which political elites joked about George Hearst and his lack of sophistication. Based on his early travels to Europe, WRH came to favor Germany and show disdain for Great Britain and what he considered its pretentious, outdated monarchy. He spent his time at Harvard somewhat removed from coursework, opting to become involved with the Harvard Lampoon and to study the Boston Globe and the New York World informally. WRH considered himself an advocate for the common man, and he favored certain immigrant groups (e.g., Germans and the Irish) over others (e.g., Chinese and Japanese). Given his influence on the content of his publications, one might expect favoritism (and disdain) toward certain groups to appear in the pages of his magazines.

When WRH became proprietor and editor of the San Francisco Examiner, and subsequently the New York Journal, he communicated with editors and reporters in person, in the respective newsrooms. As he acquired additional outlets across the nation, he communicated his editorial preferences to newspaper and magazine editors by both telephone and telegram. Veteran Hearst journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns, who began her career at the San Francisco Examiner, mentioned that when she visited the Hearst “ranch” at San Simeon, the telephone rarely stopped ringing during the 7:00 p.m. cocktail hour (Nasaw, 2000; St. Johns, 1969). In the eastern part of the country, newspapers were “going to bed” at that hour, and their editors sought content guidance from WRH before final editions went to press.

Lundberg (1937) noted that as WRH acquired more media outlets and began to wield greater societal influence, he “would be busy for the rest of his life endlessly dictating and reading telegrams” (p. 211). A frequent telegram recipient was Ray Long, who WRH hired in 1918 to edit Cosmopolitan and serve as president and editor-in-chief of the International Magazine Company, Inc. In this role, Long supervised all Hearst magazines and became one of the Hearst company’s most valuable assets. As indicated in online supplementary materials for this monograph, Long also assisted WRH in newspaper acquisitions. Still, WRH did not hesitate to voice content objections. Nasaw (2000) discussed a 1929 telegram in which WRH asked Long to remove an article for fear of costing Cosmopolitan “readers of better class” (p. 392). In referring to the prospective article, “Has an Unmarried Woman Right to a Child?” WRH wrote, “This article gives me [a] cold chill” (p. 392). Nasaw provided additional examples of WRH communicating his objections through telegrams, and Hearst’s International editor Norman Hapgood (1930) also discussed telegram exchanges with WRH.

Pizzitola (2002) noted that after WRH entered the film industry—WRH formed Cosmopolitan Productions in 1918—the publisher sent lengthy telegrams to production executives, detailing his expectations for content. WRH had instructed magazine editors to purchase fiction that could be converted into screenplays and had asked Ray Long to oversee the process (Lafontaine, 2021; Tebbel, 1969). ⁹ Some writers objected to signing over the movie rights to their work (“Authors Criticise Hearst Magazines,” 1921); but as an established magazine publisher, WRH had the leverage to require it. He had seen profit potential in magazine stories after Louis B. Mayer and MGM paid US$15,000 for the rights to a 1917–1918 Cosmopolitan series on which the 1918 film Virtuous Wives was based (Lafontaine, 2021). ¹⁰ Throughout 1918, Cosmopolitan had featured the 10-month series, based on Owen Johnson’s novel Virtuous Wives, advertising it in newspapers, magazines, billboards, and window displays. Motion Picture News reported that the magazine exposure, in addition to multiple forms of advertising, led MGM Chairman Louis B. Mayer to state, “The combined advertising and publicity given to the story by the magazine and book publishers constitutes one of the greatest campaigns in the merchandising of popular fiction” (“Film Story Credited with Wide Circulation,” 1918, p. 2956). ¹¹

Indeed, magazine content—and magazine editors—contributed significantly to the business pursuits of WRH. In 1912, a former editor named Edward McManus suggested tying movie serials to print media. WRH recognized the potential for cross-promotion and, in 1914, he produced the 20-part adventure series The Perils of Pauline. Hearst print media promoted actress Pearl White through interviews and features, such that readers would become intrigued and attend movies to see her act as Pauline (Pizzitola, 2002). Lafontaine (2021) commented on cross-promotional strategies:

Perhaps Hearst’s greatest achievement concerned his transmedial cross-promotion of film interests throughout his publication empire. Hearst not only devoted ample space to film reviews, but he also occasionally used his newsreel to promote films, financed various promotions and stunts aimed at bolstering Hollywood, and hired the first and most widely read film columnist, Louella Parsons. In addition, he promoted fictionalizations and peppered his papers with stories on subjects discussed in films, thereby raising the public’s interests in both the subjects and the films. (p. 55)

From a hierarchy-of-influences perspective, WRH exercised significant control over the content in his magazines, and that content often reflected his personal views about social and political issues. WRH hired editors and writers who would advance his views, and he paid them well to do so. But he also had profit motives. At the organizational level, his magazines supported ventures in the motion picture industry, supplying content and promoting movies. Cosmopolitan Productions did not focus on immigration per se, but the company and its business partner, MGM, did draw on magazine fiction in producing motion pictures. Thus, “Although they have evoked surprisingly little interest among Hearst biographers, Hearst’s magazines were as important in their own way as his newspapers, and Hearst used them too to promote Hollywood and help him prevail as a film industry leader” (Pizzitola, 2002, p. 350). I now examine immigrant portrayals in Hearst magazines.

Immigrant Representations in Hearst Magazines

This monograph examines content in three Hearst magazines published between 1905, the year WRH acquired Cosmopolitan, and 1945, when World War II concluded. Using 13 search terms, ¹² I gathered 82 articles about immigrants and their alleged propensity to import, sell, and use hazardous drugs that were published in Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and the World To-Day. Drug-related content facilitated the research by shedding light on how certain immigrant groups ostensibly threatened society not only through their presence but also through their habits and customs. I also gathered information from letters written by WRH, government documents, and biographies about WRH, including materials from the Roy W. Howard Archive at Indiana University, the internet Archive, and the Library of Congress.

Hearst Expands His Magazine Footprint

In 1911, 6 years after acquiring Cosmopolitan, WRH purchased Good Housekeeping, a consumer magazine with a circulation of about 300,000. Shortly after acquiring it, WRH hired Dr. Harvey Wiley, “father” of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, as food editor and contributing writer. But most Good Housekeeping content relevant to this monograph appeared at a later point, first in the article “Whose Country Is This?” by future president Calvin Coolidge (1921) and then in multiple articles published in the 1930s after Good Housekeeping’s circulation increased to more than 1.5 million (Nasaw, 2000). At that point, WRH had begun to support the efforts of Harry Anslinger, the first U.S. “drug czar,” to stamp out marijuana. I discuss related content later in the monograph.

Along with his purchase of Good Housekeeping in 1911, WRH also acquired the World To-Day. Like Cosmopolitan, the World To-Day (and its subsequent titles) “shouted” political sentiments to national audiences. When it became Hearst’s Magazine in 1912, a short article reminded readers that Great Britain had stymied progress in China—twice:

Opium is about the worst known habit-forming drug, the most destructive poison imaginable to the race, because of its will-destroying function. . . . When the late imperial government in China and also the new republic took measures again to save the Chinese from this pest, the English merchants threatened. They had two hundred and fifty million pounds worth of opium in their stores; and to hell with the Chinese. (“Trend of the Times,” 1913, p. 292)

Cosmopolitan had portrayed the Chinese as a threat inside the United States (Somerville, 1909), but consistent with Brandenburg (1905) and Headland (1909), who contributed articles to Cosmopolitan from inside China, the World To-Day characterized the nation as one Great Britain had dominated militarily, advancing Britain’s financial interests in the process. ¹⁵

In 1915, Arthur Brisbane wrote a series of articles for Hearst’s about immigrants’ struggles in the United States. Unlike Somerville’s (1909) Cosmopolitan article, which suggested an internal predisposition for deviance among Chinese immigrants, the Brisbane series in Hearst’s, titled “Making a Criminal,” attributed problems to society and an unsympathetic government. Individuals portrayed in Figure 2 (Brisbane, 1915a) are notable because of their European features and the fact that Brisbane did not attribute their struggles to inherent shortcomings of character. In fact, the following phrase appeared below his name: “Betend dass Gott dich erhalte so rein und schon und hold,” or “Praying that God may preserve thee, so pure and beautiful and good” (p. 270).

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Figure 2.

1915 Hearst’s article showing immigrants struggling in new nation.

Brisbane (1915a) wrote,

The family, the children coming each year, stay in the slums, live and die there, and there from good, hard-working men and women are bred the criminals, the gun men, the cocaine fiends; all the various victims of poverty, dirt, darkness, and starvation. (p. 317)

As Brisbane saw it, society turned these otherwise productive individuals into criminals, as opposed to individuals with criminal proclivities arriving and burdening society. Subsequent articles in the series showed how children of immigrants grew up playing games in the streets, learning how to gamble (Brisbane, 1915b), and becoming seasoned criminals. Discussing paradoxes in the “land of opportunity,” Brisbane (1915c) asserted a young immigrant whose demise appeared imminent “could be saved, if it were any part of our republican government to feel responsibility for the human being, willing to work” (pp. 429, 460). To a small degree, Brisbane appeared to channel WRH’s contempt for Republican politicians, alleging the government had failed young men who possessed great potential.

In a fourth article, Brisbane explained how an otherwise productive citizen turns to crime and, after being apprehended, “stands, a weak, white-faced, trembling creature, before the judge” (Brisbane, 1915d, p. 528). The Making a Criminal series concluded with the immigrant incarcerated at “crime university, the penitentiary” (Brisbane, 1915e, p. 49). Following their time in prison, Brisbane wrote, individuals might lose hope and succumb to despair. Each of the five articles in Hearst’s contained two drawings of individuals with European appearances, as the author argued that society and the federal government had failed immigrants. Brisbane pointedly referred to the drawings in text, encouraging readers to examine them.

Magazines also backed WRH’s opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I. In 1917, WRH screened a 15-part adventure serial, Patria, in an attempt to shift attention away from Europe. In this heavily propagandistic serial, the heroine Patria defends a munitions factory against Japanese spies and their Mexican allies. Nasaw (2000) characterized Patria as “virulently racist,” (p. 262). While Patria ostensibly addressed “war preparedness,” Pizzitola (2002) called it “a fast-moving tirade against Japan and Mexico” (p. 155). U.S. President Woodrow Wilson appealed to Hearst representatives to remove some of the most blatantly racist content, as Japan, in particular, would serve as a U.S. ally in World War I. Some edits were made, but the content remained largely the same as did the ongoing dislike between Wilson and WRH. Their views on Great Britain and Germany moved in opposite directions. As shown in the supplementary materials for this monograph, Hearst newspapers and magazines promoted Patria in advertisements, pictorials, and reviews (e.g., Bigelow, 1917; Vance, 1917).

Fiction and fact-fiction in Hearst’s and Cosmopolitan

In addition to nonfiction, Hearst’s and Cosmopolitan published both fiction and “fact-fiction” articles. Fact-fiction, in particular, allowed magazines to dramatize news events and shape them for mass consumption. As Nasaw (2000) noted, “The cult of objectivity which would define journalistic standards—if not always journalistic practices—later in the twentieth century was not yet in place. What readers expected of their newspapers was not literal, but figurative truth” (p. 79). Because fiction can contribute to perceptions of social reality (Appel & Richter, 2007; Mutz & Nir, 2010), considering the messages readers got from fiction and fact-fiction accounts is important.

Corrupting youth

A May 1914 Campbell MacCulloch piece of fact-fiction, “Black Ruin,” focused on adolescent boys employed as night messengers, making the point that messenger jobs eroded the national social fabric by exposing young men to sordid environments and turning some into addicts. The story focused on a 13-year-old, George, who worked at the Eastern Consolidated Telegraph Company from 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. His “sporting district” callers request the likes of opium and cocaine. MacCulloch described one customer as a “half-crazed woman, an inmate of a vile den, who was mad for morphine” (p. 664). A stranger asks George about the dope to which he has access: “Cocaine, opium, an’ morphine. Some of them are using a new stuff now. They call it heroin” (p. 665).

