Life, 1911-06-15 · page 14 of 44
Life — June 15, 1911 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This article satirizes the impracticality of middle-class family vacations in early 20th-century America. The piece mocks the absurd obstacles facing fathers with large families: **The Setup**: Census reports note large families are becoming rare, making them "curiosities." Hotels reject families with children; railroads threaten to relegate babies to baggage cars. **The "Solution"**: Summer cottages—expensive rentals costing $300-$1,500—requiring elaborate advance planning: negotiating with railroad presidents for car space, paying substantial tips, hauling two carloads of personal items, hiring multiple cooks (who quit weekly), arranging meat delivery. **The Satire**: The author deadpans increasingly absurd advice—hiring a piano for unemployed cooks to practice elocution, inspecting meat before public display, ensuring wells have screens against neighbors' dogs. **The Cartoon**: A wife asks her husband if joining a golf club is extravagant; he replies they'll "economize in other ways" by reducing church donations—satirizing misplaced priorities. The joke targets upper-middle-class pretension: families spend fortunes on summer retreats while claiming financial constraint, and fathers pursue leisure activities before charitable obligations.
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1158 The Family Man in Summer HE recent census reports state that large families in this country are practically becoming extinct, so that in a short time any man who has over four or five children will be regarded as a curiosity and will doubtless be able to go through the country and exhibit his group as a freak collection. At present the man with a large fam- ily has practically no place to go in summer, when it becomes necessary for him and his family to stray away from home. No summer hotel will take a man with a family, and almost every day we expect to receive word from the railroad companies that hereafter no babies will be received except in the baggage car, In the summer time, the only thing that remains to the man with a large family is the summer cottage. These structures, which cost all the way from three dollars to five-thirty to build, can be rented from five handred to fifteen hundred a season, Most of them are habitable in dry weather, and fresh canned vegetables can be obtained froin the leading city grocers at prices within the reach of all who can afford to pay them. Any man with a large family who wishes to take it away in the summer, should make his plans in advance. It is well to drop in some bright spring day on the president of the railroad company over whose line you expect to move your family, After making ar- rangements with him to permit all of your family to occupy one car, you may then proceed to the express “company, THIS HOBBL TICE, FATHER?” “CERTAINLY, MY DEAR, JUSTICE WITH- ovr Mercy.” KIRT DO ME JUS- : BUT DON’T YOU THINK JOINING THE GOLF CLUB IS RATHER AN EXTRAVAGANCE ? “NOT IF WE ECONOMIZE IN OTHER WAYS. UP OUR PEW IN CHURCH.” where, by paying a few hundred dollars in tips, you can have your baggage de- livered to you in time for nearly all of the children to be supplied with towels on the Saturday night after you get there. In arranging to occupy a cottage for the summer, you should bear in mind that, if it is furnished, you will need not more than two carloads of material to make it comfortable. A few box springs, a few dozen Turkish towels and a Set of china will be among the things that it is just as well for you to take. Also an extra supply of cooks, Your cooks will begin to leave you after you have been at your summer cottage a week or so, and you should arrange ahead to have enough of them to last all summer. Those who are unem- ployed, while they are waiting their turn, can use the piano you will hire for the occasion, and be read aloud to by your oldest. children, who can, by this method, learn while away to prac- tice up on their elocution. Be sure, sufficiently in advance, to make arrangements with the only meat- man in the place—there never is but one meatman at any place inhabited by summer cottagers—to leave his entire supply of meat in your cottage first, be- fore he displays it for general use. By 1 THOUGHT WE MIGHT Giv looking it over before others see it, you can often obtain pieces that will be of real benefit to your family, The idea of taking away your family to a summer resort is in a general way to keep them healthy and give them strength enough to be able to get back to your home in the fall. It is just as well, therefore, to select some place where the bathing facilities are good. The beach should be free from late vegetables, and the well in the back of the house should have a screen over it; it is extremely inconvenient to have your neighbor’s dog come around in the night and drink up all the water in your well. Later on, when your little brood is recovering from the typhoid, you will blame it on the dog instead of the well. No matter where you go, always be within reach of some weil-known New York specialist whose minaretted sum- rer palace overlooks your cottage. Your wife or children may have appen- Cicitis at any moment, and by having him near you will be saved from anx- iety, not only about your family, but about the little property that you have saved up for the children to quarrel over a little later on, when the simple monument over your person will pro- claim how much you once did for an ungrateful country, comicbooks.com