The Literary Digest

Articles from The Literary Digest

Eleanor Roosevelt Was a Very Different First Lady (The Literary Digest, 1933)

Written not too long after she assumed the title First Lady; Eleanor Roosevelt (1906 – 1975) was causing a dust-up in Washington:

With the Constitution making no provision whatever for the duties of President’s wives, they have heretofore confined their activities largely to the social side of the white House.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s governmental activities are approved by those who see in them altruism, sympathy for the downtrodden, and a great desire to serve others. Her activities are opposed by those who feel that she is not properly a public servant because she is not responsible to the American electorate or directly accountable to it at election time.

A Page from the Dartmouth Play Book Praised (Literary Digest, 1930)

In one of his weekly columns for the year 1930, Sol Metzger (1880 – 1932) praised the well-coordinated teamwork of the Dartmouth boys for a surprising play they deployed in their contest against Harvard a year earlier (Crimson ate it 34 to 7).

The play is diagrammed and can easily be printed.

Chateau-Thierry: Setting the Record Straight (Literary Digest, 1919)

It has been said that when the U.S. Army’s senior staff officers had learned of the great victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, Those head-line hunting bastards! When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army’s success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army.

Click here to read an article about the American snipers in W.W. I France.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.

Chateau-Thierry: Setting the Record Straight (Literary Digest, 1919)

It has been said that when the U.S. Army’s senior staff officers had learned of the great victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, Those head-line hunting bastards! When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army’s success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army.

Click here to read an article about the American snipers in W.W. I France.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.

The War Encouraged Prohibitionists (Literary Digest, 1917)

An editorial cartoon made to illustrate that some of the combatant nations across the sea had taken measures to discourage liquor consumption and with the recent U.S. Declaration of war, America would be doing the same thing (only on a far more radical level)…

President Hoover’s Farewell Address (Literary Digest, 1933)

With FDR waiting in the wings, eagerly anticipating the start of his administration, the outgoing president, Herbert Hoover (1874 – 1964), made his farewell address to the cash-strapped nation:

Warning against the ‘rapid degeneration into economic war which threatens to engulf the world’ the President said that ‘the imperative call to the world today is to prevent that war.’ The gold standard, he said ‘is the need of the world,’ for only by the early reëstablishment of that standard can the barriers to trade be reduced.’


Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry during the last year of the Hoover presidency…

The Red Cross Dogs (Literary Digest, 1917)

There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. Marquis, a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!

The Red Cross Dogs (Literary Digest, 1917)

There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. Marquis, a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!

The Red Cross Dogs (Literary Digest, 1917)

There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. Marquis, a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!

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