George experiments with all of the substances he delivers and is eventually hospitalized as an addict. His mother pawns her wedding ring and purchases a revolver, which she uses to attempt to kill the manager of the telegraph company. During her trial, at which she is presented as a sympathetic witness, her attorney receives a note that George has died in the hospital. The story concludes with this final paragraph:

Fathers and mothers of America, there is not a particle of exaggeration in this story. Every fact herewith set forth is a fact, in a general indictment drawn against most of the telegraph companies of the United States. Each statement is based upon painstaking, careful investigation by men trained in such work. The whole is founded upon a series of reports to which have been attached affidavits. Names, dates and places are given (but the names, dates and places in this story are fictitious). The things there revealed constitute a record so horrible in specific detail that it could by no possibility be printed for public reading, nor could it be read in open court without clearing the room. This record covers nine states and twenty-eight cities, the greatest in the country, and the conditions there described exist to-day, now. Think, think what this means! (pp. 669)

For magazine readers, it likely meant an increased awareness of messenger companies functioning as drug-delivery services, relying on 13- and 14-year-old boys to transport narcotics in seedy districts. The telegraph company appears to have transformed naive White boys into drug runners who sometimes experimented with narcotics and became addicts themselves. As a part of their routines, young messengers witnessed the trappings of “vile” opium dens and the madness of addicts in search of a fix. “Black Ruin” explained the problem of heroin, which was increasingly popular as a mind-altering substance in the sporting districts. Photos of adolescents smoking cigarettes and preparing for work appeared throughout the article, blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction.

Investigating crime and its victims

Mystery writer Arthur B. Reeve incorporated drugs of abuse, as well as the ill intentions of those who peddled them, into a Cosmopolitan series about a fictional detective named Craig Kennedy who applied the latest in scientific advancements to crime scenes and victims of foul play. Cosmopolitan described the stories, launched in 1910, as “twentieth-century, up-to-the-minute tales of criminals and their undoing by scientific methods that are always one jump ahead of the most ingenious lawbreaker’s cunning” (Reeve, 1912a, p. 128). As MacCulloch (1914) did in “Black Ruin,” Reeve identified popular drugs then being abused as well as those who used such drugs to manipulate, even kill, unsuspecting victims. Stories sometimes relied on stereotypes of cruel, cunning individuals, with Kennedy ultimately outsmarting perpetrators and helping to bring criminals to justice.

One story (Reeve, 1911), for example, explained how mescal had been weaponized against an individual whom Kennedy had managed to resuscitate. A second story contained the type of hyperbole that would accompany “reefer madness” in the 1930s: “The White Slave” told of a young woman who had disappeared. Her remains eventually located: “Drawn and contorted were the features of the poor girl, as if she had died in great physical agony or after a terrific struggle. Indeed, marks of violence on her delicate throat and neck showed only too plainly that she had been choked” (Reeve, 1912a, p. 131). Kennedy visits several clairvoyants before concluding, based on comparisons of human hair, that the young woman had been lured to the den of a cult where she had consumed marijuana. The detective had not been satisfied with strangulation as the sole cause of death and explained the different ways cannabis could be consumed before discussing its effects:

Slight vexation becomes deadly revenge; courage becomes rashness; fear, abject terror; and gentle affection or even a passing liking is transformed into passionate love. It is the drug derived from the Indian hemp, scientifically named Cannabis Indica, better known as hashish, or bhang, or a dozen other names in the East. . . . Under its influence, natives of the East become greatly exhilarated, then debased, and finally violent, rushing forth on the streets with the cry, “Amok, amok,”—“Kill, kill”—as we say, “running amuck.” An overdose of this drug often causes insanity, while in small quantities our doctors use it as a medicine. (Reeve, 1912a, p. 139)

Exaggerating the effects of marijuana, Kennedy identified its origins in Asia and its use by individuals of Asian descent to commit violent crimes in the United States, in this case, a swami. Meanwhile, Kennedy made a point of mentioning its medical use in responsible dosages, thus avoiding the implication that it should have been made illegal.

In “The Opium Joint” (Reeve, 1913a), Kennedy receives a call indicating that a woman from a prominent White family in Manhattan has been killed. The deceased woman had intended to marry a wealthy Chinese man, a tea importer, who will ultimately be held responsible for her murder. As Kennedy and law-enforcement officials investigated the case, much of which took place in Chinatown, the narrator described the scene at an opium den following a raid:

It was low, common, disgusting. The odor everywhere was offensive; everywhere was filth that should naturally breed disease. It was an inferno reeking with unwholesome sweat and still obscured with dense fumes of smoke. . . . There was no glamour here; all was sordid. (p. 120)

Later, the officials came across “a Chinaman, stoical, secretive, indifferent, with all the Oriental cunning and cruelty hallmarked on his face” (p. 121). An illustration showed boxed shipments from China and the “cunning” criminal who prepared opium for sale in Chinatown.

Reeve (1912b) also used the purity of White women as a standard against which to measure women of other races and ethnicities. He told the story of a Hispanic woman who had been found dead—“a beautiful woman she had been, too, though not with the freshness which makes American women so attractive” (p. 384). The woman may have fallen victim to an endormeur, an individual Kennedy described as highly intelligent and adept at putting others to sleep—not death—to facilitate criminal acts. Kennedy also investigated a case involving narcophin, a derivative of opium, and the drug scopolamine hydrobromide—a substance used to induce “twilight sleep,” a kind of trance in which a victim teeters on the brink of consciousness, able to perceive but unable to remember (Reeve, 1915a). One of his cases involves absinthe, which Kennedy described as a “narcotic poison” nearly “as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects on mind and body” (Reeve, 1913b, p. 628). Another involved horse-racing and a fatigue-inducing kenotoxin (Reeve, 1915b).

