Life, 1894-06-07 · page 13 of 16
Life — June 7, 1894 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two satirical pieces about women's rights and marriage from an early 20th-century American magazine. **Top cartoon ("The Engaged Ones"):** A couple discusses mortality. When the man asks what she'd do if he died, she replies she'd "at least" attend his funeral—a cutting joke about the minimal emotional investment in their engagement. **Main article:** Life responds to suffragist Ellen Battelle Dietrick's criticism of their stance on women's suffrage. While agreeing that legal privileges like "alimony" and "dower" are outdated relics, Life sarcastically offers support only if suffragists also agree to be locked in a room with untamed mice—mocking their demand for equality while denying them are truly serious. **Bottom cartoon ("Where the Demand Exceeds the Supply"):** A man who claimed poverty in California actually married his fiancée to afford passage home. The joke satirizes both male deception and women as financial solutions to men's problems. The overall message ridicules women's suffrage advocates while reinforcing traditional gender hierarchies.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE ENGAGED ONES. THAT's ALL VERY WELL, BUT WHAT WOULD YOU po IF I SHOULD DIE? WH, THE LEAST I COULD DO WOULD BE TO GO TO THE FUNERAL. He: She: IFE has been taken to task at great length for its utter- ances on the Woman Suffrage question by Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Secretary of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association. In only one point, however, does she do us the honor to agree with us. She says : As to the privileges, you are quite correct in claiming that women who have equal rights of citizenship should not have privi- leges withheld from or not claimed by male citizens. * * Privileges are an absurd delusion so far as they represent a denial of rights, ‘Breach of promise of marriage,” ‘ non-sup- port,” ** alimony,” ‘* dower,” etc., are relics of the barbarous ages in which it was assumed that every woman would marry and be “supported,” and that therefore she should not have education nor training for self-support. The world was then too stupid to perceive that the great mass of women really rendered full equiva- lent in marriage for all they received from a husband. Women were trained from infancy to consider themselves paupers and parasites, properly dependent upon some man who somehow “owed them a living.” The whole situation was false and ridicu- lous to a degree indescribable, Good for you, Mrs. Dietrick! Yours are really the most manly expressions we have heard from your side during this whole discussion. If you and your associates will secure the repeal of all legislation which favors women as a separate class, and will also submit to be shut up for a reasonable time in a room with a number of untamed mice, LIFE will stand by you stanchly in every effort you may make to secure enfranchisement. HAD TO DO IT. HE: Why, there’s Char- ley Van Beet. Don't you remember his going to California some time ago with his france? HE: I should say I did. He wrote me he didn’t have moncy enough to get back. How do you suppose he managed it? SHE: Why, he married her out there, ND EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY.