Life, 1908-04-09 · page 15 of 20
Life — April 9, 1908 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top illustration shows a domestic scene with two couples: a stern father ("Pater") advising a lovesick young man ("Bleeding Heart") that he'll survive unrequited love. The joke is the young man's retort that waiting will feel interminable—satirizing romantic melodrama and youthful emotional intensity. The main text section "Let Us Support the Diamond Market" is **satirical social commentary**. It sarcastically urges readers to buy diamonds as a civic duty, claiming the market needs support because South African mining companies have shut down mines to maintain artificial prices. The satire mocks: - **Conspicuous consumption** among the wealthy - **Cartels and market manipulation** by diamond producers - The absurdity of treating luxury goods as moral obligations - The self-interest disguised as prudence (even "burglar friends" should maintain prices) The final jokes about stock investment and a child's innocent suggestion complete the page's theme of satirizing adult pretense and questionable financial/moral reasoning.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Pater: NEVER MIND. YOU'LL LIVE JUST AS LONG EVEN IF YOU CAN'T MARRY THAT PARTICULAR GIRL, Bleeding Heart: PERHAPS—BUT IT WILL SEEM MUCH: LONGER. r to those who drop into youth only now and again. J. B. Kerjoot. The Weavers, by Sir Gilbert Parker. (Harper and Brothers. $1.50.) The Broken Road, by A. E. W. Mason. (Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.) Bahama Bill, by T. Jenkins Hains. (L. C. Page and Company, Boston. $1.50.) The Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard. (The McClure Company.) The Rebirth of Religion, by Algernon S. Crapsey. (The John Lane Company. $1.50.) The Iron Heel, by Jack London. (The Macmillan Company. $1.50.) The Peter Pan Picture Book, by Alice B. Woodward and Daniel O'Connor. (The Macmillan Company. $2.00.) Let Us Support the Diamond Market UR friends who have not yet bought their spring diamonds are hereby reminded not to put off this important duty too long. The diamond market needs their support if prices are to be maintained, The South African mining companies are doing their best to keep prices up and to that end have shut down their mines. But their interest is not the only one concerned. The jewelers who have considerable stocks of diamonds on their hands are vitally interested that the value of their sparkling stones should not suffer permanent depreciation. Such in diminished measure is the plight of every one of us. If diamonds go off seriously in value, our private collections will make a much less say’sfactory showing ommend it howe when we are sold up than we had hoped. It seems a matter of mere common prudence that we should bestir ourselves and lay in whatever diamonds we need while they are still worth some- thing. Diamonds are not like eggs, which appeal to the vulgar, have a very broad market and can be kept for many years in cold storage and still be good to sell. Eggs and such products will take care of themselves, and if they do finally become unsalable the market is all the better for it. But all that makes diamonds valuable is that we like the looks of them, Now is the time to show our apprecia- tion. If we do not stand by them they cannot be expected to stand by us. We hope that even our burglar friends will recognize it as their duty to maintain prices, for in the matter of diamonds the market is the whole thing. Immaterial “ QHALL we invest in this stock or not?” “Well, what do you know about it?” “Know about it ? Good heavens! man, by the time we find out it may go way up.”” ESSIE: Oh, say mamma, why don’t you play being nurse, and let papa kiss you ? comicbooks.com