Articles from The Literary Digest
A two page article reporting on the growth of the KKK throughout the United States in the early Twenties, it’s general rise in popularity and the resolve of elected officials at both the state and Federal levels to contain the Invisible Empire.
Interesting comments can be read by a reformed Klansman named H.P. Fry, who authored a cautionary memoir titled, The Modern Ku Klux Klan
Seven years after wine and spirits were banished from the land, the government in Washington felt pressured to discipline all those restaurateurs who failed to defenestrate their patrons who brought illicit drink into their establishments. This is an article about how an attempt was made to get restaurant owners to police their customers.
The attached article from LITERARY DIGEST will give you a clear understanding of all that Britain went through in order to govern Iraq in the early Twenties; Britain’s treaties with the Turkish and Angoran Governments in regards to the oil-rich region of Mosul, the selection of an Arab King and the suppression of various Iraqi revolts.
The Mesopotamian Adventure required a tremendous amount of treasure and yielded very little excitement for either party:
At the end of the war we found Iraq upon our hands, and our Government agreed to accept a mandate for the administration for this inhospitable territory.
Click here to see a Punch Magazine cartoon about the British adventure in Iraq.
In 1937 the Rare Book Department at the Library of Congress launched a surprising exhibit of what they called, ephemeral literature – these works were popularly known as Dime Novels and they were not simply the father of the modern comic book but also the father of one other form of popular literature:
The roots of the American historical novel are sunk in the so-called dime novel – the first effort at popular fiction. It began with the stories based on the Revolutionary War, then historical fiction of incidents in the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the struggle for Cuban independence, which stated about that period.
Although the dime novel was in full swing as a popular form of mass literature in 1900, the journalist titled this article as he did because the genre was undergoing so many changes at the time, departing from it’s original format. A short history of the dime novel is provided with an emphasis on it’s classic period spanning the years 1860 through 1870:
Some references are also made to the work of the Beadle and Adams bookkeeper, George Munro, who completely changed the direction of the dime novel when he took up the pen in 1865.
Although the dime novel was in full swing as a popular form of mass literature in 1900, the journalist titled this article as he did because the genre was undergoing so many changes at the time, departing from it’s original format. A short history of the dime novel is provided with an emphasis on it’s classic period spanning the years 1860 through 1870:
Some references are also made to the work of the Beadle and Adams bookkeeper, George Munro, who completely changed the direction of the dime novel when he took up the pen in 1865.
This is a wonderful read in which the American World War One fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 – 1973), recounted his experiences in France. Arriving rather late in the game (March, 1918), he quickly racked up 26 kills, a Croix de Guerre, a Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion d’Honeur and the Congressional Medal of Honor (which would not be approved and awarded to him until 1930). He was the top Ace in the American Air Service. In his later life, he would go on to become one of the founders of Continental Airlines.
I learned pretty fast. Long practice in driving a racing-car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed…
In his later life, Rickenbacker would go on to become one of the founders of Continental Airlines.
Click here to read an article about the development of aerial reconnaissance during W.W. I.
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage.
Just as the American poet Walt Whitman once remarked concerning the American Civil War – that the real war will never make it into books, so goes the thinking of the ink-stained wretch who penned the attached column regarding the efforts of the Official War Artists during W.W. I – who attempted to render accurately the horrors of war. Such genuine indecency could never allow itself to be duplicated into a two or three dimensional format.
In the immediate aftermath of the First World War there were many eye witnesses to the slaughter who refused to remember it as a Noble Struggle. The chubby and comfortable fellows who ran the British Government couldn’t have known that the society portraitist William Orpen was one of these witnesses – but they soon found out when they commissioned him to make a pretty painting depicting all the pomp that was taking place at Versailles…
Various musings concerning the influences that war has had on art through the centuries are discussed in this article, with particular attention paid to the historical belief that wars are won by those nations that host the more vibrant and original arts communities.
Three hundred and fifty French artists, among whom are painters, sculptors, engravers, and architects, have paid the extreme price of their devotion to country and are counted with the dead.
This is an interesting article that announced the Germans march into the Rhineland as well as the island of Hegoland. The journalist also listed various other Versailles Treaty infractions.
Click here to read an additional article concerning the Versailles Treaty violations.
Attached is a chart pulled from a 1936 issue of THE LITERARY DIGEST that reported on the U.S. urban homicide rate spanning the years 1926 through 1935. It indicates that the murder rate began climbing during the economic depression (from 8.8 in 1928); the years 1934 through 1936 saw a steady decline in urban homicide, more than likely as a result of the end of Prohibition.
To those of us living in the digital age, the concept that the pilots of an airplane race should be segregated by gender in order to compete seems just like a dictate from Sharia law – but for our great-grandfathers, it made perfect sense. This article is about the Women’s Air Derby of 1929, which had a list of women pilots that read like the Who’s Who of 1920s women aviation.
Amelia Earhart was one of the competitors.
This article tells the story of Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and the gang as they worked the state conventions in a effort to gain the right to vote. In states with large Republican majorities, they swore to vote vote Republican, in states with large Democratic majorities they promised to support that party:
The State Woman-Suffrage Association should remain non-partisan and each individual woman should feel free to ally herself with whatever party she approves.
This remarkable aeroplane gun is the invention of Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac N. Lewis of the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps. Curiously enough, the gun was designed primarily for infantry and cavalry use.
Click here to read a 1918 article about the Lewis Gun.
The attached article was written nineteen years after the smoke cleared over Vimy Ridge and succinctly tells the story of that battle in order that we can better understand why thousands of Canadian World War One veterans crossed the ocean a second time in order to witness the unveiling of the memorial dedicated to those Canadians who died there:
Walter S. Allward (1876 – 1955), Canadian sculptor, worked fourteen years on the completion of the monument, which cost $1,500,000.
The article also touches upon some of the weird events that have taken place at Vimy Ridge since the war ended…
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
A printable article that illustrated the sensitive diplomatic status existing between France, Britain and Germany in 1900 when France was still smarting from their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; recently allying themselves with Imperial Russia, Germany felt extremely ill at ease. The kaiser’s diplomats remarked openly that Britain, as the abusive tormentors of the Boer farmers in South Africa, were not likely to be on friendly terms with Germany any time soon.
