Life, 1906-07-26 · page 3 of 20
Life — July 26, 1906 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Illustration**: "Life's Patent Watermobile" depicts an early automobile amphibiously traversing water with passengers, umbrellas, and cargo. This satirizes primitive early-1900s automobiles' unreliability and the absurd inventions promoted during the automotive boom. **"Raising Children" Section**: The text humorously discusses breeding children like livestock for desirable traits—a troubling reference to then-popular eugenics pseudoscience. It treats child-rearing as a financial investment while mocking parents' actual profits. **"The New Régime" Section**: Sarcastically congratulates Edward Page Mitchell of the *New York Sun* for receiving an honorary doctorate, implying his journalistic credentials alone shouldn't merit academic honors. The overall tone is satirical commentary on contemporary social trends: automotive fads, pseudoscientific parenting theories, and unwarranted prestige-seeking.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE’S PATENT WATERMOBILE VERY POPULAR AT THE SEASIDE AND ON MOUNTAIN LAKES WHERE THE ROADS ARE BAD, Raising Children (From our Farm Magazine) HILDREN can be raised in almost every zone where there is water, air and money. Good, fancy stock is always in demand ® and, on account of the varia- bility in its development, very uncertain. Good specimens are often obtained from mon- grel types, and it has been found that selected stock often deteriorates fast in the offspring. Select the parents with care, never per- mitting them any choice. It is often the y case that a really fine female will throw herself away on some fourth-rate male, and vice versa. Children should be looked over carefully at birth, and those that have marks, blemishes, phyical idiosyncrasies, etc., should be carefully set aside. While not making good baseball, foot- ball, golf players or hotel porters, oftentimes among them are found generals and geniuses, financiers and fanatics, statesmen and seers. Is the raising of children a profitable investment ? Generally speaking, No. Undoubtedly large profits have been made from them, but not by the original owners. Yet men are so foolish that they go on giving others the benefit of something that only results in trouble and loss for themselves. The same energy applied to raising dogs, chickens, ele- phants, ostriches and homing pigeons will often produce better results. The New Regime ANNIBAL KING: Take away that potted missionary. I’m a vegetarian until our canning factory is overhauled. Fit to Be a Door R. EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL, of the New York Sun, has been an indifferent advertiser, and while he has undoubtedly attained to high reputation, his fame is much more notable for its substance and quality than for the extent of its diffusion. Mr. Mitchell has been on the staff of the Sun for more years than it would be polite to compute and is now the leading member of it. Bowdoin College conferred upon him this year the degree of Doctor of Letters. That was creditable to Bowdoin, though while it was about it it would have done better to make him a Doctor of Laws. Sufficient achievement to establish half a dozen doctors of letters could be abstracted from the sum of Mr. Mitchell’s per- formance without appreciable diminution of either its volume or its heft. comicbooks.com