Life, 1911-05-18 · page 4 of 42
Life — May 18, 1911 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising for Ainslee's magazine** (June issue), not political satire. The ad uses ironic rhetoric to mock readers' apparent fatigue with "uplifting" content. The copy sarcastically asks if readers are tired of sentimental stories about struggling seamstresses and moral tales about factory conditions—appeals to social conscience common in early 20th-century magazines. It then pivots to promise entertainment instead: short stories by popular writers like F. Berkeley Smith and Herman Whitaker, plus a complete novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. The small circular target design (top left) with a woman's face appears to be Ainslee's logo/masthead design. The satire targets magazine readers who claimed to want serious social content but actually preferred escapist fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Arent YOU a Little Tired of Being “Uplifted”? 3: 3: Isn’t your heart a little weary of bleeding for the poor underpaid seamstresses who sew the silk threads in five-dollarbills? Haven’tyoushed enough tears over the appalling conditions in the factories where they make wooden bird seed for cuckoo clocks? Isn’t your in- dignation through boiling over because of the shameless grafting of apple trees to pear trees? Don’t you feel a yearn- ing sometimes for a magazine that merely entertains? Wouldn't you like a maga- zine with more than a dozen bright, sparkling short stories by such writers as F. Berkeley Smith, Margaretta Tuttle, Herman Whitaker, Kate Jordan, Owen Oliverand Frank Condon, to say nothing of A Complete Novel By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES? You'll find all of that and much more in AINSLEE’S FOR JUNE Single Copies, 15c. :: By the Year, $1.80 comicbooks.com