Life, 1911-04-13 · page 19 of 44
Life — April 13, 1911 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"Why Not Swap Mayors?"** proposes exchanging Boston Mayor Fitzgerald with New York Mayor Gaynor. The cartoon ridicules both: Fitzgerald is portrayed as puritanical (he suppressed a play and extracted inheritance taxes through moral pressure), while Gaynor struggles with unsolved police and subway problems. The joke suggests each mayor could benefit from the other's environment—Fitzgerald applying his censorious standards to Broadway, Gaynor gaining moral instruction in Boston. The final jab references giving a statue to Ben Butler (a controversial Civil War general), sarcastically asking whether Boston's "propriety" would permit it. **"The Seismograph"** mocks the instrument as useless for practical purposes—comparing it to measuring a mule's hoof-print on someone's trousers after being kicked. Scientists celebrate recording earthquakes *after* cities are destroyed, offering no preventive value. The bottom cartoon "Two Heads with But a Single Thought" appears to satirize night-shift workers (likely police or officials), though specifics are unclear from the image alone.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
WHEN THEIR TERMS EXPIRE Why Not Swap Mayors ? HERE is a system now operative by which various Amer- ican universities swap professors with various European universities. It works very well, except when, as lately hap- pened, some free and equal American runs afoul of court etiquette somewhere and comes home sulking. As a rule, universities on both sides of the Atlantic seem to benefit by ges. Couldn't this idea be applied to Mayors, and, to begin with, by Boston and New York? Boston’s Mayor is just now at a particularly fine crest of success. He has suppressed a play that New York had long been patient with, and has got half a million dollars of evaded inheritance taxes out of the Shaw estate, by working on the moral sympathies of the heirs. Whereas Mayor Gaynor is running behind a little, having still on his hands, for example, an unsolved police problem, an unsolved subway problem, and a City Chamber- lain who does him no good. If these Mayors could exchange, if for no more than a fortnight, it would be a fine change for both. Mayor Fitz- gerald would have a chance, cither to acquire enlarged ideas about shows, or to apply his Puritan standards to Metropoli- tan entertainments. Mayor Gaynor would have the advan- tage of two week in a moral community and the en- couragement of observing its limitations, And think how valuable to Boston would be his unbiased views of the pro- priety of giving standing room to a statue of Ben Butler in that city! The Seismograph HE seismograph is a most interesting instrument, It is kept in a sub-basement room, far from disturbing influences. There it records upon a strip of paper such earth- quakes as may happen anywhere. The scientists then study the strip of paper and herald to the world the news that the tremor which shook cown several cities was duly registered. The seismograph is a remarkable contrivance—though in just what way is not yet determined. However, in the in- terests of science, it is as valuable as would be the imprint of the hoof upon the seat of the irousers of a man who had been kicked by a mule. After the event he could study the imprint and assure himself that he had been kicked. TWO MEADS WITH BUT A SINGLE THOUGHT (THEY BOTH WoRK AT NIGHT) comicbooks.com