The Literary Digest – Page 6 – Old Magazine Articles

The American Cemetery at Romagne (Literary Digest, 1919)

An eye-witness account of the construction of the American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in Romagne, France:

They are now gathering up the bodies of the 26,000 American boys who were killed on the Argonne-Meuse battlefield, and are burying them in a great cemetery at Romagne, a little town in the heart of the region where the fighting took place. Here and there all over the battlefield are stakes, each marking the grave of an American soldier who was buried where he fell.

In one of the office buildings a large force of clerks is keeping the records of the dead; no banking firm could be more careful of its accounts than are these clerks…and their superiors of their registration of graves.

The Federal Theater Project (Pathfinder & Literary Digest Magazines, 1939)

The Federal Theater Project (FTP) was a division of President
Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA was organized in order to dream up jobs for the many unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. They employed manual laborers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, musicians with the Federal Music Project and historians with the Federal Records Survey – to name only a few of the agencies within the WPA. The Federal Theater Project was intended to hire the nation’s actors, costumers,directors and stagehands:

At its peak in 1936, FTP employed 12,500 people…it had puppet shows, vaudeville units, circuses and stock companies traveling through every state.

‘Is the Younger Generation in Peril?” (Literary Digest, 1921)

The deans who presided over Literary Digest made this article their lead piece, so urgent was the sensation that an onslaught of vengeful modernist women, so fleet of foot and irreverently unhampered by hanging hems and confining corsets, were approaching their New York offices as their first act in disassembling the patriarchy.

Izzy Einstein: Prohibition Agent No. 1 (Literary Digest, 1922)

Here is an interview with Izzy Einstein (Isidor Einstein, 1880 – 1938): Prohibition agent and master of disguise:

A day with Izzy would make a chameleon blush for lack of variation…

He prepared himself to move in high, low and medium circles – on the excellent theory that the taste for liquor and the desire to sell it are no respecters of persons – and in all those circles he has since been whirling with rapidity and a quick-change adeptness.

‘The Literary View of Prohibition” (Literary Digest, 1919)

Four months into the Noble Experiment of Prohibition, three respected British Writers, Hilaire Belloc, G K. Chesterton and Solomon Eagle all sound-off on American Prohibition.

Farewell to Alcohol (Literary Digest, 1919)

Published at a time when America stood so reluctantly on the doorstep of the Prohibition era, an unnamed editor at The Literary Digest compiled a number of quotes from numerous literary sources as if to illustrate the deep roots the Western world of belles-lettres has invested in the culture of alcohol.

The Crown Prince in Exile (Literary Digest, 1919)

In this interview the Kaiser’s son and fellow exile, Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951, a.k.a. The Butcher of Verdun), catalogs his many discomforts as a refugee in Holland. At this point in his life the former heir apparent was dictating his memoir and following closely the goings-on at Versailles.

Click here to read what Kaiser Wilhelm II thought of Adolf Hitler.

A Socialist Remedy for Nazi-Germany’s Labor Questions (Literary Digest, 1935)

A Socialist Workers’ Government has achieved a workers revolution in Germany without resorting to, though in some respects it approximates, Communism. Adolf Hitler has done it by wiping out all class privileges and class distinction, but the economics foundation of property rights and private capital has been left almost intact – for the present time.

The Third Reich, under Hitler, has wiped out corporate trade-unionism by forcing all workers to join one great government union, the National Socialist Union of Employers and Workers…

Eventually, unions were outlawed under Hitler.

Click here to read about the Nazi assault on the German Protestant churches in 1935.

Read an Article About the Socialist Aspects of Hitler’s Book, Mein Kampf.

Hitler’s economist admitted the German economy was socialist – more about that can be read here …

Women Drivers Vindicated (Literary Digest, 1936)

Attached is a magazine article concerning the on-going debate regarding women drivers and the continuing balderdash as to which of the genders is the better driver: the issue was decided in 1936 and the men lost:

…according to the report of a university professor who took the trouble to find out. Armed with statistics, he asserts that the female of the motoring species is not nearly so deadly as the male.

FDR: The First One Hundred Days (Literary Digest, 1933)

Here are the Chief accomplishments of the special Session of the 73rd Congress, March 9 – June 16, 1933

These fifteen pieces of legislation were called the Honeymoon Bills – his critics pointed out that not one of them originated in Congress and added to their argument that Congress had been marginalized during the earliest period of his presidency.

FDR’s critics had a thing or two to say about the first year of The New Deal…

Click here to read about FDR and the press.