Life, 1904-10-27 · page 9 of 20
Life — October 27, 1904 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This political cartoon satirizes President Theodore Roosevelt's "Big Stick" foreign policy through a university hazing metaphor. The cartoon shows G.O.P. (Republican) Preparatory School students hazing an outsider labeled "Tar," representing a target of Roosevelt's interventionist policies. The joke conflates Roosevelt's aggressive diplomatic approach—famously expressed as "speak softly and carry a big stick"—with fraternity hazing rituals. The "jolly students" tar and feather the victim while the institution profits from the chaos, satirizing how Roosevelt's muscular foreign policy, while presented as righteous, actually caused disruption and harm under the guise of American superiority and strength.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LIF Es OF COURSE, USE THE TWO FOLLOWING CARTOONS. tl G.O.P, PREPARATORY SCHOOL TRUST MAGNATES MADE WHILE YOU WAIT + ni AREY it \ HAZING AT THE BIG STICK UNIVERSITY, ‘THE JOLLY STUDENTS TAR AND FEATHER AN OUTSIDER. Mr. Edison Fights Rogues. PEAKING of his efforts to smash a concern that has been using Thomas A. Edison, Jun- ior’s, name to sell ‘* Magno- Electric Vitalizers,"" Mr. Edison, Senior, lately told of the con- stant succession of attempts to use his name unfairly, to dupe the public into buying worthless things. He fights them all, in so far as he can, but it is tiresome, troublesome and ex- pensive. He has just succeeded in hav- ing the Edison, Jr., ‘Vitalizer” con- cern excluded from the mails on the ground that it wasa swindle. “I am thinking,"’ he said, ‘‘of a scheme to prevent persons from using the name I have striven honorably to protect, and I think I have got it." We hope he has, and if. the scheme can be extended so as to be made generally applicable to other swindlers, Mr. Edison may add another great service to those he has rendered mankind. It seems to be nobody's special busi- ness in this country to run down adver- tising swindles. No American paper RAN-RAIERAN! WHO ARE WE? JOLLY STUDENTS OFTHE GOP! TAR AND FEATHER HIM SPAN AND SPICK,, RAH FOR TEDDY WITH THE GREAT BIG stick! 403 that we know of makes a point of the kind of work that is done by London Truth, in trailing and ex- posing cheats and impos- tors. Here is a great field for somebody who has a hard head, a long arm and a long purse, and who likes to fight. At present the work of squelching the ad- vertising swindlers comes nearer to the Post Office Department than to any- body else. The Depart- ment, from time to time, excludes a rogue from the mails, but it does not drive out nearly enough of them. It will be recalled that when the Department was partially investigated a few months ago, it came out that one of the ways by which sundry scamps in it were robbing the coun- try was by contriving de- cisions by which other scamps should be allowed to continue to use the mails for swindling purposes. It is no private citizen's business to expose these advertising frauds. A strong paper that made a specialty of it, and had a war fund to fight libel suits, might find both sport and profit in it, and, inci- dentally, do a very useful service to the public. And the field could never be worked out. So long as so large a proportion of the public gives evidence of being born to be gulled, there will always be armies of earnest workers to ‘‘do”’ them, R. THOMAS M. BALLIET, Dean of the School of Pedagogy, said in his inaugural address: ‘A boy who would cheat unhesitatingly in an examination would not cheat in a game.” Dr. Balliet doubtless knows much of pedagogy, but not the foot- ball branch of it. To cheat in football is so common as to be reckoned a part of the game. Anything goes in foot- ball that the umpire does not see. comicbooks.com