American Roads to Peace

Los Angeles.: Los Angeles Examiner.. Sunday 1 May1938.. Printed colour pictorial map 33 x 48 cms; 41.8 x 54.5 cms (sheet) central fold, sheet toned, corners chipped with some loss to the bottom border and at the central fold, in good condition; and on the verso "Movie-Go-Round" by Louella O. Parsons, black and white photos and advertisements. Pictorial map printed for the weekend supplement of the Randolph Hearst owned newspaper the Los Angeles Examiner. The map-maker and artist Howard Burke had also worked for the San Francisco Examiner and was known for pictorial maps, many with a persuasive or rhetorical edge, and as here, were designed to shore up American patriotism and defences against a wider world in the increasingly turbulent pre-war 1930s. The caption to this map outlines a multi-billion dollar 25 year proposal by Congressman J. Buell Snyder for a network of coast to coast transcontinental highways "in case of an attack by a foreign power at any point along the border". Buell Snyder earned the soubriquet "the father of superhighways" and during the War he was assigned to a Congressional Committee in charge of appropriations for the War Department. Scarce. .