Verso of an International News Photos press print: "Thousands of Chinese Parade in Gotham"

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

This is the back of a photographic press print issued by International News Photos, and the back is all there is: the picture side was not photographed. What survives here is the apparatus a news picture travelled with. A typed caption slip is affixed across the print, carrying two agency reference numbers, the instruction WATCH YOUR CREDIT, the agency name International News Photos, and the file slug GIRLS-FLAG-PARADE — the three words by which the picture could be pulled out of a drawer.

The caption describes the photograph that is missing. It says that "TWO HUNDRED CHINESE GIRLS" are shown "CARRYING ONE OF THE LARGEST CHINESE […] FLAGS EVER SEEN IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE", that "THOUSANDS OF CHINESE JOINED IN THIS PROCESSION", and that "HUNDREDS OF SPECTATORS DROPPED COINS IN THE HUGE FLAG." It also tells the reader what to feel about it: the parade "WAS AN ORIENTAL SPECTACLE, FULL OF THE COLOR AND SENSATION THAT ONLY AN […] AFFAIR OF THIS KING [sic] COULD PRODUCE." A political demonstration against an invasion is filed, in the same sentence, as a show. The caption's one testable geographic claim is wrong — New York is not in the Eastern Hemisphere. The figure of two hundred is the caption's; the accounts the archive consulted give about a hundred women.

The slip has been worked on. Four places carry hand-drawn ink boxes: one encloses the typed word SHOWN, one encloses an overtyped group of characters after THE NEED- that reads with doubt as FOR, and two enclose words that can no longer be read. Who made these marks, and at what point between the typing of the slip and the print reaching the archive, is not established. The slug line M-5-9-38 gives 9 May 1938, the date of the parade. The date stamp on the print, set at a right angle to the caption slip, reads MAR 20 1939, ten months later, and a second stamp near the upper left, mostly buried under the slip, preserves only …939.

The remaining marks were made by hand. FLAGS — CHINA is hand-lettered in black ink across a broad graphite stroke on the print; the ink runs unbroken over the graphite, so the lettering was made after the stroke. A lighter sheet at the edge of the frame carries the tail of a typed heading ending ESE (GEN.). A large ink 80 is written on the caption slip, below the last line of the caption. Between them these marks record the working life of the object as a filed picture — a print whose caption describes Chinese Americans marching against the invasion of China, headed under China, and lying on a sheet headed with a general subject file; when each mark was made is not established.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

VERSO. Typed caption slip affixed across the print:
S843831
 S843829..WATCH YOUR CREDIT..INTERNATIONAL NEWS PHOTOS
(L21)    SLUG..(GIRLS-FLAG-PARADE)

THOUSANDS OF CHINESE PARADE IN GOTHAM.

NEW YORK.....TWO HUNDRED CHINESE GIRLS ARE [SHOWN — typed on the slip and enclosed in a hand-drawn ink box, a short ink stroke beside it]
CARRYING ONE OF THE LARGEST CHINESE [one word obliterated inside a hand-drawn ink box — illegible] FLAGS EVER
SEEN IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE, DURING THEIR PARADE
HERE TODAY.  THOUSANDS OF CHINESE JOINED IN THIS
PROCESSION WHICH WAS STAGED FOR THE PURPOSE OF CALLING
TO THE ATTENTION OF AMERICANS AND AMERICAN CHINESE
THE NEED-[FOR? — an overtyped group of characters inside a hand-drawn ink box] RELIEF FOR THE MILLIONS OF CIVILIAN
VICTIMS OF THE JAPANESE INVASION IN CHINA.  THE PARADE
WAS AN ORIENTAL SPECTACLE, FULL OF THE COLOR AND
SENSATION THAT ONLY AN [one word obliterated inside a hand-drawn ink box — illegible] AFFAIR OF THIS KING
COULD PRODUCE.  HUNDREDS OF SPECTATORS DROPPED COINS IN
THE HUGE FLAG.
M-5-9-38..5BOP          ( SEE STORIES)

VERSO. Ink notations on the caption slip:
[large, lower right of the slip:] 80
[small illegible ink mark below ( SEE STORIES)]

VERSO. Stamps and marks on the print itself, all set at a right angle to the caption slip, much of the agency stamp running under the slip:
[eagle device with spread wings on a staff, above a large INS monogram]
THIS PHOTO[...]
INT[ERNATIONAL ...]
23[6?] EAS[T ...]
THIS PHOTOG[RAPH ...]
[CO]PYRIGHT IS GR[ANTED ...]
[PHO]TOGRAPH ONL[Y ...]
[WITH]OUT OUR C[ONSENT ...]
[REQUE]ST.  IT CAN[NOT ...]
FOR PURPOSES O[F ...]
[WRI]TTEN PERMISS[ION OF ...]
MAR 20 1939
[...]939   [second, partial impression at the upper left, mostly hidden by the caption slip]

[black ink, hand-lettered, running vertically over a broad graphite stroke, upper left:] FLAGS — CHINA

[on a torn tape strip at the right edge, block capitals, set at a right angle to the caption slip:] [...]AL NEWS

Typed on a separate sheet visible at the lower left edge of the frame, mostly out of view:
[...]ESE (GEN.)

