Life, 1908-10-15 · page 25 of 28
Life — October 15, 1908 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising with one substantial political cartoon**. The main cartoon "Comrades" satirizes the decline of the **political stump speaker** in the early 20th century. The poem depicts an aging orator—a "spellbinder"—who once commanded crowds from the stage. Now obsolete, he watches his replacement: a **phonograph playing recorded campaign speeches**. The cartoon shows this sad figure alongside the mechanical device that has rendered him useless. The satire critiques both technological displacement and the mechanical, inauthentic nature of modern campaigning. Where politicians once performed live with genuine oratory skill ("arm upraised in a climax grand"), campaigns now rely on mass-produced recordings with "wooden arms" and "a speech in its metal throat." This reflects genuine Progressive Era anxieties about technology replacing human labor and authenticity being lost to mechanical reproduction—here applied to political discourse itself, which the cartoonist suggests has become as hollow and repetitive as a phonograph's scratched recording.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| M. JOHNSON-BROWN & CO. ‘SEW CONKIONMENT OF OBJECTS OF ART No. 17 West 31st Street, New York COMRADES The spelibinder sat in the gloom apart Wil a tear in his dimming eye: With a clutch, like death, at his aching heart As the big parade went by He thought of the days when he held the stage, + foes, they were strewn like chaff; less now, in this later agi paign phonograph. He watched the crowd and he heard the band Till the notes of the tune grew dim; Then he dropped his head in his hollowed hand They had no use for him, For a box and a squeak and a monstrous horn He was cast aside like chaff, And he cursed the In the throat of t Aed far from the depths of the close-packed hall He could hear the needle scree hear the cheers and the echoes fall ground-out keynote speech. breast with a sigh of pain, an—oh, a pitiful sound, ars from his eyelids fell like rain honograph went round ight of the glitter of other days, Of the period roundly turned; Of the honeyed word and the sounding phrase From the campaign text-book learned. The arm upraised in a climax grand, The cheer of the half-made vote, Yet here was his job, on a wooden stand, With a speech in its metal throat Aed the thing went round with a buzz and whirr, With a scratch and scrawl and clink; It had wooden arms where the gestures were, Rut it never stopped to drink. Then a taxicab went whizzing by That he saw through a mist all dim, And a tean old cab horse wiped its eye ras oa tral with i —Times. SPOON VICTUALS n has been married to have acquired the average man’s cyni: in respect of the written expressions of dulged in before marriage One day the Hubbite was going over with his wife ss of useless papers that had accumulated in the bessehold. They unearthed several large boxes full of love letters. After a hasty glance at them, the fe was hurt. Oh, Clarence." exclaimed she, bow can you be so brutal? Surely you don't want roy your own love letters to me? “Well, keep ‘em, if you want * cerfully as. the busbard, “ but, honestly, Helen, these seem file! "—Lippincott’s THE HORSEMEN \ veterinary surgeon pronounced a hunter to be aflicted with an incurable disease. “What had I better do?” queried the owner to his Broom ing. ’ was the reply, “conscientiously speak- Tis Bits ld part with him to another gentleman.""— THE GLORIOUS ORIENT Lssrely travel, personal escort. Small party, exclu- sive arrangements. Write for booklet. RAYMOND & WHITCOMB CO. 225 Fitth Ave., New York JOWNEY’S Cocoa Nothing better for the baby or the Mother than Lowney’s Cocoa — nourishing, strengthening, digestible, delicious. Cocoa treated by strong Alkall (the Dutch method) may be blacker and more “soapy,” but free Alkall Is not gocd for the stomach and Lowney’s is NOT made that way. It Is the best cocoa made anywhere or at any price. The Walter M. Lowney Co., Boston, Mass. Cocoa Chocolate Chocolate Bonbons Do Not Buy Badly Made Picture Puzzles! LIFE'S Picture Puzzles Are Carefully Made FOR ADVANCED PUZZLE WORKERS Life’sPicturePuzzles Life’s Gibson Puzzles Two Dollars Each, Twenty Dollars a Dozen Three Dollars Each, Thirty Dollars a Dozen All Different Subjects All Different Subjects LIFE'S Puzzles are sold in Sealed Boxes, precluding any danger of missing blocks. Sent, carriage prepaid, to any address in the United States on receipt of price by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 17 West Thirty-first Street NEW YORK CITY comicbooks.com