Life, 1911-05-18 · page 12 of 42
Life — May 18, 1911 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"The Usual Question" cartoon** depicts an angel asking an old man "Say, old man, what's their horsepower?" — a joke about modern obsession with automobiles replacing traditional heavenly concerns. The angel and man stand on clouds, making this an afterlife scene where even celestial beings care about cars. **"Ah There, Colonel!" article** discusses President Smith of the Mormon Church, citing 1910 birth/death statistics (38 per 1,000 births; 9 per 1,000 deaths). The text humorously suggests looking at "Oyster Bay" statistics for comparison — likely referencing Theodore Roosevelt's location — to understand demographic influences on the Mormon Church's high birth rate. The circular photograph shows two men in conversation, though their identities aren't specified in visible text.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LIFE: This Number A RECENT English observer, who is evidently in the habit of getting at the causes of things, has remarked that the world is rapidly becoming uninteresting and therefore unlivable. There scems to be nothing more to appeal to the imagination, We have gradually become incapable of being terrified. So long as there about the unknown an element of uncertainty, a chance that sometime it might become known, we were intensely curious to find out about it. But when the unknown had become the known until ‘there were no more fields to conquer, then the curiosity abated. What is thus truc of the physical world has come also to be truc in the mental, It having been demonstrated to the satisfaction of everybody that heaven and hell were only sensations of the mind (a kind of ganglionic sceretion, if we speak physiologically, or a z= Ges cmon illusion if we speak philosophically), we have there- ZF fore rothing to reflect about but certain commonplaces. Nothing ‘7 startles us any more; nothing terrorizes us. An occasional carth- quake, killing several thousands of people, is no longer the work of gods, but is reducible to a chemical analysis; a volcanic eruption is a caloric crisis; we have a comet time table, and our financial panics are on the following morning reduced to a formula by a thousand mathematicians. Birth is no longer a miraculous abio- genesis, but only an incident in the phenomenal world; souls have been drawn out of bodies and swept away by psychological vacuum cleaners and heaven and hell have been segregated and localized as particular spots in the area of consciousness. We have all parted from hell without particular compunction We never took much stock in it, anyway. We never quite believed in it. It went out with the advent of radiators. Fortunately. the devil has gone into vaudeville, still affording us some amusement a stock comic character. But with heaven the affair is different. We bad come to egard it as a kind of relicf from everything that was an- ow St. Peter has gone with the rest of the parapher- ; only biplanes remain—biplanes and monoplanes ani other birds of gasoline AHERN. 1410 — THE USUAL QUESTION “SAY, OLD MAN, WHAT'S THEIR HORSEPOWER?” Ah There, Colonel ! RESIDENT SMITH of the Mormon Church is quoted as saying in his annual address that the birth rate within his church during 1910 was 38 per 1000, the highest in the civilized world, and the death rate 9 per 1000, the lowest in the world. Perhaps the Mormon leader is misquoted or mis- aken or has miscalculated, but allowing he said so, and that it is true, we commend his figures to the thoughtful consid- eration of the Sage of Oyster Bay. It will not be difficult to discover by what influences or conditions the high Mormon birth rate is induced, and possibly the Colonel will find it practicable to take a leaf out of President Smith's book to A STAR OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE MAY BE DISCovrRED use in his own preachments. WITHOUT THE AID OF A TELESCOPE comicbooks.com