Life, 1907-09-12 · page 5 of 24
Life — September 12, 1907 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon "A Rescue":** The illustration depicts an angel rescuing an elderly man from water, likely representing death or financial ruin. The heading "Pinched on $50,000 a Year" indicates the satire targets wealthy Americans claiming poverty. **The Satire:** The article mocks affluent citizens suffering from a "money-pinch"—those with $50,000 annual incomes (substantial in this era) claiming financial hardship. It critiques the disconnect between genuine poverty and the complaints of the wealthy, noting that families accustomed to luxury find it difficult to adjust spending even when earning amounts most citizens consider affluence. **Historical Context:** This appears to reference post-WWI economic adjustments or early Depression-era anxieties among the wealthy class, satirizing their sense of victimhood during periods of economic constraint.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
(") 1% ; ‘hin iw ltt il!" iN - A RESCUE On a Friend's Fiftieth Birthday (To E. S. M) LD? What, grow old? What's fifty years, I ask? Hair turning gray? A wrinkle round the eyes? A certain look of being extra-wise? A liking for the sun in which to bask ? A fondness for the comfort of the flask ? Do longings for a vanisht past arise? Do molehills scem like mountains in disguise? Is early rising now a dreaded task? Oh pshaw! That's purely physical! The Heart— ‘That is to say the Spirit—is all right. Just in the jocund prime of Life thou art With thirty, forty goodly years in sight. And may the skies above thee still be bright, ‘The genial gods their grace to thee impart! Nathan Haskell Dole. UST as the most disgruntled citizen will stand by his country J when it is attacked from abroad, in a like manner a man’s conscience will never trouble him so long as he is the object of persecution. Otherwise New York’s seats in the national Sen- ate must have been vacated by resignation months ago. Pinched on $50,000 a Year HE well-to-do are as yet the chief sufferers from the money- pinch. The papers report very extensive relinquishment of automobiles by owners who are suffering from fiscal disa- bilities, and are going back to roller-skates. Persons addicted to fashionable life tell of severe embarrassment among their acquaintances, especially those who have been cut down from easy circumstances to incomes of about fifty thousand a year and have had to change their habits. They are not joking when they say this. To families that have been uscd to live on five, ten, fifteen or twenty thousand a year, a fifty-thousand dollar income looks like affluence, but when a household has adjusted itself to an annual expenditure twice or thrice as great as that, it seems a poor, awkward sum, overlarge for picturesque simplicity, and not big enough for real style. Fifty thousand a year is the income of only about one million. When one considers how moderate a fortune that is considered in these days to be, the pinch of the fifty-thousand- dollar incomes can be easier understood. HE true critic is one who can appreciate something he doesn’t like. comicbooks.com