Life, 1913-02-13 · page 25 of 44
Life — February 13, 1913 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon "Looks" depicts a well-dressed man in a top hat (left) observing a disabled gentleman in a wheelchair surrounded by attentive women (right). The caption attributes it to "Sprig, M.D."—likely a satirical pseudonym. Below, the "Relative Values" joke mocks former President William Howard Taft's move to Yale University. Taft earned $75,000 as President but would receive only $5,000 at Yale. The humor hinges on the punchline: he's being paid based on "the damage he can do"—implying Taft caused significant harm as President, making his lower academic salary appropriate to his reduced capacity for damage. This reflects early 1900s criticism of Taft's presidency and satirizes the notion that executive power is inherently destructive.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LOOKS. A LOOK S| theme to work upon, it moves with a scarcely audible clank, but with a maddening, because a foreseeable, uni- formity and precision; so that one knows at last with exactly what clicks and whirrs it will seize upon the avail- able platitudes, and, by reversing them, turn them into more or less presentable paradoxes; so that one finally comes to be somehow certain that during the intervals be- tween essays this mechanistic brilliancy must be some- where noisily going through its accustomed motions while waiting for a new theme to engage and so quiet its energies. There are many enjoyable passages in the thirty-eight ‘G AGE AND VAST EXPERIENCE BY SPRIG, M. D. papers of “A Miscellany of Men” (Dodd, Mead, $1.50). There are even a few papers that are wholly human and carly-Chestertonian. But if you don’t look out you'll find yourself beating time to the. machinery. J.B. Kerfoot. Relative Values RIGGS: I see Mr. Taft will get only five thousand dollars a year at Yale, when he got seventy-five thou- sand dollars as President. Is that, enough? Griccs: Why not? He is getting paid in each case ac- cording to the damage he can do. comicbooks.com