ComicBooks.com Register / Loginit's free!

Life, 1912-08-15 · page 34 of 40

Life — August 15, 1912 — page 34: what you’re looking at

📖 Open the full issue in the page-flip reader →
Life — August 15, 1912 — page 34: Life, 1912-08-15

What you’re looking at

This page combines advertisements with political satire by George Bernard Shaw on vivisection (animal experimentation). **The Advertisements:** The top features a Remington typewriter ad and a LIFE magazine subscription offer (bound volumes for $2-$4). **The Satire:** Shaw's "Balloon Buster" cartoon uses absurdist logic to critique vivisection. He presents a reductio ad absurdum argument: if the government justified burglary by noting burglars' ingenuity and contributions to lock-making, requiring burglar inspectors to BE burglars themselves, the logic would collapse. Similarly, Shaw argues, justifying animal experimentation by claiming its scientific benefits while licensing only vivisectionists as inspectors reveals the absurdity of the entire enterprise. **The Point:** Shaw satirizes how institutions rationalize practices (animal testing) by emphasizing their "benefits" while ignoring their fundamental ethics. The comparison makes vivisection sound as obviously wrong as legalizing burglary—a common Shavian rhetorical technique mocking establishment hypocrisy.

📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Adding and Subtracting Typewriter (Wahl Adding Mechanism) of the reason why every business Toute shoud tae ths mechine {or biling, order work, and all work where writing and edding are done on the same page. ich i . roves everything, which proves Trewn aot, aod yours oo tne rachite for which you have have beee looking to stop all the leaks in your billing and accounting system. And over and above this insurance of accuracy is the time and labor saving. Our representative will be glad to demonstrate the machine on your request. Remington Typewriter Company (Incorporated) ‘New York and Everywhere “T’// Be Bound” Said LIFE, and he was. In this form LIFE has a permanent place in every household. The cost is $2.00 per volume if you return your loose copies, otherwise $4.00, the re- sult a continuous joy. LIFE 17 West 31 Street New York THE BALLOON DUSTEK George Bernard Shaw on Vivisection To begin with, if you want more inspectors in order to sce that a thing is carried out properly, you ought first of all to consider whether you want the thing carried out at all. If, for instance, you have a tremendous outery against burglary—I should not become rty to that, because it is a very small matter—but supposing you had a large body of persons who said, “ Burglary is a thing that we want seriously to be stopped.” And supposing the Government should say. “Well, yes, there is a great deal in this outery; but, after all, burglars are men who are engaged in the pursuit of wealth, which must be more or less the object of every Englishman (Laughter.) They display very remarkable qualities in carry- ing out this pursuit. They show great ingenuity. One of their great characteristics is that they have led to very re- markable discoveries in mechanics, to an enormous improve- ment in the making of locks, for instance, and to the dis- covery of a remarkable system of identification by thumb marks. (Renewed laughter.) But we still yield to the fact that a popular clamor has been got up against these deserv- ing men, and accordingly we propose that in future no man shall be allowed to commit a burglary unless he is a licensed person, Furthermore, we shall not allow him to commit a burglary in a house which is valucd at more than £120 a year, unless he has a certificate as well; and he must get his license and certificate from an organized body of burglars themselves. And in order to sce that no burglar shall burgh without a certificate, we shall appoint a certain number of men as inspectors. A mere policeman, not being a burglar, would not be capable of seeing whether the burglar was carrying out his operations properly, and therefore the first thing we shall see to is that every inspector shall be himself a burglar.” (Laughter.) I think, in the face of such a statement as that, you will admit that the inspector theory would begin to fall through, in the minds of those persons who do not believe in burglary, or in the remarkable “ benefits” it confers on the human race (Applause.) The reason that I tell you this long story is that it applies almost exactly in the case of vivisection. comicbookeom