Life, 1893-07-20 · page 3 of 18
Life — July 20, 1893 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The American Comedy: A Financial Fizzle" This satirical cartoon mocks the failure of financial schemes to improve social conditions. The dialogue depicts an exchange about inherited wealth and poverty: a grandfather invested in stocks that failed, passing loss to his father, who then failed to train his son properly. The satire's point: money cannot reliably create lasting improvement across generations—it either disappears through bad investment or fails to educate heirs to use it wisely. The accompanying dialogue about mothers and environmental factors suggests the cartoonist argues that financial solutions alone cannot solve social problems; character, training, and circumstance matter equally. The "Dead Man" section references a failed political suicide, further emphasizing themes of failure and futility.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
VOLUME XxXIl. NUMBER 551. THE AMERICAN COMEDY A FINANCIAL FIZZLE. T? pot? Clean gone! And not twenty-five yet ! Barely twenty-three. The stock was so bad, ch? No; the stock was decent enough. Not heredity then ? Not very obviously; and yet —— Well! The grandfather went in for money; the father went in for ease, and the son has been going in for pleasure. And were there no mothers ? There must have been mothers. And what of them ? You may well ask. Their environment was too strong for them, perhaps. Or they were otherwise oc- cupied. Dear! Does money work so badly as all that ? Not always; sometimes it works exceedingly well. As when—? As when the grandfather isn't too busy to train the father, nor the father too lazy to train the son. And the mothers are not swamped by their environment ! Exactly. You can’t trust money then to do its own training ? No; it makes the mare go, but it doesn’t do to let it drive, ELS. M. A DEAD MAN. SDA, can't they arrest Hill for trying to commit politi- cal suicide ?” “No, my son. He succeeded.” comicbooks.com