Life — October 8, 1903 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Salut au Chauffeur" - Life Magazine Page 339 This page celebrates the automobile chauffeur as a modern folk hero. The illustration shows a reckless driver in a peaked cap speeding past a tree where a child sits reading—the caption warns "Woodman, spare that tree...I'll protect it now," sarcastically suggesting the chauffeur endangers what nature preserves. The poem "Salut au Chauffeur" (attributed to Walt Whitman) mockingly praises the "festive Red Devil" driver—speeding, crashing, evading police. It's satirizing both the chauffeur's dangerous recklessness and society's romanticization of automobiles as symbols of liberty and modernity, despite their obvious public hazards. The brief "Fame" section continues the joke, noting quarreling chauffeurs make the newspapers regularly.