The Literary Digest – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

Nancy Langhorne Astor, M.P.
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Lady Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964) is remembered as the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons (she was not the first woman to be elected, but she was the first woman to serve in the House of Commons). Born in Virginia, she was the daughter of a former Confederate officer who refused to send her to college, thereby sparking her interests in the Suffrage movement. Following the divorce from her first husband in 1903, she set sail for Britain and met Waldorf Astor (1879 – 1952) while on board ship. The two were wed in 1906 and soon developed and interest in British politics. She became a Member of Parliament in 1919 and served in the House of Commons until 1945.

From the Beer Hall Putsch and Beyond
(Literary Digest, 1933)

This article appeared a few weeks after Hitler came to power and it lucidly explains how Handsome Adolf had first gained notoriety in Germany.

Click here to read about Ludendorff’s association with Hitler.

The KKK Fall from Fashion
(The Literary Digest, 1928)

In 1928 the presiding übermensch of the KKK, Hiram Evans (1881 – 1966), saw fit to make a sartorial change in his terrorist organization by declaring that there would be no need in the future for any face-covering to be worn by any member. The article is primarily about the rapid disintegration that the Klan was experiencing and the tremendous loss in it’s over all social appeal throughout the country.

It was a success, temporarily, because it appealed to the playboy instinct of grown-ups and offered burning phrases of patriotism as the excuse for gallivanting about… It failed because its ‘patriotism’ was not real, but ancient bigotry in new a guise… It failed finally, because the genuine American sense of humor finally asserted itself and laughed at the Klan out of court.

The KKK Fall from Fashion
(The Literary Digest, 1928)

This Guy Coached Astaire and Rogers
(Literary Digest, 1936)

A magazine profile of RKO Studio Dance Director Hermes Pan (1909 – 1990); his work with Fred Astaire (1899 – 1987) and Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995) and the lasting impression that African-American dance had made upon him. It is fascinating to learn what was involved in the making of an Astaire/Rogers musical and to further learn that even Bill Bojangles Robinson (1878 – 1949) was a fan of the dance team.

Astaire liked the youngster’s blunt answers. He realized the need of a critic who would talk back to a star.

This Guy Coached Astaire and Rogers
(Literary Digest, 1936)

Astaire liked the youngster’s blunt answers. He realized the need of a critic who would talk back to a star.

Amelia Earhart: Hawaii to California
(Literary Digest, 1935)

All well’, Amelia Earhart (1897 – 1937) radioed repeatedly during her 2,400-mile flight from Hawaii to California last week. ‘Alls well that ends well,’ she might have said as she set her monoplane down at Oakland Airport Saturday afternoon, eighteen hours and sixteen minutes after she took off from Wheeler Field, Honolulu. What she actually said was, ‘I’m tired’

Thus she has become the first woman to fly the Pacific from Hawaii to California, and the first person of either sex to fly it alone. Her record has been studded with ‘firsts’ ever since she learned to fly in 1918.

The Very First Football Referee Hand Signals
(Literary Digest, 1929)

With the widespread complaints on the rise from the football fans on the sidelines that they were completely in the dark as to why a play was called, the elders of the sport decided that action had to be taken to remedy the growing confusion…

Hence a system of signals has been devised whereby the officials on the field can let the people in the stand know what is what. A gesture of the arm by the field official will immediately telegraph to the stands that Whoozis College’s penalty was for slugging. Another wave will inform the inquisitive public that the forward pass was incomplete by being grounded.

The article is illustrated with eight photographs of assorted football penalty hand signals; none of the gestures have stood the test of time – the penalties have remained but today different signals indicate each infraction.

Social Differences Among the Lighter Skinned and Darker Skinned Blacks
(Literary Digest, 1922)

The varying degrees of color found among American Blacks has been, and still is, a sensitive topic and it was addressed in 1922 with some wit by an African-American journalist whose work is attached. Its a good read and speaks of a social structure that, we like to think, is gone with the wind; words appear in this article that seem queer in our era – there is much talk of

yellow gals
golden-skinned slave girls
tawny-skinned maids
midnight
stove-pipe

-all originating from African-American verse and popular song.

During the Second World War, hair dye was not simply used by women;
click here to read about the men who needed it, too.

Click here to read about black women who pass for white.

Click here to read a history of African-Americans between the years 1619 through 1939.

The Maginot Line Will Save Us
(Literary Digest, 1938)

The Maginot Line will permit calm French mobilization, experts say, in the event of a crisis. It may be noted, from a study of these forts on a map, that the chief point of concentration is approximately opposite the reoccupied Rhine zone. The Paris newspaper, Le Soir, says that no army can break down the Maginot Line.

Click here to read an article about French confidence in the Maginot Line.

The Twentieth Anniversary
(Literary Digest, 1937)

Here is a 1937 article marking the significance of General Edmund Allenby’s (1861 – 1936) march into the ancient city of Jerusalem in 1917. Written twenty years after the event, the article also marks the twentieth anniversary of the the Balfour Declaration – the British edict that declared British Palestine as the home of world Jewry.

The Career of General George Gordon Meade
(Literary Digest, 1912)

A brief article on the military career of Civil War General George Gordon Meade (1815 – 1872) with particular attention paid to his leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Meade will not be ranked by the historians with the great commanders, but his career is that of a well-trained, capable, and patriotic soldier, and he must always be remembered in the history of the war and of the country as the General who, for the longest period in its history, held the command of the Army of the Potomac, and to whom came the well-deserved good fortune of winning with this army the decisive battle of the war.

Reunion at Gettysburg’s Bloody Angle
(Literary Digest, 1913)

During the Battle of Gettysburg’s fiftieth anniversary celebration that took place during the summer 1913, a surviving member of Virginia’s Fifty-Sixth Regiment of Infantry encountered the Federal soldier who had saved his life at the Bloody Angle; this is the moving story of their encounter.

The KKK Influence on U.S. Politics
(The Literary Digest, 1922)

Attached is a 1922 report from THE LITERARY DIGEST regarding how remarkably close two KKK candidates for governor came to winning their respective state primaries. The two political contests in question, Oregon and Texas, caught national attention and became popular subjects for concern across the United States:

The closeness of the vote ought to be a warning…If the Ku Klux Klan insists on entering politics, good citizens must show it the way out.

‘Harvard Talks About Jews”
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This is an article about Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856 – 1943) who attempted to avoid the topic concerning his deep desire to admit Jews by quota and keep their numbers limited to a particularly low proportion.

In 1923 President Lowell came up with a politically palatable solution: he limited the size of the incoming class to one thousand, which meant incorporating an evaluation of each candidate’s non-academic qualities into the admissions decision. How manly was the candidate, for instance? How congenial and clubbable? What promise, what potential for future leadership?

Over time meritocracy won out – until Asians began applying in large numbers…

Preparing for War with Motorcycles
(Literary Digest, 1937)

A short news piece from The Literary Digest reported on an investment that the Nazi forces were making to insure a lightening-fast attack:

Motorcycles, a cool million of them, have become a German army specialty. The new Wehrmacht specializes in them. (it knows it will be short of horses; as when in March, 1918, the Teuton cavalry arm was virtually abolished, west front and east.) The British and French have only half a million machines apiece.

Read about the mechanics of W.W. II German motorcycles…

Myths About Lincoln
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Myths After Lincoln is a book that documented many of the assorted tall tales that have, through the years, evolved in such a way as to have us all believe that Lincoln was a mystic who was blessed with dreams of foreboding.

The myth of Lincoln’s funeral train appearing as an apparition once a year is discussed, as are the legends that John Wilkes Boothe, like Elvis, survived the Virginia barn fire, where he is believed to have died and escaped into the Western territories.

Elmer Wheeler, Word Chemist
(Literary Digest, 1938)

For ten years it has been Elmer Wheeler’s profession to find out for his clients what words, spoken across the counter, will sell merchandise. It is shrewd psychology applied to a neglected link in the chain of business…:

Don’t ask if, ask which. Don’t ever give the customer the choice between something and nothing.

Wheeler knows he alone is not the gate keeper of successful sales pitches – he recalled seeing a blindman with a sign reading, It’s spring, and I am blind.