Life, 1886-06-03 · page 12 of 18
Life — June 3, 1886 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis for Modern Readers This page satirizes a fictional "Early Bud Insurance Co." that uses gas stoves to protect fruit crops from frost damage (personified as "Jack Frost"). The top cartoon shows an elaborate heating system installed in orchards—stoves hung from tree branches, connected by pipes to a central gas receiver. The satire's point: the company's rates are absurdly specific (10¢ for peach trees, 5¢ for berry bushes, "special rate" for pumpkins), treating agricultural protection like insurance premiums. A secondary joke targets chicken thieves: the company also places hot stoves on chicken roosts at night, so would-be thieves reach for poultry and burn their hands instead. The cartoonist (Wallace Peck) mocks both the inefficiency of farmers who won't invest in crop protection, and the entrepreneurial spirit of companies offering solutions to seasonal agricultural problems. The absurdity lies in the impracticality of heating entire fields with gas stoves—a satirical jab at overly-complicated "solutions" to natural problems.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Uo Soa ST) RRPORT (recpasa rics PREPARING FOR A CHANGE OF WEATHER. At nightfall the gas is turned on, the stoves are lighted, and all night they radiate their heat through the branches, thus protecting each and every bud. Under such an arrangement the peach crop can never be ruined by Jack Frost. ‘The company's rates are : Peach, apple and pear trees vo... + 10% Huckleberry and gooseberry bushes. rod Pumpkin vines... + Special rate. At a slightly advanced rate this company will also protect the spring ‘‘brilers,” by placing these stoves, at regular intervals, on the roosts; and the chicken thief will not be so active when the upward reach may land his hand on a red hot stove, instead of a fat pullet. Wallace Peck, HOW THE CHICKEN THULP 15 FOILED. leaves outdoors over night to shiver and freeze. He hangs his coarse shirt by the warm fire, while he leaves that most delicate of all textures—the blossom—out in the cold, wild air, Now, if he would exercise a bit of sense; if he would warm his trees, as he does himself and his animals, he would have a different experience. The Early Bud Insurance Co.—which, while earning its living, does to the trees what Bergh does to the ani- mals—has a system whereby it can protect all buds, thus ensuring the full after crop. When a risk is noted on a farm, a portable gas work is at once erected in the centre of the field ; and hun- dreds of gas stoves—connected with the huge central re- ceiver—are fastened among the branches of the trees. comicbooks.com