Life, 1911-01-05 · page 47 of 104
Life — January 5, 1911 — page 47: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page contains two satirical cartoons about early 1920s automobiles and reckless driving. The top cartoon "Wildhack" depicts a speeding race car with passengers standing unsafely on it, throwing what appears to be exhaust or smoke. Two well-dressed women on the left react with shock, saying "Thank heaven we're not like that!"—the satire being that reckless, dangerous driving was apparently fashionable among young people despite obvious safety hazards. The bottom cartoon "A Naughty Mobile" shows a similar unsafe vehicle with a woman driver, suggesting women drivers were viewed as particularly reckless or careless—a common stereotype of the era. The accompanying article about French psychology is separate, discussing how physical actions influence emotions—unrelated to the car cartoons except as page filler. Together, the cartoons mock both dangerous driving practices and the generational divide between conservative observers and thrill-seeking motorists of the Jazz Age.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Everybody: THANK HEAVEN WE'RE NOT LIKE THAT! Ideas and Feelings PROMINENT French psychologist has written a book to show that ideas are in themselves of no value unless accompanied by a physical reaction. When an idea occurs to you, you must do something—make a gesture or imitate the thing suggested by the idea. Thus you start up a feeling so that thereafter, when the same idea occurs to you, it will have a double force. He goes further than this and says that we can often counteract the effect of one feeling by imitating the physical action that goes with another feeling. If you have lost all of your money in Wall Street, for example, you have only to wear a forced smile—it doesn’t make any differ- ence whether you mean it or not. When, on the first of the month, your wife confronts you with a lot of unexpected bills, instead of using profane language sing a hymu; in a few minutes you will be glad she did it. This is a simple rule and ought to do great good when understood by all. It is only necessary to, do the opposite thing physically that you are thinking mentally. It is a great pity, however, that it does not work the other way. For example, when you plunge into your cold bath in the morning, if you could only couple this with the idea that you are in reality sinking into a warm brook, your A NAUGHTY MoBILE. happiness would be complete. comicbooks.com