Reeve included heroin in two stories published in 1914. Kennedy mentioned that heroin had a more profound effect than morphine and was 10 times stronger than codeine. He said it was “rotting the heart out of” (1914a, 382) the seedy districts known as “tenderloins” where the drug had become known as “happy dust” (Reeve, 1914b, p. 760). Kennedy explained heroin’s pharmacology to his confidante, Walter Jameson, who accompanied the detective to crime scenes:

Its scientific name is diacetyl-morphine. It is New York’s newest peril, one of the most dangerous drugs yet. Thousands are slaves to it, although its sale is supposedly restricted. . . . It can be taken hypodermically, or in a tablet, or by powdering the tablet to a white crystalline powder and snuffing up the nose. (Reeve, 1914a, p. 382)

Kennedy also investigated cases involving cocaine. “The habit is spreading like wildfire . . . . Cocaine is one of the most harmful of all habit-forming drugs. It used to be a habit of the underworld, but now it is creeping up, and gradually and surely reaching the higher strata of society” (Reeve, 1913c, p. 780). In fact, Reeve (1917) told the story of a supposed cocaine-smuggling operation in Peru, whose smuggling techniques would actually be used later in the century to move drugs from South America to the U.S. Legal shipments required the payment of taxes; smuggling not only “exempted” shipments from taxes but also enabled drugs to be sold illegally for higher profits.

Becoming an addict

After World War I, Hearst’s began to publish more articles about drugs of abuse. In 1920, a three-part series offered a first-person fictitious account of a young woman who experiences addiction. After her husband, Joe, departs for France to fight alongside General Pershing in World War I, the young woman has difficulty sleeping. She explains this difficulty to “Mrs. K,” who administers a drug that relieves the anxiety. The young woman begins to request more and more of the substance. Eventually, she convinces Mrs. K to take her directly to a source in Chinatown. As the first article closes, the young woman writes, “I had often heard that heroin was the most terrible drug on the market. But it was bringing me such joy that even though it would kill me I still could not do without it” (“The Sting of the Needle,” 1920, p. 75).

In the second installment, Joe is killed in action and his widow has become a full-fledged addict. She routinely visits Chinatown, where the operator of an opium den, Li Hund, takes all of her money and commands her to bring him her jewels and additional valuables. She experiences visions and hallucinations, having discovered “how delicious the effects of morphine or cocaine could be in conjunction with the smoking of opium” (p. “Down the Dark Lane,” 1920, p. 40). Her departure from reality reaches a crescendo when she kills Li Hund, whom she calls her “Chinese tormenter,” in the final segment of the story (“Like a Bad Nightmare,” 1920). Hearst’s published a drawing depicting a vision experienced by the character in the story. In the illustration, shown in Figure 3, Li Hund, the proprietor of an opium den, prepares to sink his claws into the young woman. ¹⁶

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Figure 3.

1920 Hearst’s story about a woman experiencing drug addiction.

The “Chinese tormenter” in the preceding piece of fiction resembled a character described earlier in “The Opium Joint” (Reeve, 1913a) as well as the Chinese man who killed Elsie Sigal, discussed in the nonfiction Cosmopolitan article (Somerville, 1909). Taken together, fiction and nonfiction may coalesce to create exaggerated perceptions of crime and social reality among readers; that is, dramatizations of Chinese men with evil intentions may have interacted with one or more news exemplars to show what happened to White women in “degraded exile.” ¹⁷

Anslinger and the Feds

In 1930, Harry T. Anslinger was appointed to direct the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics and crack down on heroin use. Anslinger held the position for 32 years, retiring in 1962. He portrayed the Bureau as the “last line of defense against the perceived foreign drug menace” (Kinder & Walker, 1986, p. 909), inserting himself into policy matters beyond the scope of his position. Like WRH, Anslinger held strong beliefs on how the nation ought to be governed and how drugs of abuse should be eradicated. Anslinger played to a “latent xenophobia” (Kinder & Walker, 1986, p. 926) in the United States, reinforcing “anxiety about subversion from abroad. From international councils he brought his message of fear to the halls of Congress” (p. 926). Hearst newspapers and magazines supported Anslinger, and Anslinger considered this support “crucial” for success (Musto, 1999, p. 209).

As an example of how Hearst newspapers supported Anslinger and the 1930s anti-drug campaign, Figure 4 contains an image of “The Three Horsemen,” published on the editorial page of the July 23, 1934, edition of the San Francisco Examiner. The newspaper editorial stated,

With China infested by “dope” rings driven out of Europe by international control, and with Manchukuo and Jehol fostering the trade, California for months has been subjected to a smugglers’ invasion . . . . [T]here is a new menace from Central America, whence, it is officially reported, literally tons of “dope” have been smuggled into this country . . . . The fight against “dope” is an unceasing fight. Governments—Federal and State—must not relax their vigilance. (p. 10)

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Figure 4.

“The Three Horsemen” in the San Francisco Examiner, July 23, 1934.

Vera Connolly (1935), who in 1937 became one of the founding editors of Woman’s Day magazine, warned upward of two million Good Housekeeping readers about the “grave” addiction problem in the United States. She noted that Anslinger had asked 38 state legislatures to adopt the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, “the most powerful piece of state legislation aimed at the local drug peddler and the spread of addiction ever framed” (p. 90). As its name implied, the Act sought to create consistency between state and federal law and among individual states. Nine states had signed on by February 1935, when the Good Housekeeping article appeared, and California had already adopted comparatively stringent state laws. Connolly encouraged readers to get involved in the fight against drugs, advising them to demand that their respective state legislatures adopt the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. The first page of her article, “The Dope Menace,” featured an image of the federal government metaphorically cracking a whip against illegal drugs. One passage read: “The Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, a whip that lies ready to the strong hand of the law, will scourge the purveyors of living death from the land—if you do your part” (p. 90).

Forrest Wilson (1935), a journalist who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, also drew attention to federal law enforcement in “How the Federals Get Their Men,” published in Cosmopolitan. According to Wilson, of the 14 federal bureaus pursuing criminal actors, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was one of the busiest. Moreover, law enforcement vigilance had helped reduce the number of dope fiends nationwide, making heroin a scarce commodity and leading dealers to adulterate it by as much as 80%. Three years later, Leon G. Turrou, who worked as a special agent and translator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), teamed with journalist James Street (1938) to celebrate the exploits of a G-Man, “a new type of hero . . . on the contemporary scene, one we are proud to include in our distinguished autobiography series” (p. 42). The article featured photographs of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI head, and of agents performing calisthenics and one agent firing a machine gun.

