Life, 1910-05-26 · page 37 of 44
Life — May 26, 1910 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains **advertising and corporate messaging rather than political satire**. The main content is a Bell Telephone advertisement disguised as editorial copy. The piece defends the telephone company's 24/7 operational costs by comparing the telephone system to police and fire departments—essential services that must always be "on duty" even when not actively used. The argument is that customers demand immediate service availability, justifying continuous infrastructure maintenance and expense. The accompanying cartoon (lower left) shows a couple discussing whether to eat, with the caption "You were right, George, there is no one in [line]"—a light domestic joke about avoiding crowds. The page also features period advertisements for **Underberg Bitters** (a digestif liqueur) and **Man-a-cea Water** (a patent digestive aid), typical of early 20th-century magazine marketing. **The Literary Zoo** article continues below, discussing encyclopedia scholarship. This is primarily a **commercial publication** rather than satirical commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Quit Thinking © You Cannot Eat! od same as when well. Popreredl ike, and white taking food Sip fey eating anything vy WAN-A-CEA jacobs” Pharmacy » W Jevne se Co. 1 required. “YOU WERE RIGHT, GEORGE, THERE 18 NO one In}"" ne World's Best Bitters ; Try UNDER rrestion when you have tried What othersand you will it? have found the best. rept ; Use the name and So watch the label. AL a Sold Everywhere, ed in LUYTIES BROTHERS + U.S. Agents. New York. beauty e whole The Always-on-Duty Telephone Your Bell Telephone is on duty 1440 minutes every day. So is the telephone exchange; so are the toll | lines which radiate through the neighboring communities; so are the long distance lines which con- nect you with far-away cities and other radiating systems. The whole Bell System is on duty 1440 minutes a day—and if any of these minutes are not used, their earning power is irrevocably lost. Like the Police Force or the Fire | Department, the telephone is not always working—but it is always on duty and always costing money. But you would not be satisfied with the fire department if your burning house had to take its turn; nor with the police force if you had to wait in line to receive protection. You want service at once. is exactly what the Bell System endeavors to give you—immediate attention, instantaneous service. It strives to be always ready to receive your call at any point, and connect you with any other point—without postponement or delay. It would be much cheaper if tele- phone customers would be content to stand in line, or if their commun- ications could be piled up to be sent during slack hours; or if the domand was so distributed as to keep the | whole system comfortably busy for 1440 consecutive minutes a | day. But the public needs immediate | and universal service and the Bell iI System meets the public’s require- || ments. i AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES The. Literary Zoo (Continued from page 980) one authority: Prof. Harry Thurston Peck. Is not his “ New International Encyclopedia” (the plates somewhat revised) the complete compendium of comprehensive scholarship? And to edit his brief essay on the elephant did he not make all nature-knowledge his We rather think he did. See To edit that one para- own? what he says. 981 graph on the pachyderm he devoured all books germane to the subject, with the possible exception of certain wild yams by one Joseph R. Kipling, re- cently discredited if not damned. He read, among other things, “the writ- ings of sportsman- D'Ewes, Forsyth, win and Barras "—to ss nd Holub, In the Pig- skin Library of the Colonel there were (Continued on page 982) comicbooks.com