Life, 1910-09-08 · page 36 of 40
Life — September 8, 1910 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a promotional page for an upcoming "Man's Rights Number" of *Life* magazine, presented with satirical irony. The page mocks the growing women's suffrage movement by pretending to champion "men's rights" as a humorous counter-movement. The satire works by inverting feminist rhetoric: the magazine claims to document "woman's inhumanity to man" with mock-serious language about giving downtrodden men a voice. The cartoon at top shows figures engaged in chaotic activity around a dining table, illustrating domestic discord. The accompanying illustrations depict archetypal male figures (a working man with tools, a man in a hat)—likely representing "everyman" characters supposedly oppressed by female empowerment. The exaggerated tone ("we have abandoned all sense of shame," "secret blush of shame") reveals this as tongue-in-cheek satire mocking anti-suffrage sentiment, not genuinely supporting men's rights. *Life* was using humor to ridicule those threatened by women's equality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
That Humorous Number Is Coming Subscription $5.00 Have Men Any Rights? To be candid, we suspect the worst. At any rate, we have abandoned all sense of shame, and in the Man’s Rights Number Next Week Woman's inhumanity to man will all be explained, duly commiserated: absolutely nothing will be extenuated, and, to the limit of our powers, everything will be duly set down in malice. In this great number, Man will at last come to his own. (On paper, of course.) Every suffragist will read it with a secret blush of shame. Brothers everywhere who have money enough to buy a copy (or better still, subscribe for a year), we call upon you to rally around this number. Our object in issuing it is of course purely philanthropic. It is a duty we owe to civilization. If this number be the humble means of influencing downtrodden man in all countries to assert himself, we shall feel that we have not lived in vain. Always send good money when you subscribe. It in- sures your getting the paper. SPECIAL OFFER.—Three Months $1.00. Canadian, $1.13; Foreign, $1.26. Open only to new subscribers. TA No subscriptions renewed at this rate, This offer is net. Canadian $5.52 Goody Goody Adam and Eve Midnight Hell In the Sweet Bye and Bye Foreign $6.04 lcomicbooks.com