Reefer madness

In the mid-1930s, the federal government began to focus greater attention on marijuana use (Armstrong & Parascandola, 1972; Musto, 1972). It instituted the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937, requiring those who sold, dispensed, acquired, or possessed the drug to register with the Internal Revenue Service and pay a small tax. The law did not criminalize marijuana, but as Ferraiolo (2007) noted, “its language and implementation effectively brought about prohibition” (p. 154). Customs agents collected marijuana that had been imported and did not release it until all taxes had been paid and the necessary paperwork filed. Anslinger considered the legislation necessary not because of scientific evidence, but because of patriotism. “He saw the only solutions to pot as dogged enforcement, legislation, condemnatory rhetoric, and suppression of the new foreign music known as jazz” (Gerber, 2004, p. 4).

Anslinger won strong support for his antipot campaign in some fifty Hearst papers and magazines that regularly gave headline attention to marijuana-related incidents under such labels as “marijuana-crazed madmen.” William Randolph Hearst may have had his own motives as well. If he could eliminate hemp production, his extensive forest holdings would be the prime source of pulp needed for West Coast paper production. (Gerber, 2004, pp. 6–7)

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 appeared shortly after the 1936 film Reefer Madness premiered and Harry Anslinger began to exaggerate the effects of marijuana in print. His article “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth,” written with Courtney Ryley Cooper for the July 1937 issue of American Magazine, is perhaps the most reproduced marijuana article of the era. Reflective of content in Reefer Madness, it contained stories of young women jumping out of windows and young men unable to stop themselves from committing crime. A condensed version of the article appeared in the February 1938 issue of Reader’s Digest, reaching thousands of new readers. Connolly (1935) had helped to generate hysteria over marijuana (i.e., “Mexican cigarettes”) in Good Housekeeping: “Marijuana first exhilarates and releases the addict from all dictates of conscience or emotional restraint; it also excites sexually. Next follows a stage of dullness, melancholia, and stupor. Continued use of it leads to insanity” (p. 98).

Fact-fiction returns

Journalist and screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns’s novelette “Walking on AIR,” a story about a young man who experiments with hasheesh and begins to experience nightmares and personality changes, appeared in the May 1938 issue of Cosmopolitan. He drifts to a seedy underworld and becomes involved with people who photograph young women in compromising positions and then extort their wealthy families. Editors introduced the story by warning readers that while the story was fictitious, it would “astound America” (p. 36).

This is one reason for publishing it. We hope that it will shock this country out of the unthinking passivity that evades responsibility for the growing drug menace by saying, “This can’t happen to my son.” If you doubt that it could after reading this magnificent but heartbreaking story . . . read the actual facts, amply documented from government sources. (p. 36)

The story implied that one character had gained extreme levels of physical strength from marijuana and had killed a blackmailer with his bare hands. What might that mean for law-abiding citizens? In the San Francisco Examiner, Walter Winchell (1938) assured readers, “Walking on AIR” would “macerate” them. The May 1938 cover of Cosmopolitan calls the story by Adela Rogers St. Johns “the fiction sensation of the year.”

In addition to “Walking on AIR,” the May 1938 issue ran the nonfiction article “Public Enemy No. 1: Dope” by Frank C. Waldrop. He placed much of the blame for international dope trafficking on Japan: Its “war machine” had rolled into China and forced increases in morphine production, in turn smoothing the way for the production of “madness, murder, and misery for American homes” (p. 35). Waldrop noted that the Chief of Police in San Francisco estimated that peddlers sold US$1.5 million worth of dope each day in the United States and that Japanese-controlled areas provided much of the supply.

Newspapers nationwide covered the Waldrop article, with some treating it as news and others locating it on their editorial pages. The headline “Increase in Dope Output Follows Jap War Machine” (1938) accompanied an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, with the report noting that an increased Japanese presence in China had resulted in a “forced increase in opium-poppy production” (p. 3). The Gazette explained that morphine factories had opened in conquered provinces, with heroin output in a single factory accounting for more than 15 times the amount needed internationally. In the United States, narcotics agents had seized 386 tons of marijuana plants and dried bulk marijuana in 1936, doubling amounts seized in 1935. The “tons of madness,” Anslinger told Waldrop, “were grown for our school children, our boys and girls; for youngsters with a nickel to spend on a ‘reefer.’” (p. 3). ³³

In 1941, Donald E. Keyhoe, a Marine Corps aviator, melded the law-and-order approach to crime with alleged communist infiltration, asking “Why Don’t We Deport Criminal Aliens?” Keyhoe’s writing appears consistent with something WRH might have written regarding communism:

For years, thousands of alien Communists and criminals have mocked American laws. Four out of five escape deportation proceedings entirely. Of those ordered banished, three-fourths remain here—free. According to Attorney General Robert Jackson, less than one-fourth of the 8,091 aliens now under orders will be deported. Among these are hundreds of Communist Russians working viciously to wreck this country, and felons guilty of murder, robbery, criminal assault—almost every known crime. Yet only 330 of the entire group are in custody! (pp. 20–21)

Keyhoe (1941) contended that Mexico had served as the main entry point for “subversive agents” to infiltrate the United States, and urged “Mr. and Mrs. America” to recognize the potential dangers. Peck (1945) wrote about the damage opium stashed in wartime cargo could do, asking whether hard-won victories in the Pacific might generate a postwar narcotic problem. Peck suggested that World War II had exacerbated problems with drug trafficking, as ships delivering supplies and then returning for additional cargo allowed smugglers to stash narcotics. He focused on India as a primary source of opium. Peck noted that opium production there had once been limited to use in India:

Now, in Bombay, Karachi and Calcutta, World War II has placed our troops in close association with the habits of the East. Westward go United States ships to the great new port of Basra to unload war materials, soldiers and civilian technicians in Iran, where both raw and prepared opium can be bought as readily as cigarettes in the United States. (p. 58)

