Life, 1908-06-11 · page 8 of 20
Life — June 11, 1908 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes marriage by depicting it as a horse race handicapping system. The image shows a thin groom struggling under the weight of an enormously heavy bride he must carry—a visual metaphor suggesting marriage burdens men disproportionately. The "handicap" racing reference implies wives are dead weight slowing husbands down. This reflects early 20th-century attitudes about marriage as an obligation constraining male freedom, particularly regarding a wife's dependence and financial burden. The cartoon likely targets concerns about matrimony's unfairness to men—a common satirical theme in Life magazine's humor. The grotesque exaggeration of the bride's size emphasizes the joke's misogynistic premise: that wives represent physical and economic encumbrance rather than partnership.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
eM ee “d4 Milkman: fF IT RAINS LIKE THIS From. Our Readers EAR LIFE Hit the vaccine poisoners again! You have neglected that folly recently. Don't you think a re- cent instance of 1,300 vaccinations in one day (prob- ably 60 per cent. compulsory) is going it pretty strong? “Come over and help us!”* Axtt-Cosrctsoey Philadelphia, May 1, 1908. Our correspondent should find solace in the thought that vaccination, while giving no protection, may leave in its trail con- sumption, scrofula, cancer and other un- expected things, which very things bring additional business for certain doctors. ‘These vaccinators are not so prehistoric as they may appear. IFE PUBLISHING COMPANY: Gentlemen—It is, indeed, to0 bad to find you editorially antagonistic to Governor Hughes's Anti Race Track bill, for certainly the present law is directly contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, and permits open race track gambling, which judges and social workers recognize to be a potent source of demoralization and crime. Yours very truly, D. Kise, Boston, Mass., May 20, 1908 TO, THE EDITOR OF LIFE Dear Sir—Lire, and 1 disagree 00a point of two eccasionally (which, of course, Iam too polite to an noy you by mentioning, but remorse should keep you awake o' nights), but I cannot refrain from butting in with my heartfelt, if humble, wishes for success in your crusade against indiscriminate vivisection. I have heard many things on both sides, and I feel that while a surgeon should be above all things cool and dispassioned, I would certainly hesitate to trust my life toa man whose ordinary human instincts are so completely obliterated as those of the vivisector. If operations on human beings (and the attending fees) were barred to vivisectors, it is possible that as TILL WE GIT TO THE HOUSE I GUESS WE much valuable knowledge could be gained without recourse to vivisection as with it. And has there ever been an argument in favor of vivisection that has aot been refuted by men equally competent? Yours very truly, Cuarurs W. Bowsas Weimar, May 9, 1008. DITOR OF LIF! Ss Permit me to suggest for Mustration the following: A little giel seated at a window watching a thunderstorm. At a heavy flash of lightning, she says to her mother: "My, their bill for “lectricity this month will be ‘normous"”” Yours truly, E. L. Feretano. New York, April 1s, 1998. From Australia ‘O THE EDITOR OF LIFE: Dear Sir—With this 1 am sending you a copy of the current issue of my paper, the Triad» As you will see, [ have been celebrating my fifteenth birthday After my screed was in type, my monthly budget of Lire. came to hand, and therein I found the number in which you jubilate discreetly, but with rare humor, and good humor, too, over your twenty-fifth birthday Tam a subscriber to Fliegende Blactter, Sim plicis simus, Jugend, Le Rire, Le Journal Amusont, It Pa. pagello, and “our only comic paper,"” and though T write from this fly-speck of a country—this country of the Adoration of the Obvious, the high place of single and squeak, where the people love darkness be- cause their needs are uncertain, and their aspirations are vague—I would like you to know that a younger brother editor is cheered and stimulated by your iant weekly causeries. I was in New York for three moaths, from early in January, last year, and I have subscribed to Lire: since that time. I can hoa estly say that no other paper of its kind (of course, there is no other paper of its kind, but you will not misunderstand me) gives me so much real pleasure. Your outlook upon life and affairs is so sane and so sage. Your contributors are almost invariably masters of English prose, stylists in fact; and when they write they say something. Usually your criti WON'T NEED TO STOP AT THE PUMP. cisms are just but kindly, but when you are confronted by the hosts of wrong and injustice, your rapier is keener and ruder than the breath of the Northerly from Greenland’ ‘Then, what a play of fence is yours! Non alia quam in ludo gladiatoris Vira ext. The stream of life has left me stagnant in this back- water, shut in by the reed-beds of respectab '¥ mountains. All men are liars. Ex pectations are but the preludes to disappointment, memories the soiled linen and the broken fragments of the banquets of yesterday. Clerics tell us that dull lives last f Fools fret because they know not whether dead men rise up. I care not. Thrice and again times monthly I have Lire. Ave atque val C.N. Barveerz. Women and wine mock us. ever, Dunedin, April s, 1008. MATRIMONIAL HANDICAP—“ WEIGHT FOR AGE” comicbooks.com