Life — February 8, 1906 — page 19: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a **Schlitz beer advertisement**, not a political cartoon. It promotes Schlitz beer—"The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous"—by emphasizing the brewery's sanitation practices as a selling point. The page highlights multiple cleaning steps: air filtration in a glass room, mechanical beer filtering, bottle sterilization, and extreme cleanliness standards. The tagline "That is the price of purity" frames rigorous hygiene as a premium quality justifying the product's reputation. The decorative hop illustrations frame the text, reinforcing the beer's ingredients. A note instructs consumers to verify authenticity by checking that "the cork or crown is branded." For modern readers: this reflects early-20th-century marketing emphasizing industrial hygiene as a novel luxury, appealing to consumers concerned about product safety—a significant selling point before modern food safety regulations existed.