Life, 1913-01-16 · page 26 of 40
Life — January 16, 1913 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This *Life* magazine page contains three distinct satirical pieces: **1. Top cartoon:** A father and son discuss their competing desires—the boy wants to sled outside, but prefers playing with his train indoors. The humor mocks adults who regress to childishness through excessive "rejuvenation" exercises (a contemporary wellness trend). The caption warns against overdoing youth-restoration practices. **2. "An Erring Professor":** The article attacks Yale Professor George Trumbull's claim that women don't understand themselves. The satire argues the opposite: women demonstrate complete self-knowledge through their strategic ability to attract men. It dismisses his pseudo-scientific observations as mere male opinion, noting husbands have made similar claims since antiquity. **3. Bottom cartoon:** Two bank officials discuss a large loan. One justifies it because the borrower employs "over fourteen hundred children"—implying child labor was considered a legitimate business asset or credit indicator. The caption references Martha Washington, suggesting shock at modern degradation. All three pieces satirize flawed masculine reasoning about women, childhood, and economics.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“1 WANT TO GO OU-OUT AN’ COAST ON MY NEW SA-SA- SLED, “WELL, WHY DON’T You co?” ” “'COS I WANT TO STAY IN AN’ PLAY WITH MY TRAIN.” stave off premature senility is all right, but to anticipate second child- hood is an error. These exercises bring back your youth so rapidly that you are likely to overshoot the mark. Get young by all means; but if you find yourself uncutting your second teeth or getting a taste for milk, call a halt in time. J. B. Kerfoot. An Erring Professor “ Women do not understand them- selves, Indeed, they are more ¢s- sentially non-understandable because so large a portion of their motives and sources of fecling and action are instinctively unconscious or sub- conscious.” George Trumbull of Yale. ROFESSOR TRUMBULL has evidently been studying women in one of the laboratories of Yale Uni- versity, instead of where women can usually be found: in homes occasion- ally, and in many other places regu- larly. Professor Trumbull is a very able man, but his forte is evidently nov women. When he states that women do not understand themselves he mere- ly states his own opinion. Any one man’s opinion is as good as any other’s—especially when it comes to women. For Professor Trumbull’s enlight- enment and his further humble reflec- tions, we take great pleasure in in- Shade of Martha Washington: Gracious! HAS THE MINUET COME To THIS? forming him that women, on the con- trary, are the only ones that do under- stand themselves. Has Professor Trumbull ever seen a woman go after a man that she really wanted? Has he ever tabulated the dramatic art, the skill, in fact, the absolute per- fection of methods which such a wom- an uses when she wishes to capture a particular man? And does Professor Trumbull suppose that if a woman did not perfectly understand herself she could produce such results as she in- variably does in these circumstances? What Professor Trumbull really means is that a woman does not en- gage—for the public benefit—in a species of ratiocination with regard to herself. A woman does not dissect herself or endeavor to find out what fancy it is that moves her. Occasion- ally when some woman attempts to do this she winds up in a lunatic asylum, but just because she makes no effort to explain herself this does not mean that she doesn’t understand. This notion that woman does not un- derstand herself has been the favorite theory of every husband since the year one, but if he is a well trained hus- band he is pretty apt to keep quiet about it. IRST BANK OFFICIAL: I just loaned Bulger fifty thousand dol- lars on his business. Seconp Ditto: Is his business good enough to warrant it? “Sure! He showed that he was employing over fourteen hundred chil- dren.” comicbooks.com