No Chinese-language text appears on this object.

Historical context

On 9 May 1938 some twelve thousand Chinese Americans, from Newark and Jersey City and as far away as Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Wilmington and Washington, D.C., marched three and a half miles from Mott Street in Chinatown through Lower Manhattan. The date was the twenty-third anniversary of Japan's Twenty-One Demands on China of 1915. One group of a hundred Chinese girls in cheongsam carried a 45-by-75-foot Nationalist Chinese flag stretched between them; spectators threw coins onto it and about $300 was collected that day. The device was taken up in later parades, at which the flag became so heavy with money that each parade had to be stopped three times to be emptied. The Rice Bowl parties, American fundraising events for Chinese civilian relief, began after this procession: the first were held simultaneously in a number of cities on 17 June 1938, organised by the United Council for Civilian Relief in China under Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr. together with the Chinese War Relief Association, with San Francisco collecting $55,000 in a day, a second event raising $87,000 in 1940 and a third $93,000 in 1941. International News Photos was the picture service of the International News Service, which began as the American News Service, founded by William Randolph Hearst in May 1909, and was renamed the International News Service in January 1910. INS merged with United Press on 24 May 1958 to form United Press International.

What is not known

• The face of the print was not photographed, so the archive has not seen the photograph this caption describes; nothing here confirms what the image shows.
• The photographer is not named anywhere on the object.
• Two words on the caption slip are obliterated inside hand-drawn ink boxes and cannot be recovered. Whether the obliterated words were pasted over, opaqued or simply struck out is not determinable from the photograph.
• The correction after THE NEED- is an overtyped group of characters inside an ink box; FOR is a plausible but doubtful reading.
• Who applied the ink boxes and corrections to the caption slip, and whether they were made at the agency before distribution or later by a newspaper or picture library, is not established.
• The typed word in the caption reads AFFAIR OF THIS KING; whether this is a typist's error for KIND or a damaged D is not determinable, and it is transcribed as it photographs.
• The leading character of S843831 is blotted. The refuter read it as a 3; on re-examination at full resolution its form matches the S of SLUG and of S843829 on the same slip, and the archive reads it as S. The relationship between the two numbers, and between them and the code (L21) and the tail 5BOP, is not established; the character after 5B is ambiguous between the letter O and the figure 0.
• Why a print captioned 9 May 1938 carries a MAR 20 1939 date stamp is not established.
• Whether the second, partial date stamp near the upper left is another impression of the MAR 20 1939 stamp is not established: only the digits …939 survive.
• The date of this printing is not established. The March 1939 stamp is consistent with the print being in a picture library by then, but does not fix when it was made.
• The caption says two hundred girls; the accounts consulted say about a hundred young women, and give the flag as 45 by 75 feet (NEH) or 100 by 50 feet (Museum of Chinese in America). The archive has not resolved these figures.
• Two Museum of Chinese in America pages date a Chinatown parade differently, one to 9 May 1938 and one to 10 May 1938; the archive has not resolved whether these are two accounts of one parade or two events, and has followed the 9 May date because it matches the slug on the object and the NEH account.
• No source the archive consulted places this 9 May procession inside the Rice Bowl fundraising campaign, and the archive does not assert a connection.
• Most of the International News Photos address and copyright stamp runs under the caption slip. What survives of the address reads 23[6?] EAS[T …]: the third digit photographs as a 6, with 5 a possible alternative reading, and no street name or number survives. The archive has not verified the agency's street address against a source it fetched.
• The meaning of the large ink 80 written on the caption slip is not established.
• The block capitals on the torn tape at the right edge read […]AL NEWS; whether they are printed on a gummed agency tape or hand-lettered is not determinable.
• The typed heading at the lower left edge, read as […]ESE (GEN.), is cut off by the frame; CHINESE (GEN.) is a likely but unverified expansion, and whether it belongs to an envelope, a folder or another print is not established.
• No newspaper printing of this specific picture has been located, so the archive cannot say where or whether it ran.