Life — February 13, 1913 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "A Threatened Industry" - Life Magazine Page 320 This satirical article attacks proposed legislation to ban kissing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The main cartoon shows a woman rejecting a man's advances with the caption "What the Inmates Are Doing" — suggesting hospital patients are conducting unauthorized romantic experiments. The accompanying poem mocks the kiss-ban proposal by defending kissing as an "ancient and consoling custom." It argues that kisses cannot be legislated away and celebrates them as natural human behavior. The smaller cartoons ("The Poet Loveate" and "The Flesh and the Devil") support the satire through humorous depictions of romantic entanglement. The piece ridicules what it views as government overreach into private intimate behavior, presenting the proposed ban as absurdly puritanical and unenforceable.