Life, 1883-03-01 · page 12 of 16
Life — March 1, 1883 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Can She Come In?" - Life Magazine Satire The cartoon illustrates a debate at Columbia College over admitting women students. The image shows a woman at a doorway being blocked by male students and administrators inside, visualizing institutional resistance to coeducation. The accompanying text is a satirical anecdote mocking Columbia's male establishment. A narrator seeks employment guidance from a "doctor of divinity" (clergy) and a "scientific charity" gentleman, who exploit him by sending him to collect "statistics" from brothels ("dens of iniquity"). The joke: these supposedly respectable men are actually profiting from immoral establishments while maintaining a veneer of piety and concern for "morality." The satire suggests Columbia's resistance to admitting women stems from hypocrisy—male administrators who publicly oppose immorality while privately benefiting from vice cannot credibly claim moral authority to exclude women. The final caption about Brigham Young's polygamy further ridicules male-only institutional control over sexuality and women's roles.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CAN SHE COME IN? Ts this the attitude of the Columbia Students on the question of admitting women to the college? The doctor of divinity coughed. At that moment, he said, he was unable to indicate a field for my labors ; but stay! he would give me a letter to a gentleman who went in for scientific charity, and who could, doubtless, direct my efforts aright. “The gentleman who went in for scientific charity received me with enthusiasm, and eagerly asked me if I had the run of any of the newspapers. I replied that I had not. “That is a pity,’ said he, ‘you might have helped me to publish some statistics. ‘They are not only shocking, but rich.’’ He thereupon Produced a bun- dle of papers about a foot in thickness, and asked me if I should mind taking them and explaining them to an eminent editor whom he knew by name. He, him- self, he said, was too busy in compiling statistics to circulate them in person. I replied that I should re- gard the act as suicidal—for the editor was known to goarmed. To this he rejoined, with a sigh, that he had ever found them who said that they burned with enthusiasm, only lukewarm when put to the test. He would advise nothing more—unless I, myself, were willing to wall with fresh statistics. “©The very thing !" I cried. “You are a good young man," he said, fervently ; ‘T will give you a number of addresses!’ He did so. An eminent conveyancer has since informed me that the dens of iniquity in question stood in the name of this gentleman who went in for scientific charity. They were scientifically useful. “T visited them. I wallowed. I furnished the gen- tleman who went in for scientific charity with innum- erable statistics. He has assured me, and the doctor of divinity, that my efforts in the cause of morality would be remembered in Heaven. And it was in pur- suit of fresh statistics that I penetrated the club-house, where my eyes were dazzled by the aspect of your august countenance.” in iniquity, in order to provide him BriGHAM YOUNG once made proposals for twenty- one Hibernian wives to be “sealed” to him in job lots to suit the trade. In his last years, however, he declined receiving any more sealed bids. comicbooks.com