Life, 1912-01-25 · page 34 of 44
Life — January 25, 1912 — page 34: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines satirical content about Benjamin Franklin with advertising. The left side contains a humorous biographical essay about Franklin, presented as serious historical commentary but written with absurdist exaggeration. The joke appears to be a parody of reverent, overwrought biographical writing: the author credits Franklin with inventing a "deadly weapon" (a glue-saturated towel) and notes he "never murmured or repined" despite chaotic childhood circumstances with seventeen siblings. The right page is a straightforward advertisement for Harper's Magazine, using rhetorical questions to position the publication as the answer for educated consumers seeking quality literature, merchandise, and information—implicitly contrasting it with lower-brow alternatives. A cedar chest advertisement also appears, unrelated to the editorial content. The satire targets pretentious biographical hagiography and America's tendency to mythologize founding figures like Franklin, while the magazine advertisement appeals to middle and upper-class aspirations.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
DEE It is claimed that Franklin, at this Moth-P: roof Cedar Chest time, invented the deadly weapon known as the printer’s towel. He found that a common crash towel could be satu- 15 Days rated with glue, molasses, antimony, Free concentrated lye, and roller-composition, T and that after a few years of time and 441n. tong. perspiration it would harden so that “A 2010. wide Constant Reader” or “ Veritas” couid 21 In, high be stabbed with it and die soon. Order Now! Many believe that Franklin’s other Bisarscepica neers titer, scientific experiments were productive alables | Ferfee Brace for fa of more lasting benefit te mankind than this, but I do not agree with them. {esting bovtlet, "The Story of Ret Cedar."* "AN goo sokt direct irom tactery AT TACTORY PRICES. FREIGHT PREPAID. 13 DAYS FREE TRIAT, 10, Statesville, N.' PIEDMONT RED CEDAI AR CHEST CO.. Dest. Where do men of affairs turn when they want the best that literature, art and science offers? Where does the housewife turn when she wants to purchase quality merchan- dise for her home? Benjamin Franklin LLD., Ph.G., F.RS., Ete. It is considered advisable by the his- torian at this time to say a word re- garding Dr. Franklin, our fellow-towns- man, and a journalist who was the Charles A. Dana of his time. Franklin's memory will remain green when the names of the millionaires of to-day are forgotten. Coextensive with the name of E. Rosewater of the Omaha Bee, we will find that of Benjamin Franklin, whose bust sits above the fire- place of the writer at this moment, while a large Etruscan hornet is making a phrenological examination of same. But let us proceed to more fully mark out the life and labors of this remarka- ble man. Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Bos- ton, came very near being an only child. If seventeen children had not come to Where do parents turn when they want to locate their children in the highest grade schools? Where is the best place to tell the story of your product if you want to bless the home of Benjamin's parents they would have been childless. Thin! of getting up in the morning and pick- ing out your shocs and stockings from among seventeen pairs of them! Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be called upon every morning to select your own cud of spruce gum from a collec- tion of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window-sill! And yet Benjamin Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea and to avoid this he was apprenticed to hic brother James, who was a printer. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the in- terests of freedom. reach consumers who respand to the best-is-the-cheapest argument—who can afford to buy anything from books to the highest price automobile? Harper’s Magazine