Life, 1896-09-17 · page 3 of 18
Life — September 17, 1896 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page (Volume XXVIII, Number 716) This page contains satirical commentary and illustrations rather than political cartoons. The main article, "The Growing Unpopularity of Death," proposes absurdist solutions to mortality—suggesting governments could regulate death like they regulate population, and even proposing "death franchises" as revenue sources. The illustrations by Harry B. Neilson include "Oh! For Greenland's Icy Mountains" (showing a bundled figure) and "Racing Term—The Home Stretch" (depicting a horse racing scene), though their exact satirical connections to the text are unclear from the image alone. The "One Better" section features a brief comic exchange between Miss Keedick and Miss Fosdick about a woman choosing between a wealthy ice man and a bicycle shop owner—social humor about marriage and economic status typical of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
VOLUME XXVIII ° L | k k ° NUMBER 716 THE GROWING UNPOPULARITY OF DEATH. zy IGH medical authorities are of the opinion that by the end of another half century there will have been discovered spe- cifics for every disease. There will be no reasonable excuse for dying. Even suicide will be no child’s pla There will doubtless be a law prohibit- ing anyone from expiring under a cer- _ tain age limit. Thus communities can regulate nu- merically their respective populations. Acity like Chicago,whose laurels rest on census estimates which almost outrun her resistless city limits, can work this circum- NY stance for all that is in it. She could enforce municipal legislation prohibiting death and immigration, and in time revel in a population so dense that whole families would be crowded into one composite individual. In the New England States where women are in the majority, it could be made a felony for an able-bodied man to die. Of course every reasoning person knows that if it were made impossible to die we would soon come to re- gard death as a sort of bonanza. The Government could take the matter in hand and derive considerable revenue from the sale of death franchises. These should be granted only when the applicant successfully passes an examination and receives a certificate stating that he is qualified to remove his mortal coil. Instead of sentencing criminals to incarceration for ninety-nine years, they could be condemned to take the combined specifics for a few centuries, during all of which time they could ex- perience none of the whole list of diseases, from influenza to kleptomania. Could Methuselah have had access to some of these twentieth century remedies and managed to escape the anmenenontnnnseteonsiin Suen Rome | oF Hansy B Neison ON! FOR GREENLAND'S ICY MOUNTAINS. flood, he would probably be with us to-day, a loquacious, bald- headed old gentleman, with a fund of anecdote that would. fill with a wild and paralyzing envy the typical grandfather on the children’s page of a weekly newspaper. ONE BETTER. ISS KEEDICK: Ethel can't be after money. She has broken her engagement with that wealthy ice man. Miss Fospick: Don't be too sure. She jilted him for a man who owns a bicycle repairing shop. UCCESS has increased the size of many a head, but it RACING TERM—THE HOME STRETCH. has never improved the quality of its component parts. comicbooks.com