Life, 1911-12-14 · page 15 of 40
Life — December 14, 1911 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes Edison's claim that age should be measured by productive work rather than years lived. The article proposes a humorous metric: rating people's "true age" based on their activity level and life experience. The satire targets idle wealthy men through caricatured types: "Badger," a fifty-year-old living a life of cocktails, gambling, and clubbing—rated as only six years old because he accomplishes nothing. "Braintree," a college graduate who wastes his inherited fortune on cars and chorus girls, rates as roughly twenty-three despite being older. The final joke notes that actress Sarah Bernhardt, by Edison's standard of constant activity and work, would be "fully two hundred years old"—implying her legendary career and vitality make her effectively ageless. The cartoons above mock similar themes of frivolous upper-class life ("The End of the World") and the blind, disconnected wealthy observer. The satire criticizes leisure-class idleness versus productive achievement.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Jones E TO ME. MINE? ALL THOSE ROOFS LOOK WHY DIDN'T 1 MARK Age and Action M* EDISON recently declared that he was one hundred and ten years old, on the basis of the amount of work he had done, calculating it at eighteen hours a day. This is, in reality, the only proper manner in which to estimate one’s age. Some people who are over eighty ¢ not lived so long as those of forty. Life is made up of emotions, of action. It is also made up of contemplation, of that necessary leisure which precedes the best and most effective action. Mr. Edison has been a large dealer in all of these com- moditics. It seems to us that he is even older—on this basis—than he asserts. If we could apply a simple years of age “THE END OF THE WORL SAY, COPPER, IF YOUSI AND KEEP YOUSE, COMPANY test like this to all men, and rate them accordingly, how interesting the find- ings might be. We fancy we see in our mind our old friend Badger (we have purposely misstated his name) who, at fifty or thereabouts, has reached the purple flush that comes after a life of morn- ing cocktails and afternoon highballs, and who spends his time at the club consulting the ticker—between games of chance—and his cloudless days at the race track or commingling with cronies at half-way houses, while the chauffeur waits. Badger, we estimate, is about six years of age. DON’T MIND, ULL STAY MERE AWHILE Then there is Braintree, who man- aged to get through college without serious mishap, and whose father left him enough money to become a fad- dist in motor cars, chorus girls and other necessities. Braintree we estimate roughly to be about twenty-three—that is to say, he was twenty-one when he left col- lege, and during the last two decades he has grown a couple of years more. But the ladies! Well, so far as they are concerned, there might be some objection to this logical method. Sara Bernhardt, according to Mr. Edison, must be fully two hundred years old. comicbooks.com