Life, 1898-01-13 · page 15 of 20
Life — January 13, 1898 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes a soap company's offensive advertising campaign. The text criticizes a widespread advertisement showing a child reciting prayers with the caption "Give us this day our daily **soap**"—a blasphemous parody of the Lord's Prayer. The author argues this fails both morally and commercially. It offends religious sensibilities while paradoxically alienating customers: those who revere children's prayers won't buy soap advertised this way, and those indifferent to religion won't care either. The soapmaker has thus achieved the worst outcome—violating decency while harming sales. The accompanying illustration depicts a well-dressed woman near a ship, likely representing Maritime Massachusetts commerce, contrasting respectable society with the crass advertiser's poor judgment. The piece closes with gentle aphorisms about judgment and friendship, maintaining the magazine's satirical tone about foolishness in business and advertising ethics.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
grand old timbers of the Enterprise with the passionate war-songs of Chautauqua. With heaving bosom and moist eye the Governor-Admiral turns to bis colonels and mutters huskily: “Gentlemen! Lead me to Parker's! Let Nicaragua s:orm and Pe threaten; we defy them! The Enterprise and her crew still stand between Massa- chusetts and her foes!” Then, amid the thunder of three-pounders the procession hustles to the wharf, the anchor is weighed, the snowy canvas spread, and the good ship goes down the bay in stately beauty, skillfully avoiding the islands and tugboats, and so out into the pathless deep at a remorseless four- knot gait. She goes to foreign lands, that foreign aggression may be curbed and foreign militarism awed; she goes to show England “NOTHING ON EARTH. HE'S A SIIPOWNER.” and France that Massachusetts is still in it, aud has her eye on the earth, Well may the Bay State be proud! Joseph Smith, A Fool and His Advertise- ment. CURIOUS misappre- hension in business is disclosed by certaia large and conspicuous pictorial adver- Aa. tisements which abound on contemporaneous dead walls, representing a child saying its prayers and asking ‘Give us this day our daily soap!" It is, of course, a gross breach of taste, not to say decency, to use sucha picture and such a legend inan advertise- ment, but it fails also as a busin dient, since pretty whatever preference expe- much everyone, of in belief or disbelief, reverences the prayers of a child, and of those who don't, very few haveany regard or use for soap, or would take it asa gift The soapmaker, therefore, who has so offended propriety with his pictures, has also over-reached himself in business, which is very gratifying and just as it should be. E cautious in forming a too hasty opinion of the man who pleases you at first; you may like him just as well when you know him better. HE devil is not such a bad fellow— he always comes to us when all other friends fail.