Life, 1896-06-25 · page 12 of 17
Life — June 25, 1896 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Political Satire from Life Magazine This page satirizes New York City's cable car system and its operator. The main poem parodies Walt Whitman, mocking the president of the Metropolitan Traction Company (identified as "Vreeland" in the signature). The satire attacks the executive's callous indifference to the dangers and deaths caused by cable cars—treating them as inevitable casualties he needn't address. The poem's speaker boasts of watching "slaughter" while feeling no responsibility, reflecting the era's critique of monopolistic transit operators who prioritized profit over passenger safety. The top cartoon, "Independence," appears to be unrelated domestic comedy about a couple's breakup. The bottom illustration shows passengers crammed dangerously into a cable car, visualizing the poem's complaint about overcrowding and the human cost of the system. This represents turn-of-the-century *Life* magazine's muckraking approach to corporate negligence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
INDEPENDENCE. He: HORTENSE VASELINE DEBRIS, FROM THIS HOUR HENCEFORWARDFORTH WE AINT TO EACH OTHER WHAT WE WUZ A WEEK AGO. [BRAND YER AS A FLIRT AN A CROQUETTE ! She (haughtily): AS YOU PLEASE, REGINALD OVERTON. THERE ARE OTHERS! SONG OF MYSELF. (After Walt Whitman, maybe by the President of the Metropolitan Traction Company and Society for Nervous Prostration.] CELEBRATE myself, I am onto myself, And the damage done I shall assume, For every nerve belonging to me is as good as belongs to you. [ loaf and ride in a cab, . And lean and loaf and watch the others slaughtered : Hoping to cease not until death. Women and children in abeyance Waving in vain, others inside, with men cursing at me, packed like sardines in a box, I watch with sinister look and laugh in my sleeve: Gripmen unchecked I laugh at, glad that I am here. I have heard what the people were saying and it moves me not. I do not talk, for I have nothing to say. I am satisfied: I see, dance, laugh In secret at the carnage for which I am responsible, at the cable cars with their lines of victims. Shali I postpone my exquisite joy for a moment to help a fellow-man That he in turn may lend me thanks? Nay, nay, there are too many pcople already on earth to suit Me, The insatiable. the quenchless—not by a d. s. Trippers and askers surround me, Remaining members of families, and people on my line who have been maimed for life: These come to me day and night and go from me again All on a hopeless quest. Ha! Ha! I am Vreeland, the silent, the terrible, I am indeed a daisy, calm and immovable as a Central Park statue. “WHY, THAT IS PROFESSOR SAWYER WHO USED TO VIVISECT US TO MAKE HIS LECTURES H. H, Vr-l-n-d. INTERESTING.” comicbooks.com