Life, 1912-10-17 · page 32 of 44
Life — October 17, 1912 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising and corporate messaging**, not political satire. The main feature is a **Bell Telephone System advertisement** titled "Your Telephone Horizon." It uses an extended metaphor comparing visual horizon limits (what the eye can see) to communication horizons (how far voice travels). The illustration shows a man using a telephone, emphasizing the technology's revolutionary reach—talking 2,000 miles versus needing a 560-mile-high telescope to *see* that distance. The ad's central argument: just as one's shadow follows a person, the telephone "horizon" follows the user across the country, making them always "at the center of a great circle of telephone neighbors." This promotes the Bell System's national network as essential infrastructure. The page also contains **filler content**: moral tales ("Wisdom," "Laconie") and period advertisements (Jergens soap, Cortez cigars, a "Sexology" book). The tone is aspirational corporate messaging about technological progress, not social commentary or political satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The horizon of vision, the circle which bounds our sight, has not changed. It is best observed at sea. Though the ships of today are larger than the ships of fifty years ago, you cannot see them until they come up over the edge of the world, fifteen or twenty miles away. A generation ago the horizon of speech was very limited. When your grandfather was a young man, his voice could be heard on a still day for perhaps a mile. Even though he used a speaking trumpet, he could not be heard nearly so far as he could be seen. Today all this has been changed. The telephone has vastly extended the horizon of speech. Your Telephone Horizon Talking two thousand miles is an everyday occurrence, while in order to see this distance, you would need to mount your telescope on a platform approximately 560 miles high. As aman is followed by his shadow, so is he followed by the horizon of telephone communication. When he travels across the continent his tele- phone horizon travels with him, and wherever he may be he is always at the center of a great circle of telephone neighbors. What is true of one man is true of the whole public. In order to provide a telephone horizon for each member of the nation, the Bell System has been established. AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES Every Bell Telephone is the Center of the System. Write for a Sample Cake For 2c we will send you a sam- ple cake, enough to last over a week. In this crystal clear soap "we have caught the real fragrance of fresh vio~ lets. Write today for your sample; smell it, hold it to thelight. Address the ANDREW JERGENS CO. Dept. ‘Spring Grove Ave., Cincinnati, O. JERGENS Violet Glycerine Soap Andrew Miller, 17, West New York. Known bondho and other security holders: George care Guaranty Trust Company, Branch, Fifth jue and Forty-thi Tie ith Avenue 1 Street, Uaite d States Trust Com- 4s Wall. Street, New tcalfe. Sworn to and subscribed before me, this first day of Octo- ber, 1912. (Seal) Wm. Krone, Notary Public. 2016 Wisdom A certain king was in company with one of his philosophers, and as they passed through a ruined village they saw there two owls; and he said to the philosopher, “ What are these birds say- ing to each other?” And the philoso- pher said, “I understand something of what they are saying, and if thou wilt swear unto me that thou wilt do me no harm, I will shew thee.” And when the king had sworn to him the philosopher said: “ One of the owls hath a son and the other a daughter, and they wish to arrange a marriage be- tween them. The owl with the daugh- ter is willing to give her one hundred ruined villages as a dowry, but the other one will not accept them, and de- mandeth more. The father of the daughter, having no more to give, prom- iscth his fellow, saying, ‘If this king ruleth his kingdom in the way in which he is now ruling it for one year more, I will give thee a thousand ruined vil- lages.’"" When the king heard this he was rebuked, and he began to work righteousness—From the Orient. Laconie An ambassador having come to Spar- ta from Perinthus, spoke at great length. “What answer shall I return to the Perinthians?” he asked. “Say,” replicd the king, “that you talked a great deal, and that I did not utter a word.” Ix moonshine districts, whiskey looks like water and drunk like water, strange ideas prevail as to what intoxication really is. In a village one Saturday afternoon, a man lay in the broiling sun in the middle of the road with an empty bottle by his side. “ He's drunk; lock him up,” the sheriff said. But a woman interposed hastily. “No, he ain't drunk,” she said. “I jest seen his fingers move."—Argonaut, where the There Forties. | manding Each to outde most lu Forty cl And { have be greatest | horsepor Find | value th Weh “40.” cars. \ provem Our « who ha: For b | bell, wh Each picked the resu went ot A Happy Marriage edge of the whole truth about self and sex and their relation to life and health. This knowledge does not come intellizently of itself, nor correctly from ordinary, every-day sources. SEXOLOGY (Ullustrated) by William H. Walling, A.M., 34.D., imparts in a clear, wholesome way in one volume. Her Daughter. Nn \. Write for “Other People’s Op! able ot Content Puritan Pub. Co., 776 Perry Bidg., Phila., Pa. “MADE AT al GARS Depends largely on a know!