The Literary Digest

Articles from The Literary Digest

‘Fascism in America” (Literary Digest, 1937)

With the opening of Camp Nordland (Dorkland?) in Andover, New Jersey, the two streams of American fascism saw fit to convene there and join hands. The Italian side was lead by the American Duce Salvatore Caridi and Yankee Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn stood at the head of the American Bundists.

Amidst much heiling, drinking of imported beer and assorted flag-waving, was celebrated the cementing of the twenty-first link in a chain of camps which has been gradually growing. By car they came and by train, until the countryside was increased by ten thousand inhabitants.

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The Loud Noises of N.Y. (Literary Digest, 1929)

The unsettling noises of New York City are as well-known to the New Yorkers of today as they were to the New Yorkers of yore:

Soldiers get war shell-shock; New Yorkers get peace shell-shock, a condition of nerves less obvious, but more insidious. It makes the New Yorker smoke more cigarettes than any one else in the world…it keeps the speakeasies open, it builds skyscrapers and eggs him on to splendid achievement, or shatters his morale…

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The 1920s Craze for Flagpole Sitting (Literary Digest, 1929)

Here is a 1929 magazine article that makes clear for us in the digital age just how appealing the fad of flag pole sitting was to the YouTube-starved teenagers of the Twenties. This article tells the tale of Avon Azie Foreman and Jimmy Jones, two courageous flag pole sitting sons of Baltimore who inspired their feminine Maryland counterparts, Ruth McCruden and Dorthy Staylor, to ascend to perch. This journalist was probably not alone in believing that anyone who was capable of placing their keister where the flag should be was a rare and distinct breed of individual – possessing a faultless character and was destined for great things in the future.


Good; they will need such sturdy souls in two months – when the bottom falls out of the N.Y. Stock Exchange and the Great Depression begins – you can read about that here…

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The Blessings of Poison Gas (Literary Digest, 1927)

Having examined the collected data from the First World War, scientists and soldiers alike were drawing surprising conclusions as to the inefficiency of chemical agents in warfare. No doubt, it was articles such as this that lead to the decision not to use gas in the Second World War:

Poisonous gas as used in warfare is ‘a blessing, not a curse,’ and makes for the future security and peace of the world’, declares J.E. Mills, of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service

…Theoretically one ton of mustard gas could kill 45,000,000 men. Actually one ton of mustard gas as used at the front caused about twenty-nine casualties, of which one died.

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The Mind of Susan B. Anthony (Literary Digest, 1894)

For those Victorian phrenologists who made it their life’s work to map out the brains of American Suffragettes, Susan B. Anthony proved to have been the least complicated:

This is a brain in which there was no waste – no superfluous expenditure. This is a woman with a purpose from which she never swerves.


Click here to read about that moment in 1920 when American Women attained the vote.

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Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (Literary Digest, 1913)

A 1913 profile of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (1847 – 1919), president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and leader in their struggle to secure American women their right to vote. This article primarily deals with her meeting with President Woodrow Wilson and his inability to commit to the question of women’s suffrage.

Having helped to fight the good fight, Dr. Shaw died in 1919, weeks after the U.S. Congress voted to ratify the 19th Amendment.

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Germany’s Discomfort Over the War-Guilt Clause (Literary Digest, 1929)

The Treaty of Versailles was signed ten years before the printing of the attached article, and within that time the German press had literally published hundreds of thousands of editorials objecting to the treaty’s clause that placed all blame entirely on Germany for the start of the war. In order to mark this anniversary, the editors of The Literary Digest decided to run this article that reported on how that country felt about the war-guilt lie.

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The French Army Moves into the Ruhr Valley (Literary Digest, 1923)

When Germany’s post-war government failed to remit a portion of the 33 billion dollars it owed under it’s obligations agreed to in the Versailles Treaty, France lost little time deploying her army into the coal rich regions of the Ruhr Valley. This article, illustrated with cartoons and maps, offers a collection of assorted observations and editorial opinions gathered from from across Europe concerning the event:

Premiere Poincare remarked, ‘the French troops will remain in the Ruhr as long as may be necessary to assure the payment of reparations, but not a single day longer.’

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The Lynchings of 1934 (Literary Digest, 1935)

Four paragraphs tallying up the number of lynchings that took place throughout the course of 1934. The study was compiled by the Department of Records and Research of the Tuskegee Institute, which also compared the amount to the number of lynchings that took place during the previous four years.

Fifteen people, all Negroes, were lynched during 1934…Mississippi led in the number of lynchings, six; Florida and Louisiana came next with two each; and one each was recorded for Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.

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