Life, 1904-10-06 · page 22 of 38
Life — October 6, 1904 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical definition of the typical American political candidate, illustrated with a caricatured figure carrying a newspaper and standing amid discarded items (suggesting corruption or waste). **The satire targets:** - **Hypocrisy**: The candidate claims reform while accepting "stolen ballots"; opposes rum and tobacco publicly while subsidizing drinking for political gain - **Pandering**: His views on ethnicity and geography conveniently shift by day—praising Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Puritan heritage as needed to win votes - **Inconsistency**: He's solicitous about babies he's never met, generous about stolen goods if it wins elections, and patriotic about protecting industries while opposing trusts - **Empty promises**: Full of "genuine as a Chefoo dispatch" (a known source of unreliable news) The accompanying comic strip titled "The Zealous Fireman" (right panel) appears to show someone creating chaos while claiming to help—likely reinforcing the theme of self-serving incompetence masquerading as public service. This reflects turn-of-the-century American distrust of machine politics and candidate opportunism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
-LIFE- The Candidate. CANDIDATE is an American citizen frenziedly anxious to neg- lect his own business for a chance to neglect that cf the nation, He is as full an early soms ; he of promises as spring is of blo wears a smile as wide as a pasture and as genuine as a Chefoo dispatch; he shakes a hand on the street with men he shakes a head at in the bank; and te raises his hat to ladies his wife raises her nose and eyebrows to. He is solic- itous about the health cf babies he never saw and gabies he wishes he couldn't see; and while he amazes the righteous by the sudden fervor of his faith, he earns a reputation a dead. game sport in regions where religion grows more slowly than Rockefeller’shair, As a yood citizen and unyicld- ing reformer, he abhors corruption ; but as an hor- est merchant, he is willing to pay for all goods that are delivered, be they steel billets or stolen ballots. A member of the Church, he shudders at the twin curses of civilization— rum and tobacco; but as a citizen, merely in politics for his health, he subsidizes the drinking of that health early and often, and he knows no better plan of smoking out the enemy than out-smoking him. Moreover, no good American, deeply interested in the prosperity of American industry, can deliberately discourage two widespread agencies of wealth and expect to be accepted as a patriot. As election day approaches, his views on geography, ethnology and human brotherhood broaden and deepen. land touch his heart deeply in one portion of his district ; he boasts of his Anglo-Saxon origin in another. He grasps the sinewy hand of sturd ndinavia on Mc day; he acknowledges the republic's debt to Germany on Tuesday ; he believes the full glory of the Nation will come, on Wednesday, only when the genius of Italy tingles in the veins of the stern Puritan; and at a union meeting in a secluded vestry on Frid he warns his Methodi tion is casting upon our sacred soil and re Deserving charities be; a passion for labor p' less in stating that the battle-scarred saviours of the U: have been treated with scant generosity by the Nation ; he wants it distinctly understood that he stands firmly high wages, high tariffs, high ideals, a white man’s govern- THE ZEALOUS FIREMAN. ment and unhampered suffrage for the colored man, peace, a strong navy, cheap beef and cheap coal, no trusts and no government meddling with business, and no matrimonial expansion in Utah. When the polls close and the mere politician is elected, comicbooks.com