Fact-checking question from Freakonomics / Shaw quote

Thu Feb 6 22:04:18 UTC 2014

To try to obtain information about the publication date of the issue
of "Commercial West" containing the quotation attributed to George
Bernard Shaw I extracted text above and below the snippets. I could
not find anything useful above. Below the quotation is an
advertisement with the headword "Liquidity". This advertisement
displays two dates: December 31, 1932 and March 31, 1933. These dates
apparently are in the past.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lssaAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22none+of+its%22

So the "Commercial West" issue is probably dated April 1933 or later.
The issue of Reader's Digest with the cover date May 1933 would have
actually been distributed by the final week of April 1933, I think. I
have seen newspapers run RD quotations in the final week of the month
before the cover date.

It would be great to examine the "Commercial West" issue on paper (or
scans). The scans are from University of Minnesota. I've contacted
many libraries in the U.S. and Canada but not MN, yet.

Garson

On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 4:46 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fact-checking question from Freakonomics / Shaw quote
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks for your excellent work, Hugo. Page 27 appears multiple times
> in this volume, I believe. I did not quite understand your reasoning.
> Why do you think that the page 27 with the February 18, 1933 date is
> the same page as the page 27 with the quotation?
>
> A search for "June 17" shows a page 31 with a date of June 17, 1933.
> So there is almost certainly a page 27 with the same date. There is a
> page 3 dated June 3, 1933.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=lssaAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22June+17%22
>
> Garson
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Hugo <hugovk at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Hugo <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Fact-checking question from Freakonomics / Shaw quote
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> A slight antedating -- I've found a probable Saturday, February 18, 1933.
>>
>> It's a Google Books snippet, but the same page is dated. GB says it's
>> "Commercial West, Volume 65", Commercial West, Co., from 1932, but
>> more likely a later volume given the year.
>>
>> Page 27 has the exact same text as the May Reader's Digest:
>>
>> [Begin excerpt]
>> George Bernard Shaw once addressed a company as follows: "I suppose
>> that you seldom think. Few people think more than two or three times a
>> year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking
>> once or twice a week."
>> [End excerpt]
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?ei=TEnzUse0LIXp4wSF8IDACw&id=lssaAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22thinking+once+or+twice+a+week%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22international+reputation%22
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=lssaAQAAMAAJ&q=%22thinking+once+or+twice+a+week%22&dq=%22thinking+once+or+twice+a+week%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TEnzUse0LIXp4wSF8IDACw&redir_esc=y
>>
>> Here's the "Saturday, February 18, 1933" date at the top of page 27:
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?ei=TEnzUse0LIXp4wSF8IDACw&id=lssaAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22thinking+once+or+twice+a+week%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+insurance+1932+showing+is+good%22
>>
>> This volume doesn't seem to be in HathiTrust or Internet Archive.
>>
>> Hugo
>>
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