The Literary Digest

Articles from The Literary Digest

Who Pays the Bills Racked-Up in a Socialist State? (Literary Digest, 1894)

This article was written long before the crumbling Euro and the economic collapse of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Venezuela, East Germany and the USSR – it is an 1894 editorial that outlines why socialism cannot not work:

He insists that all previous Social evolutions have meant an improvement in production and an increase in income, but the peculiarity of the Socialistic programme is that “it is to be not a money-making, but a money-spending evolution,” in which “everybody is to live a great deal better than he has been in the habit of living, and to have far more fun.


This 1946 article argued that Socialism is simply un-American…

Who Pays the Bills Racked-Up in a Socialist State? (Literary Digest, 1894) Read More »

Discovered: The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (Literary Digest, 1923)

One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC – 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 – 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American:

What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself.

Discovered: The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (Literary Digest, 1923) Read More »

The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923)

Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow ‘Isvicstia’ and the ‘Economcheskaia Gizn’ feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces.

Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.

The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923) Read More »

Georgia Invaded (Literary Digest, 1921)

Nine months after the Soviet Union signed a good-will agreement respecting the autonomy and independence of its Black Sea neighbor, Vladimir Lenin’s Red Army quickly overran the borders of the Democratic Republic of Georgia on February 16, 1921; seizing the Georgian capital nine days later, Russian General Anatoli Ilyich Gekker declared the establishment of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.


Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

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Public Relief for Young Men (Literary Digest, 1933)

During the Spring of 1933 articles like this one began to appear in the magazines and newspapers across the country serving to inform their readers about the creation of an additional Federal agency that was designed to help take some of the sting out of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal intended to take a hefty percentage of unmarried young men off the streets of 16 American cities, feed them, clothe them and line their pockets with $30.00 a month for their labor. W.W. II created a host of other demands requiring Federal funding, and so Congress voted to dissolve the C.C.C. in 1942.


Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…

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Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All? (Literary Digest, 1921)

‘The public school system will become a vast political machine.’ And this machine, it is charged, ‘will give a Federal Administration the opportunity of creating an educational autocracy, really endangering the liberty of thought and information, which is a basic right of the people.’


This article pertains to a bill that was before the Congress one hundred years ago that proposed the creation of a Department of Education. The bill was defeated. The proposed legislation was enthusiastically supported by the National Education Association.

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All? (Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All? (Literary Digest, 1921)

‘The public school system will become a vast political machine.’ And this machine, it is charged, ‘will give a Federal Administration the opportunity of creating an educational autocracy, really endangering the liberty of thought and information, which is a basic right of the people.’


This article pertains to a bill that was before the Congress one hundred years ago that proposed the creation of a Department of Education. The bill was defeated. The proposed legislation was enthusiastically supported by the National Education Association.

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All? (Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »