The Literary Digest – Page 8 – Old Magazine Articles

Christians Butchered
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Attached is an article filed during the closing days of the Greco-Turkish War (1919 – 1922) which takes into account that seven years after the 1915 Armenian slaughter in Asia Minor, the victorious governments of the West had never dolled out any punitive measures whatever, and the murder of Christians was continuing under cover of the Greek military withdrawal from that region.

…the Christian population is flying, like herds of frightened sheep, and the fate of those who lag behind is death.

Reverend Fosdick’s Rebellion
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Heresy Hunters are on the war-path again, we are told, their latest attack being directed against Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick…who is charged with rejecting the four great doctrines of Christianity -the virgin birth, the inspiration of scriptures, the atonement of Jesus, and Christ’s second coming…

A Near-Death Experience from the Thirties
(Literary Digest, 1935)

A short article from 1935 reporting on the near-death experience of a British gardener named John Puckering who insisted that when his heart ceased beating for four and a half minutes during the course of a complicated surgery his soul slipped away, and joined a heavenly company…

A second article dealing with the same subject can be read here.

A Near-Death Experience from the Thirties
(Literary Digest, 1935)

A second article dealing with the same subject can be read here.

Good Christians & Good Soldiers
(The Literary Digest, 1897)

Accompanied by a German political cartoon that more than implied that army generals do not belong in God’s heaven, this article is a digest of a number of articles from Germany that thought carefully about a speech given by Kaiser Wilhelm, in which the sovereign opined:

He who is not a good Christian is not a good man, nor a good Prussian soldier, and he cannot possibly fulfill the duty of a soldier in the Prussian army.

The Teutonic press corps rightfully pointed out that Jews had been serving in that army since 1812, and had been recognized as a patriotic and reliable pool of recruits.

Male Church Attendance Drops
(Literary Digest, 1929)

A report from The Literary Digest revealed that only one man out of every nine attended Sunday services with any regularity in 1929. The article quotes one wounded clergymen who predicted doom for the American culture as a whole, and interviewed an assorted number of church-goers of the male variety who offered a number sound reasons to attend weekly services, none of them having anything to do with the Gospels. However 317 out of 320 interviewed all concurred that their participation helps them attain a sense of the presence of God in their lives.

Click here to read an article from 1900 about why men dislike going to church.

When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church…

Bertram G. Goodhue on Church Architecture
(Literary Digest, 1913)

Bertram Goodhue (1869 – 1924) was a popular American architect who was highly praised for his mastery of the Gothic Revival style of architecture, which won him many of the finest commissions that society had to offer any architect during the high-water mark of the WASP ascendancy.

This article appeared in The Literary Digest just as his design for St. Thomas Church on New York’s Fifth Avenue was nearing completion and he shared with the journalist his insights as to how he designs churches:

Sometimes, of course, the cloistral effect is needed, in a monastery, for instance. And the church must always have solemnity, but not coldness. I have tried in my work to express this quality of invitation, together with sanctity and a degree of magnificence quite undreamed of in my craftsman days.

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.