Life, 1907-08-22 · page 24 of 24
Life — August 22, 1907 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **a beer advertisement, not satire or political commentary.** It's a Schlitz beer ad from Life magazine (August 22, 1907) making health claims common to early 20th-century advertising. The ad presents beer as "a food and a tonic" with beneficial components, then emphasizes Schlitz's purity through aging, filtering, and sterilization—positioning these as competitive advantages. The tagline "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous" references Milwaukee's reputation as a major brewing center. For modern readers, the striking element is the **health claim**: early 1900s advertisers routinely marketed alcohol as medicinal and nutritious. This predates FDA regulations and reflects attitudes before medical understanding of alcohol's actual effects. The ornamental hop and flower designs are period-typical decorative flourishes. This represents straightforward commercial advertising rather than editorial satire or political content.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
\—"—""_—As a food and a tonic. Every compo- —"=—% nent in beer is good for you. But be sure it is pure, else harm will be mixed with its healthfulness. Beer aged insufficiently causes biliousness. That is why all Schlitz beer is aged for months in our cool- ing rooms. Beer that’s: impure—not clean, not filtered, not prop- erly sterilized—should be avoided. That is why we spend more to insure absolute purity than we spend on anything else in our brewing. @ Ask for the Brewery j Bottling. i See that the cork or | crown ts branded Schittz. he Beer That Made Milwaukee Famou comicbooks.com