Life, 1911-02-16 · page 7 of 44
Life — February 16, 1911 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon ("Supply and Demand"):** A waiter confronts two diners at a restaurant table. The waiter says: "Hang it, waiter, you have brought more sweetbreads than I ordered!" This is a joke about supply exceeding demand—the diners received more food than requested. **The Editorial Text:** The accompanying essay critiques socialism's viability. The author argues that as the world "comes to many things," new ideas become exhausted, and socialism will eventually "work itself out." The piece dismisses socialist rhetoric about redistributing wealth and property rights as offering mere distraction to the poor. The author suggests that only the wealthy elite can truly enjoy leisure under any system—a cynical defense of class hierarchy against egalitarian alternatives. The satire equates minor consumer complaints with larger economic contradictions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND “WANG 17, WAITER, YOU HAVE BROUGHT MORE SWERTBREADS THAN 1 ORDERED!” This Number E can imagine that this number of Lire will excite conservative old gentlemea to scorn, and that aristocratic old ladies, sniffing faintly from afat reprehensible contents, will first assure themselves that it is really so, and then, laying it down with a sense of horror, will wonder anew what the world is coming to. This number, in effect, is an answer to that troublesome question. The world, of course, is coming to many things; one of these things if not socialism as the world seems to re- gard it, socialism as it will eventually work itself out to be. When we are no longer able to advance to any new strata of thought, or when we become incapable of being startled for the reason that there are no more new things to startle us, we shall not care to live; the human race has an almost insatiable capacity to be horrified ; as we become more civilized this capacity takes on mental aspects where before it was satisfied with the purely physical, We no longer care to see Christians eaten alive in the arena at the daily matinee; we prefer to offer up our victims in the shape of countless chil- dren on Socialism, bald and bold and vulgar as it is, offers a relief from all this; it horrifics the few who are on top by declaring that it intends to take away from them their power to satiate themselves on the misfortunes of others. The few resent this quite properly and adduce the sacred rights of property as a militant phrase which will act as a sort of dissolvent. Nevertheless, the few (or, to be more precise, the higher classes), are short on sensations; they must be amused. And it is amusing to ccntemplate socialism in its lignter aspects. Hence this number. comicbooks.com