The Literary Digest – Page 8 – Old Magazine Articles

The Catholic Devotion to Mary
(Literary Digest, 1897)

Many and myriad are the reasons Roman Catholics and Protestants worship differently – one of them is the idolization of the Virgin Mary.
This article from 1897 outlines the reasoning behind this uniquely Roman Catholic brand of piety that emphasizes the Virgin Mary while numerous other Christian faiths have long held that this extracurricular devotion merely serves to upstage Christ and His message. The column is composed of numerous passages from an open letter written by Pope Leo XIII (1878 – 1903) clarifying the need for the Catholics to understand the importance of the Virgin Mary:

From all eternity He chose her to become the mother of the Word who was to clothe Himself in human flesh…

The Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses
(Literary Digest, 1936)

Here is an article concerning the persecution of that Protestant faith so unique to American shores: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion that numbered 50,000 world-wide in 1936. The attached article reported on the school expulsions of various assorted young followers for failing to show proper respect to the American flag on campus:

A year ago the first such case, in Pennsylvania, startled the newspapers. ‘If you kill me I won’t salute!’ quavered an eleven year-old schoolboy. He was expelled. Soon after, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, a teacher was was dismissed for refusing to honor ‘the flag of horror and hate.’

An Islamic View of Christianity
(The Literary Digest, 1897)

The credited source for the attached article was a Christian cleric in Baku by the name of Pastor von Bergmann, who, having lived among the Mohammedans for some time, had gained a unique understanding as to their creed:

But, by the rejection of the great grace of God through Mohamed, Christians and all other unbelievers have become such gross criminals that their lives have no worth or value whatever…It is a terrible sin to regard the Christians as equal to a Mohammedan or to consider them entitled to any rights over against the latter.

An article about the Muslim opinion concerning colonialism can be read here…

Religions at Sing Sing Prison
(Literary Digest, 1933)

For the stat-minded among us who study the religions of New York City, this short magazine article from 1933 will illustrate how the various faiths were represented numerically in New York’s Sing Sing Prison:

One Buddhist and two [Muslims] were received within the gray walls of Sing Sing during the last fiscal year.

During the same period the doors of the great prison closed behind 855 Catholics, 518 Protestants, 177 Hebrews, twenty Christian Scientists and eight of no religion at all.

Click here to see a 1938 photo essay about life in Sing Sing Prison.

Click here to read more old magazine articles about religion.

Christ is Big Box Office
(The Literary Digest, 1927)

This is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, The King of Kings, which was directed by one of Hollywood’s earliest seers: Cecil B. DeMille (1881 – 1959). The film was genuinely adored in all circles; one critic gushed:

Cecil B. DeMille’s reward for The King of Kings will be in heaven…

Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

The Forgotten Midshipman
(Literary Digest, 1897)

This column emerged from the mists of time, telling us a story that had long been forgotten. Reading this column, we are able to piece together that there once lived an African-American fellow named R.C. Bundy, who let it be know that he wished to attend the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. It gets fuzzy from here as to whether he had sponsors backing him or if he never even took the entrance exam – the shouts from the press were so loud and cruel on this topic from the start. We found no other information of the young man. The first African-American to graduate Annapolis did so decades later, in 1949.

‘Is It Worth While to Educate the Negro?”(Literary Digest, 1900)

This column discusses a public address that got a lot people talking back in 1900. Charles Dudley Warner (1829 – 1900) was an honored man back in his time – even today he is celebrated with a website that has preserved his better quotes – but non of those citations were pulled from the controversial speech that is remembered here. In his address as president of the American Social Science Association, Warner openly called into question the usefulness higher education for African-Americans. The news of his prattle soon spread like a prairie fire and thousands of editorials were set to newsprint. Three eloquent responses appear here, one was by the (white) editor of a prominent African-American paper, The New York Age.

‘Southern Opinions on Negro Suffrage”
(Literary Digest, 1900)

American Arts and the Black Contribution
(Literary Digest, 1917)

The attached column is an abstract of an article that first appeared in THE NEW YORK EVENING POST in 1917. The original article was penned by NAACP secretary James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938)

I believe the Negro possesses a valuable and much-needed gift that he will contribute to the future American democracy. I have tried to point out that the Negro is here not merely to be a beneficiary of American democracy, not merely to receive. He is here to give something to American democracy. Out of his wealth of artistic and emotional endowment he is going to give something that is wanting, something that is needed, something that no other element in all the nation has to give.

Johnson was quick to point out that American popular culture was enjoyed the world-over and these dance steps and catchy tunes were not simply the product of the Anglo-Saxon majority.