Beyond Hearst: Commies, Countercultures, and Cocaine Cowboys

In the years following World War II, Hearst magazines published few articles addressing drug threats among immigrant groups. In 1947, Cosmopolitan did publish a three-part series about drug addiction as told by an individual who had spent time in a rehabilitation facility in Lexington, Kentucky (Davis & Slatoff, 1947a, 1947b, 1947c). Like the 1923 series by Sidney Howard, the articles defined addiction as a medical problem and portrayed punishment as a futile approach to the problem. In 1951, WRH died, and, by that point, Cosmopolitan had become “decidedly nondescript” (Landers, 2010, p. 217); during the 1950s, its absence of focus coupled with the advent of television resulted in fewer readers and lower advertising rates. As Landers (2010) noted, magazine publishers discovered that “specialization was salvation” (p. 218). By the end of the 1950s, Cosmopolitan had become a women’s magazine.

During the 1950s, as the Cold War ensued, a non-Hearst publication, the Saturday Evening Post, which had endorsed strict immigration policies in the 1920s, denounced communism and praised the U.S. federal government for its efforts in controlling the borders. In fact, similar to Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping in the 1930s, the Saturday Evening Post content appeared close to propaganda. For example, in a 1952 article titled “They’re Death on Dope Runners,” Neil M. Clark described “fifty hard-boiled” customs agents stationed along the Mexican border. Their lives in constant danger, the agents had succeeded in “nabbing some of the dirtiest criminals on earth” (p. 36). Clark characterized narcotic control as “one of the toughest jobs in the intensifying war on drug addiction” (p. 37). He also described traffickers:

Generally speaking, the agents say, [drug smugglers] are the lowest of human scum . . . . Ages were mostly in the twenties and thirties, and they were predominantly male, but there were also quite a few women. Racially, Mexicans predominated, followed by Negroes, white American citizens, Chinese. Many were addicts themselves, but not the big shots. (p. 110)

Harsh depictions of drug smugglers appeared consistent with antidrug legislation in the 1950s. In November 1951, the Boggs Act introduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and in 1956, the Narcotic Control Act extended the length of sentences and allowed a jury to invoke the death penalty for anyone older than age 18 caught selling heroin to anyone younger than 18. As drug historian David F. Musto (1999) noted, the statutes “represent the high point of federal punitive action against narcotics” (p. 231). One of the most popular magazines in the United States, Life, had earlier provided text and photography in tacit support of drug enforcement and punitive action. A June 11, 1951, article, “Children in Peril” (Brean, 1951), suggested that pushers were selling narcotics to thousands of adolescents. The issue contained images of drugs sales in the streets, known drug traffickers, confiscated substances, and incarcerated men. Two weeks later, the June 25 issue of Life contained photos of handwritten notes from students who had responded to a school assignment called “Narcotics” (“New York’s Children Accuse,” 1951). Grade school and junior high school students had written short essays on what they knew about drugs. The responses, which indicated a great deal, were submitted as evidence at a New York state narcotics hearing.

Regarding communism, editorials published in the Saturday Evening Post included “Mr. [Clement] Attlee’s Friends, the Chinese Commies, are the World’s Leading Dope Smugglers” (1954), and “Red China Exports Opium to Make Dope Addicts of Our Boys in Asia” (1955). The magazine criticized Attlee, a leader of the British Labor Party who had visited China, for believing what leaders in the Far East had told him about opium control. In its 1955 editorial, the Saturday Evening Post posited:

Addiction is growing in this country, notably among teenagers . . . and the commodity involved is usually heroin, the deadliest of opium derivatives and one that has no place in American medical practice and is not, therefore, diverted from the legal manufacture and distribution of narcotics. It comes from abroad. . . . Red China is the major source of supply. (p. 12)

Adding to that editorial, Darrell Berrigan (1956), a newspaper editor who lived in Bangkok, addressed smuggling operations in Asia: “One of communism’s most vicious attacks on the free world strikes through corruption-riddled Thailand, where Red China unloads vast quantities of opium every year” (p. 42). Opium traffic in Thailand had reached 300 to 400 tons per year, an amount constituting cause for concern.

In the 1960s, communism and external narcotic threats pivoted to rebellion and internal threats. The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Newsweek, and Time published stories on amphetamines, LSD, and marijuana use on college campuses and in the broader society. ³⁴ A December 1965 Saturday Evening Post (Davidson, 1965) discussion of “the thrill-pill menace” focused on the dangers of amphetamines and barbiturates. Davidson noted that while the American Medical Association considered compulsive use of amphetamines and barbiturates a relatively small problem, Connecticut Senator Thomas J. Dodd argued: “Contrary to our experience with heroin and other narcotics, these dangerous drugs, used in various combinations, tend to induce a hostile state of mind. They have figured prominently in some of the most violent crimes on record” (p. 24). If one examines drug-related magazine content, it seems nearly all substances have been responsible for some of the most violent crimes on record.

When WRH became interested in moviemaking, he instructed his magazine editors to purchase articles that could be converted to screenplays (Pizzitola, 2002). In 1965, Life magazine published a photo essay of two heroin addicts who shared a Manhattan apartment near “Needle Park.” Black-and-white photos taken by Life photographer Bill Eppridge showed the couple using heroin. James Mills, the associate editor at Life, wrote an accompanying article and followed with a 1966 novel, The Panic in Needle Park. The photos and texts led to the 1971 movie The Panic in Needle Park, starring Al Pacino and Kitty Winn. Dog Day Afternoon (1975), also starring Pacino, was also based on a magazine article.

Panic in Needle Park (1971) premiered in theaters at a point when drug addiction among U.S. soldiers serving in Vietnam had worsened. John Steinbeck IV had written a cover story for The Washingtonian’s January 1968 issue in which he described widespread marijuana use among the troops. In 1971, the New York Times ran a front-page article headlined “G.I. Heroin Addiction Epidemic in Vietnam” (Shuster, 1971). One month later, U.S. President Richard Nixon declared “war’ on drugs, characterizing drug abuse as “public enemy number one.” ³⁵ In waging “a new all-out offensive,” the government would address international sources of supply in Southeast Asia and Europe. Time magazine featured “The Global War on Heroin” on its September 4, 1972, cover.

