1938 ISSUE: “After a busy winter at school, boys and girls need
the health-giving contact with sun and wind, nature’s great
restoratives and energizers; they need rest and relaxation, but,
also, they need work — work that will keep them in mental trim and
moral tone.”

“A summer vacation without work is not relaxation, it is
demoralization.”

That’s something to show your kids when they whine about having
nothing to do this summer.

We’re quoting from the June 1938 edition of “Woman’s World,” a
magazine dropped off by a reader.

What struck us the most about this vintage piece was the
back-cover ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes. The issue is full of
reminders of how life used to be — from lace doilies, to how-to’s
for making jellies and jams, to setting the table for a formal
tea.

Ads are for Palmolive for “middle-age skin” and for a cooking
range using kerosene. Also offered are products for piles, eczema,
asthma and psoriasis. An electric comb is promoted “to be used at
home for waving the hair.” Carter’s Little Liver pills promise to
“wake up your liver bile.”

Articles feature fashions for a weekend trip or an excursion to
the beach, and selecting the bride’s furniture.

But back to the words of advice for parents:

“Teachers complain that after the annual summer recess it takes
from September to Christmas to get their pupils back into a
receptive frame of mind. Four months wasted in counteracting the
effect of vacation before their pupils are ready to receive the
instruction for which the school is intended.

“In two short months habits of mind and habits of conduct may be
built up which will determine the course of a life — and the kind
of habits they are, mother and father, depends on us.

“There is open to us this summer a golden opportunity to refresh
our minds in the eager enthusiasm of our boys and girls, to renew
our comradeship with our sons and daughters and, by giving them
definite daily tasks to fit them for the serious work of school in
the Fall and for the assumption of the burdens and responsibilities
or later years. It may require a little more of our time at first,
but aren’t the returns worth the effort involved?”