The First Elected African-American Judge
(Literary Digest, 1924)

An article about Albert B. George (1873 – ?) of Chicago, the first African-American to be elected as a municipal court judge:

An epochal scene will presently be enacted in one of the divisions of Chicago’s Municipal Court, pointed out several editors, when there will ascend to its bench Albert Baily George, the Negro just elected Municipal Judge on the Republican ticket by 470,000 votes. In the past a Negro here and there has been appointed judge, notably Robert H. Terrell (1857 – 1925) of Washington, we are told, but this is the first election of one to a regular judicial office.

Judge George’s ancestors were slaves in old Virginia. His success, says the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, ‘has sent a thrill of hope through the black belts – a new incentive to work and decent living.; It is considered ‘a milestone in the journey of the negro race out of the wilderness of slavery, an application of the principles of democracy which may point the way to better things for both races.’

The Negro’s Northern Exodus
(The Literary Digest, 1931)

Click here to read a second article about the great migration.

The Similarities Between Fascists and Bolsheviks
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

Here is a brief glance at various observations made by a correspondent for The London Observer who compared the two dominate tribes found in 1933 Moscow and Berlin. The journalist was far more distracted by the similarities in their street hustle and their speechifying rather than their shared visions in governance and culture – for example, both the Nazis and Soviets were attracted to restrictions involving public and private assembly, speech and gun ownership while sharing an equal enthusiasm for May Day parades and the color red. Additionally, both totalitarian governments held religion as suspect and enjoyed persecuting their respective dupes – for the Nazis that was the Jews and for the Communists it was the bourgeoisie.

Read a magazine piece that compares the authoritarian addresses of both Hitler and Stalin – maybe you will see how they differed – we couldn’t.

Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

Catholic Hierarchy Pressured in 1930s Germany
(Literary Digest, 1937)

With every organization in Germany gobbled up, the Evangelical and Roman Catholic churches continue their valiant, tortured struggle against absorption in the totalitarian state.

Last week Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 – 1952), Archbishop of Munich, mounted the pulpit of old St. Michael’s and basted Nazi violations of the Concordat, the 1933 treaty between the Reich and the Vatican under which Catholics agreed to a ban on the political activities clergy and lay leaders, in exchange for religious liberty in their churches and schools.

Modern Dance: Spreading the News
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Quoting the apostles of Modern Dance quite liberally, this article presents for the reader their impassioned defense as to why the era of a new dance form had arrived and why it was deserving of global attention and much needed in America’s schools. The column centers on the goings-on at Teacher’s College, N.Y.C., where a certain Mary P. O’Donnell once ran the roost at that institution’s dance department; it was O’Donnell’s plan to send her minions out in all directions like the 12 Apostles of Christ, spreading the good news to all God’s creatures that Modern Dance had arrived.

The Boy at Vicksburg
(Literary Digest, 1912)

After reading the attached article, we concluded that baby-sitters must have been pretty hard to come by in the 1860s – and perhaps you’ll feel the same way, too, should you choose to read these columns that concern the recollections of Frederick Dent Grant (1850 – 1912) – son of General Ulysses S. Grant, who brought his son (who was all of 13 years-old at the time) to the blood-heavy siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. The struggles he witnessed must have appealed to the boy, because he grew up to be a general, too.

The Atlantic Monthly in the Beginning
(Literary Digest, 1897)

Forty years ago the Boston publisher, Phillips, with the assistance of that famous coterie of American writers that included Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, Motley, Quincy, Parker, Cabot and Underwood launched
The Atlantic Monthly

It was Holmes who named the magazine, and it was he, probably, more than any other, who assured its success… The prime object of The Atlantic was in the beginning and has continued to be the making of American literature, ‘to hold literature above all other human interests.’

Click here to read the articles from The Atlantic Monthly

The Eight World War One American Cemeteries
(Literary Digest, 1923)

Written five years after the Armistice, this is an article about the eight U.S. W.W. I cemeteries that were erected in Europe (with the help of German P.O.W. labor) and the money that was set aside by the veterans of The American Legion to aid in the upkeep of these memorials:

The American flag is still in Europe, even tho the last Doughboy has left the Rhine. It floats over eight cemeteries, six in France, one in Belgium and one in England…It is the high honor of the American Legion to represent the American people in the fulfillment of the sacred national obligation of decorating the graves of our soldiers abroad on Memorial Day. The Legion pledges itself always to remember and honor our dead on foreign soil on the day when the heart of all Americans is thrilling with reverence for them.

Secular America on the Rise
(Literary Digest, 1933)

The most fundamental change in the intellectual life of the United States is the apparent shift from Biblical authority and religious sanctions to scientific and factual authority and sanctions.

So, at any rate, Professor Hornell Hart, of Bryn Mawr College reads the signs…Two other investigators find evidence of a decline in dogma and a rise in the ‘social gospel’ as evidence of the humanist form of religion which Professor Hart sees foreshadowed by the morning sun.

In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…