Life, 1908-06-11 · page 13 of 20
Life — June 11, 1908 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes public gullibility and mob mentality. The top illustration shows a hypnotist in formal dress controlling several women, depicting how easily crowds can be manipulated or swayed by charismatic figures. The left column, "Rioting in Reason," discusses monuments and mob behavior, referencing Mr. Chesterton's views on mobs as "reasonable and heroic" compared to Shakespeare's portrayal. It argues that destroying statues benefits society more than preserving them. The right column contains poetry titled "Alas!" expressing disillusionment with lost ideals and perfection. Below are comic dialogue snippets featuring animals (dogs/cats) making puns about debt and money, providing light comic relief contrasting with the serious upper content about social manipulation and mob justice.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
'HE mob has found a friend, which Heaven knows it needed. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, who loves to say a disputed thing in a far from solemn way, points out in the London I/ilustrated News that mobs are not hysterical—which is the vulgar point of view; they are reasonable and heroic. All the great mobs of history, so far as Mr. Chesterton can remember, “have been perfectly reasonable.” Our distorted view of them is due to Lord Tennyson and the newspapers. It is a sign of the “espe- cially undemocratic age” in which we live and flourish. But Shakespeare, who lived in a warm, florid, emotional and intimate age, enter- tained for mobs a superlative contempt which makes Tennyson, by comparison, an outlaw. He knew more about them, too, than did the poet laureate, who lived in dignified isolation; more about them than does Mr. Chesterton, whose idea of a mob is a handful of students smashing, or trying to smash, the “Brown Dog” monument at Battersea. A memorial to a vivisected dog is naturally as offensive to medical students as a statue of Rénan (apparently in an ad- vanced stage of inebriation) is to the pious Catholics of Brittany, or a statue of a master thief is to the despoiled citizens of Pennsyl- vania—and they have to pay for the insult. But a truly rational mob (the kind that Mr. Chesterton admires) would not be influenced by such paltry principles and prejudices. It would realize broadly that one monument the less is one blessing the more, and would extend its field of a ity. There are thou- sands of statues in the United States await- ing beneficent destruction, and hundreds Owner of the Coop: wno's IN THERE? Quick-Witted Rastus (sojtly) : "TAINT NO- BODY IN HEAH 'CEPPIN’ US CHICKENS. of public buildings which to lose would be pure gain. A peaceful and law-abiding American artist was heard to say that he longed to be rich enough to hire a rabble to pull down the Philadelphia City Hall, That would be a deed of such benign reasonable- ness that it would absolve a rioter and sanc- tify a mob. Agnes Repplier. Alas! H, ALL my pleasant, peaceful joys Are now replaced by woes; I cannot love the daffodil Since I have smelled the rose. Where once perfection I beheld, Alas, defects I mark; I cannot love the bobolink Since I have heard the lark. I was contented all the day, But now I ever pine; I cannot love the draught of milk Since I have tasted wine. No more I'd bide in Arcady, I weary of the scene, I cannot love the shepherdess Since I have scen the queen French Bull: Y's HEAD OVER EARS IN DEBT. Plain Bull; wow! But you MUST OWE A LOT OF MONEY! comicbooks.com