Life, 1893-04-20 · page 9 of 16
Life — April 20, 1893 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 255 This page satirizes public health concerns about immigration and disease transmission in early 20th-century America. The main article, based on a Naples correspondent's letter, describes U.S. doctors inspecting shipments of rags and emigrant clothing arriving from disease-ridden regions—particularly contaminated bandages from Hamburg hospitals and Egyptian rags allegedly carrying ophthalmia (eye disease). The accompanying illustrations show figures discovering diseased materials in building windows and doorways, suggesting the infection risk posed by imported goods. The satire critiques both government negligence in enforcing health regulations and the fraudulent practices of rag traders who falsely mark contaminated goods as "disinfected" before shipping them to America—highlighting corruption in trade and inadequate immigration/commerce oversight.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
> LIFE: IFE is not a newspaper and certainly not a sensa- tional one, but the following extracts from a personal letter written from Naples, and by a person in whom we have im- plicit confidence, impart a bit of news which is of some interest to the American public, The doctors sent here from the United States to look after the shipment of rags and emigrants from this port are in a state of despair. ‘They have sent cablegram after cablegram to the home author- ities stating that the lations are not being observed. From differ- ent ports that they have inspected, there are now being shipped to the United States rags which contain bandages bearing the Hamburg bospital mark, and used during the cholera season there; rags from Jerusalem that have come from the leprous patients, and rags from Egypt that have been used by peo- ple suffering from that dreadful ophthalmia, which is so contagious. ‘The doctors have just come from the examination of a ship about to sail for the United States with eleven hundred of the most miser- able class of Italians, with all kinds of skin diseases, and covered with dirt and vermin. The people say they are going to Mulberry street, New York, which to them means America. 'On Wednesday eight hundred more go out, and on Sat- urday another lot. The rag shippers have a way of marking the bales of rags ‘‘ disin- fected " when no inspector has ever been near them, and shipping them to England, whence they are re- shipped to New York. Itis perhaps too late now to avoid the results of the criminal lethargy on the part of our government officials in deal- ing with these matters, but the state of affairs our correspon- dent describes certainly calls for im- mediateand energetic action. OST of the office-seekers now left remaining in Washington have got down to the boarding- house and beanery stage of existence. VUJHEN we don’t spend our money we are economical; when other people don’t spend their money they are stingy. comicbooks.com