Life, 1903-06-04 · page 16 of 36
Life — June 4, 1903 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks wealthy industrialists' hypocritical advice to young men entering the workforce. The comic strip at top ("How Tramping Titus Lost Two Pair of Trousers") illustrates a vagrant losing his pants—establishing the ironic contrast. The text features **Russell Sage**, a notoriously miserly financier, claiming success comes from "liberal spending" while admitting he can't resist giving money away—a thinly veiled joke about his actual reputation for penny-pinching. **John W. Gates** (a railroad and steel magnate) advises against gambling and "undue prominence"—transparently ironic given his own notorious speculation and public profile. The satire's point: these robber barons offer platitudinous moral advice while their actual behavior and wealth-accumulation methods contradict it entirely. The "success rules" are either obvious platitudes or hypocritical coming from them specifically.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
516 -LIFE- HOW TRAMPING TITUS LOST TWO PAIR OF TROUSERS. How to Win Success. TP HIS is the season when thousands ~ of young men all over the country bid farewell to their alma maters and begin their real struggle with the world. Each, of course, is looking for success. To aid them in this landable ambition a number of our most promi- nent and beloved citizens who have won—or can buy whenever they wish —large niches in the halls of Fame, have kindly consented to contribute a few words of advice and instruction for the benefit of those younger and less experienced than themselves, Russell Sage, when interviewed, was found engaged in his characteristic occupation of giving dollar bills to newsboys. His face was beaming with innocent benevolence, ‘* The little fellows do get such fun out of a little money, with their innocent games of craps, and sweatboard, and pitching pennies,” said Uncle Russell, apologetically, ‘‘ that it is all Ican do to restrain myself from giving them all I have in my pockets. Success, real success, does not come from the making of money, but from the liberal spending of it. To be unsuspicious, guileless, and, when in doubt, to let the other man have the best end of a bargain, is to win the success that counts. If I could impress this trath on Wall Street, as well as on young men just leaving college, I would feel that my declining years were not wasted. At least, they would not be likely to be.”” John W. Gates reluctantly closed a Sunday-school book he had been perusing, in order to deal out a few cold facts as to success, ‘A young man who wishes success,” said Mr. Gates, “must avoid boasting, gam- bling in any form, whether poker, horse races or Wall Street, and anything which tends to bring him into un- due prominence. There may be other rules for success, comicbooks.com