In what seems an unrelated magazine article, but showing the legacy of Hearst’s innovation, Mark Jacobson later wrote about Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas for the August 14, 2000, issue of New York. During the 1970s, Lucas ran a Harlem drug-trafficking group called the Country Boys, which allegedly imported heroin from Southeast Asia in the coffins of soldiers killed in Vietnam. The Jacobson article, “The Return of Superfly,” inspired the 2007 Universal Pictures movie American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington (Dargis, 2007). Relatedly, in June 1977, Harlem drug lord Leroy “Nicky” Barnes, looking suave in coat and tie, appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. As New York Times writer Sam Roberts (2019) later recalled, U.S. President Jimmy Carter found the characterization of “Mister Untouchable” highly offensive and demanded the U.S. Justice Department focus more intently on its pending case against the drug trafficker. By the end of 1977, Barnes had been sentenced to life in prison. Director Mark Levin drew on the New York Times Magazine article (Ferretti, 1977) in developing the 2009 documentary “Mr. Untouchable.” ³⁶ Additional vice-related films Boogie Nights (1997) and Wonderland (2003) were based on a 1989 Rolling Stone article, “The Devil and John Holmes,” by Mike Sager.

Indeed, allowing that the aforementioned magazine articles and feature films did not necessarily originate “in-house” (i.e., were not limited to a single company), cross-media practices pioneered by WRH have endured. On the topic of immigration, a 1981 U.S. News & World Report cover termed it a “nightmare” (Orr Kelly, 1981). Similarly, on its November 23, 1981 cover, Time characterized South Florida as a “Paradise Lost” to immigrant-related violence. The accompanying article by James Kelly (1981) discussed actions eventually featured in Cocaine Cowboys (2006), a documentary about drug traffickers from South America and Cuban refugees from the Mariel Boatlift wreaking havoc on a picturesque region of the United States. Kelly did not exaggerate statistics and occurrences in his report, but it nevertheless painted a bleak portrait:

An epidemic of violent crime, a plague of illicit drugs and a tidal wave of refugees have slammed into South Florida with the destructive power of a hurricane. . . . [B]oatloads of half-starved Haitians are washing up on the area’s beaches every week. The wave of illegal immigrants has pushed up unemployment, taxed social services, irritated racial tensions and helped send the crime rate to staggering heights. ³⁷

The 1981 Time cover continues to function as a reference point. Forty years after it appeared, the New York Times referenced the cover in an article about the collapse of Champlain Towers in Surfside (LaForgia, Playford, & Gamio, 2021). Kenneth Dickerman and Nathan Benn (2018) referred to the cover in a Washington Post article about 1980s Miami, and in the Daily Beast, Roben Farzad (2017) mentioned the article in a story about the Mutiny hotel, “where all the narcos came to play.” In the Los Angeles Times, Susan King (2006) described the early 1980s: “Drug-related crime was rampant, and Miami’s homicide rate tripled, prompting Time magazine to label the city ‘Paradise Lost’ in a cover article. Authorities cracked down.” Francisco Alvarado (2011) also referenced the cover story in a Miami New Times article about 1981, “Miami’s deadliest summer.” Apart from newspapers, the Time article nearly interrupted filming of the movie Scarface in 1983. As author Ken Tucker (2008) noted, the

Time magazine piece did not sit well with [Miami’s] civic leaders. So, when they got wind of a Universal Pictures production company invading their town to make a bloody movie about a Miami drug lord—a Cuban-refugee one at that—squawking commenced immediately. (p. 53)

Eventually, producers succeeded in making the movie.

The 1980s actually came to resemble an earlier period addressed in this monograph. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, women used opium and its psychoactive alkaloid morphine in higher numbers than men did (Courtwright, 2001). Both men and women who used these substances tended to be White, middle-class, and native-born. Reflective of largely White users, the legislation did not ban potentially addictive drugs nor did it define the issue as criminal. As more immigrants and members of racial minorities began using mind-altering substances, however, legislation began to appear. The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 and the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 allowed the United States to demonstrate a supposed commitment to fighting the international drug trade while also allowing it to institute quasi-measures of social control. Additional regulations, specifically the Narcotic Import and Export Act of 1922 and the Anti-Heroin Act of 1924, appeared following World War I when immigration concerns resulted in significant policy changes. By that time, heroin use had allegedly expanded in immigrant communities, and Hearst media had launched antidrug crusades.

In the early 1980s, cocaine in powder form became a drug of choice in White America, symbolizing success in high society (Siegel, 1984). In fact, the July 6, 1981, cover of Time showed the substance in a martini glass, complete with olive and drink stirrer. But in the mid-1980s, when crack cocaine became popular in urban centers, the drug came to symbolize violence in Black America (Hart, 2014; Jacobs, 1999). Following the high-profile death of basketball star Len Bias from a cocaine overdose, the U.S. government passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, followed by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 (Belenko, 1993). The initial law called for mandatory prison sentences and appeared unusually harsh, if not draconian (Alexander, 2012). In 1986, Time and Newsweek devoted multiple cover stories to the crack-cocaine crisis in the United States (Reinarman & Levine, 1989). Magazines showed dangerous Latin drug lords and violent members of inner-city gangs, portraying drug traffickers as ruthless killers making their way to suburban America (Lassiter, 2015; Netherland & Hansen, 2016). ³⁸ Violent crimes certainly occurred, but press coverage appeared to focus on supply and nearly ignored demand. ³⁹

Just as magazines have helped to define drug-trafficking criminals, they have also identified drug-consuming victims. ⁴⁰ Studies have recently examined the role of White women in affecting a “gentler war on drugs” amid the opioid epidemic (Daniels et al., 2018); however, when White people in lower income brackets or rural locations become involved with drugs, as with methamphetamine, they may be dismissed as “White trash” (Peterson et al., 2019) and used in campaigns about “meth mouth,” or rotted teeth (Linnemann & Wall, 2013). In other words, journalists have followed historical patterns in defining which groups constitute societal threats and which groups constitute unknowing victims.

