American Boy – March 1930

Description

This is the March 1930 issue of The Youth’s Companion combined with American Boy. It has a great nautical cover. The magazine’s cover article is “Surfman Number Nine.” There are other articles, black and white illustrations and photos and great vintage ads (Ford, Studebaker, Cadillac-La Salle, etc.).
This issue contains 68 pages and measures approximately 11 x 14 inches.
The American Boy was a monthly magazine published by The Sprague Publishing Co. of Detroit, Michigan from November 1899 to August 1941. At the time it was the largest magazine for boys, with a circulation of 300,000, and it featured action stories and advertising for the young boy.
In 1911 a copy cost {{detail_product_description}}.10, and a year's subscription was .00. In 1929, The American Boy merged with its rival, Youth's Companion.
The Youth's Companion (1827-1929), known in later years as simply The Companion – For All the Family, was a children's magazine that existed for over 100 years until it finally merged with The American Boy in 1929. The Companion was published in Boston by the Perry Mason Company. (Erle Stanley Gardner was an avid reader of the magazine, and named his fictional attorney – Perry Mason – after the company). From 1892 to 1915 it was based in the Youth's Companion Building, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the 1890s its content was focused on entertainment, and it began to target adults as well as children with pieces contributed by writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Booker T. Washington, and Jack London. Another innovation was a medical column for older readers. In consequence, its circulation increased 100-fold, with sales peaking in 1893. It was advertised in 1897 as "an Illustrated Family Paper," having, as one person said of it, done "away with childish things." It did, however, retain a children's section, which included short poems and puzzles, and in faith to its beginnings, The Youth's Companion did not mention nor advertise drugs or alcohol, nor did it delve much into politics; when it did, it usually did so in a humorous way.
On September 8, 1892, the magazine published the first copy of the Pledge of Allegiance, written by staff member Francis Bellamy.