Life, 1909-06-17 · page 4 of 32
Life — June 17, 1909 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not satire or political commentary**—it's a straightforward product advertisement for Ivory Soap from an early 20th-century Life magazine. The image shows a train laden with soap bars leaving Ivorydale (Procter & Gamble's manufacturing facility) and distributing globally. The ad emphasizes Ivory Soap's purity (99 44/100% pure) and versatility—suitable for bathing, toileting, laundry, shaving, and delicate fabrics. The marketing strategy highlights how one product serves multiple purposes equally well, framing purity as the reason for this universal applicability. The train visualization suggests industrial-scale production and nationwide/worldwide distribution—a modern convenience to celebrate. This represents early advertising copy that appeals to efficiency and reliability rather than aspirational lifestyle.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Millions Upon Millions of Cakes of Ivory Soap Leave Ivorydale Every Year. Where do they go? To Europe, Asia, Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama. But by far the greatest proportion remains in this country. What are they used for? . For bath, toilet, fine laundry and a hundred other purposes. For the toilet? Yes. More people use Ivory Soap for the toilet than for anything else. Thousands of men use it for shaving and like it better than any of the high-priced shaving soaps. Experienced housekeepers will use nothing else for washing woolens, laces and delicate fabrics. How are these things explained? How does it happen that Ivory Soap is used for so many different purposes? And with such uniformly satis- factory results? This is why: Ivory Soap is pure. It cleans, but it does not injure. It is the mildest, gentlest soap it is possible to make; but it does what it is intended to do—it cleans. And it is what soap ought to be—it is pure. Ivory Soap . . 9944700 Per Cent. Pure comicbooks.com