Life, 1912-10-31 · page 9 of 44
Life — October 31, 1912 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes early 20th-century tariff debates. The main cartoon shows a fashionably dressed woman telling two men: "Sir! My dear, I've engaged her for the children. She knows all those extraordinary new dances." The satire targets politicians' competing tariff proposals—specifically those of Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson (referenced in the text). The woman represents a voter or the nation itself, "hiring" a tariff policy like hiring a governess. The text discusses how "free meat" (a tariff bill item) affects poor families struggling with high food prices, contrasting Republican and Democratic approaches to tariff reduction. The joke critiques how politicians treat complex economic policy as interchangeable fashion choices rather than serious governance affecting working families' budgets.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“su! MY DEAR, I'VE ENGAGED HER FOR THE CHILDRE SHE KNOWS ALL. THOSE EXTRAORDINARY NEW DANCES.” beef. “Free meat” was one of the items in the tariff bills passed by the last Congress, which President Taft vetoed. But for tariff duties of per cent. on meat and 27 per cent. on live stock, we might be getting South American beef as they do in London, a good deal of it better than most of ours, and about one-third cheaper. It is on the poorest of our people that the high price of meat presses hardest, be- cause the proportion of a small income that must be spent for meat is much larger than of a large income. To families that have fifty or a hundred dollars a day, or more, to live on, the price of meat is merely something in- teresting to talk about, but to families that live on one, two or three dollars a day, present prices must mean very little meat. HE tariff as an issue has held out pretty well. All the parties pro- fess intentions to abate it, but Mr. Taft has had his chance and muffed it, like Snodgrass, even in the tenth inning, and Mr. Roosevelt can’t keep his mind on tariff at all. The two Republican candidates believe in reducing the tariff very carefully, indeed, and so as not to hurt it. Mr. Wilson believes in re- ducing it carefully, so as not to hurt the people. Mr. Wilson will not mind any disfigurement of the tariff that re- sults in a net increase of comfort for the people. The Democratic theory about the tariff is tariff for revenue 2085 only, but the Democratic practise can- not go that far, but will doubtless be content with changes that will match the formula that “tariffs are made for people and not people for tariffs.” Mr. Wilson is ahead both of Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt on the tariff, and he is ahead of Mr. Roosevelt on the trust issue. For our part, we ad- mit that we do not know whether his theory (or the Brandeis and La Fol- lette theory which he supports and ex- pounds) about the regulation of com- petition, is entirely sound and can be put into practicable and beneficial leg- islation. But certainly the noises that Mr. Wilson has emitted on that sub- ject have sounded better and more melodious and reassuring than the noises Mr. Roosevelt has emitted about the regulation of business. Either plan is somewhat awful, but Mr. Wil- son's plan sounds better, though the terrors of a choice between the two mal one indulgent to Mr. Taft's Cisposition to leave it to the courts. Tf a judicious abatement of the tar- iff should bite the trusts hard enough in the hind leg to obviate the need of drawing all their teeth, that would be a very welcome modification of a na- tional embarrassment. For This Relief Pals have their compensations. What with politics, the Becker trial, the visit of the fleet, the base ball series and the shooting of Roos velt, we won well through towards October this year with hardly any men- tion of foot She: 1 MODEL HUS BUT ONE THIN ARE ALWAY CAN'T SAY YOU ARE A AND IN ALL RESPECTS; G1 MUST ADMIT. YOU HOME BEFORE DARK, comicbooks.com