Life, 1913-01-30 · page 13 of 36
Life — January 30, 1913 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon depicts a winter accident scene involving an automobile. The caption shows "Tommy" (after an accident) exclaiming about a dollar watch ticking away "like a good feller" — suggesting the watch survived impact unscathed while the vehicle and occupants experienced misfortune. The satire targets early automobile safety concerns and the contrast between cheap, durable goods (the dollar watch) and expensive, fragile automobiles. The scene mocks the irony that an inexpensive timepiece proves more resilient than the costly machine designed for transportation. The accompanying article "Well, Why Not?" discusses banking transparency and financial disclosure, seemingly unrelated to the cartoon's automobile theme.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
tomy (after the accident): Gr parents are so busy doing reprehen- sible things themselves that they have no time to talk or think about it. Well, Why Not? R. G. F. BAKER, president of the First National Bank of New York, recently made the statement that he would as soon think of asking a man what the amount of his tailor’s bill was as to ask him how much money he had in the bank. Mr. Baker does not seem to believe that a man’s bank account should be made public. Why not? It was not so very long ago that the heads of insurance companies and other large financial corporations dis- played very much the same attitude THAT DOLLAR WATCH 1 THAT wus Lucky! TICKIN’ about exposing their own affairs to the public view. Their stocks were listed upon the New York Stock and the public could buy the! as they pleased, but the idea of letting anybody know about the inside work- ings of these stocks was not only re- garded with horror by the heads of these companies, but when such a thing was suggested, they looked at you reproachfully as if you were crazy. This idea that a man who has prop- erty shall conceal its value and amount from his neighbors (many of whom may have helped him to accumulate it) is based upon the rule of the strong over the weak. It has no real basis, either in logic or reason, There are certain private things common to every man and woman which should xchange or not, AWAY LIKE \ GOOD FELLER! not he exposed to the public view, but the bank account of a man engaged in rigging the stock market, or buying and selling the necessities of life, is not one of them. A Dispenser of Agony AN it be true that Dr. Alexis ¢ rel, winner of the Nobel prize to appear on the vaudeville stage and do, stunts in surgery ?. Perhaps this Paris, seriously French surgeon, not only ridicules the exploits of our astonishing Carrel, but asserts that he is doing nothing new; that nt his tory. . And what a trail of blood! rumor comes from taken Dr. Doyen, the well known where he is not very his discoveries are anc comicbooks.com