Conclusion

This monograph examined how Hearst magazine fiction, “fact-fiction,” and nonfiction articles published between 1905 and 1945 presented immigrants and immigration as social and political issues of the period. In connecting drugs and vice to specific immigrant groups, Hearst magazines identified immigrants who allegedly posed a threat and those who did not. Like Hearst himself, the magazines favored immigrants from Germany and the Scandinavian countries of northern Europe and disfavored individuals from China and Japan, and to a lesser degree, Mexico. WRH also supported the Irish in their fight to escape British rule, and his magazines were consistently critical of Great Britain. He came to distrust Russia and crusaded against communism, which he believed had penetrated public education in the United States.

Nasaw (2000) characterized readers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as seeking figurative, not literal truth in the news. WRH built an empire precisely accommodating those readers. Despite his success as a media baron and the exposure his news outlets provided, WRH did not succeed as a candidate for public office. He did serve as a congressional representative, but his mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns as well as his candidacies for the presidency ended in disappointment. The content in his publications helped to explain why: At the New York Journal (and elsewhere), WRH opted for sensationalism and advocacy. Reports of gruesome crimes and affairs in high society kept audiences entertained, but sensationalistic content also detracted from WRH’s perceived fitness for public office.

As drug historians (Courtwright, 2001; Musto, 1999; Provine, 2007) would have predicted, Hearst magazines associated the Chinese with opium and Mexican laborers with marijuana. Race, nationality, and social class appeared to influence portrayals of opiates, in particular. The Chinese smoked opium in unsanitary dens, and the underclass used heroin in downtrodden urban neighborhoods. In contrast, members of “respectable” society relied on morphine or perhaps codeine. Ironically, a German pharmaceutical company, Bayer, began marketing Heroin (sic) in 1898 as a cough suppressant, and it proved effective; however, it also proved addictive. Use among immigrants and those in lower socioeconomic classes led to state and national regulations. In the 21st century, heroin has retained its status as a “dirty” street drug (McElrath & McEvoy, 2001), while morphine and codeine tend to be associated with pain relief in medical settings. Pharmacological distinctions among opiates seem less consequential than sociological constructions, with media portrayals contributing to the latter.

To a limited extent, Hearst magazines attributed drug-related problems among European immigrants to social conditions and problems among Asians and Latinos to internal predispositions. In his 1915 series, Arthur Brisbane blamed society when “hard-working” European-looking individuals turned to drugs, but Hearst magazines tended to attribute deviant behavior among Asians and Latinos to propensities for wrongdoing. Following Haynes et al. (2016), researchers should continue to examine the role of mass media in defining group differences, focusing, at least in part, on the political agendas of news organizations. In the 21st century, conservative news outlets have exacerbated racial tensions surrounding contagious diseases (Li & Nicholson, 2021). Anti-Asian sentiment surrounding COVID-19 has resembled the anger directed at Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, when officials in San Francisco blamed “vapors” in Chinatown for outbreaks of malaria, smallpox, and leprosy (Trauner, 1978). After the U.S. President referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” and the “Wuhan virus,” individuals lashed out against people of Asian descent. As in the 19th century, the aggression occurred at a time of financial uncertainty and unemployment concerns.

From a policy standpoint, this research shows that just prior to passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which banned Japanese immigrants and sharply reduced the number of Italian and Jewish individuals permitted to enter the United States (Marinari, 2020; Okrent, 2019), a Hearst’s International exposé identified Italians and Jews as major operators in the drug trade. Although one cannot assume a causal relationship between Hearst magazine content and U.S. immigration policy, the two nevertheless coincided. Indeed, WRH had definite ideas of what the United States ought to be—and who ought to be in it (Mugridge, 1995). Still, magazines showed some variation in sentiment. For example, American authors based in or writing from Asia portrayed China as a nation of great potential but thwarted by opium forced upon it by Japan and Great Britain. In addition, although Hearst’s International suggested that Jews and Italians played significant roles in the U.S. drug trade, and WRH himself did not object to an anti-Semitic Henry Ford seeking the presidency, Hearst newspapers also reported on the atrocities of World War II in greater depth than other U.S. news outlets. Moreover, WRH appeared more outspoken than other publishers in advocating for a Jewish homeland (Nasaw, 2000; Wyman, 1984).

On the promotion side, WRH pioneered techniques still in use. For example, he understood the value of publicizing magazine investigations in his newspapers. Wire reports frequently contained synopses of magazine articles, and in some instances, newspapers published their own articles in response to the content of magazine features. This approach allowed WRH to expand the influence of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Hearst’s International. By the mid-1930s, as many as 20 million people—about 17% of the U.S. population—received information from a Hearst outlet (Nasaw, 2000). During the period, Cosmopolitan reached a circulation of 1,700,000. In 1943, Good Housekeeping reached a circulation of 2,500,000 en route to more than five million in the 1960s.

Cross-media promotion also applied to motion pictures. WRH instructed magazine editors to buy articles that could be converted to screenplays for Cosmopolitan Productions, in partnership with MGM. WRH also instituted serials, with film actors giving interviews to newspapers such that readers began to identify with the actors. Audience members developed parasocial relationships with the people they watched in the movies, and to some extent, such patterns continue to exist. Social media have allowed users to interact with celebrities, commenting on posts made by famous actors and high-profile athletes. Although its focus has changed, Cosmopolitan remains a leading magazine at Hearst Communications, as does Good Housekeeping. The former maintains a circulation of 2.2 million and the latter 3.3 million. ⁴¹ The publications have necessarily adapted to digital communication, maintaining websites as well as a presence on social media.

In her autobiography, Adela Rogers St. Johns (1969) wrote that among his differing media enterprises—newspapers, magazines, radio stations, film studios—WRH was most passionate about his newspapers. But Hearst magazines also reached millions of readers. With this monograph showing how Hearst magazines characterized immigrants from 1905 to 1945, meaningful opportunities exist for additional research on both the publications and the individuals who edited and wrote for them.

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