Life, 1913-05-01 · page 11 of 48
Life — May 1, 1913 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The satirical cartoon depicts a small child leading a line of well-dressed men toward a factory. The caption quotes Isaiah 11:6 ("and a little child shall lead them"), inverting the biblical passage's hopeful meaning. The accompanying article discusses Senator Works's proposed bill to make crime reporting unlawful in Washington D.C. newspapers. The text argues that while some newspapers sensationalize crime, suppressing reporting isn't the answer—instead, honest journalism and "cleaner and more reliable" reporting would better serve public interest. The cartoon sarcastically critiques this reform proposal by showing a child leading industrialists to the factory, suggesting that well-intentioned reforms may paradoxically enable exploitation rather than prevent it. The juxtaposition highlights tension between controlling media narratives and actually addressing systemic problems like child labor.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ceptable, but not as Californians, and the disposition to deny them permanent settlement on farming lands is an anchor to the windward; a precaution against future troubles that are cer- tain to arise if yellow people in con- iderable numbers come in competition with whites: But California, though she has trou- bles which the East escapes, owes it to the country to be polite and diplo- matic even in her precautions. And she should observe that, however, un- desirable Asiatics may seem as perma- nent residents of these States, there is great good will for them at home, and solicitude, especially for China, that she may work successfully through her Present unsettled and distracted con- ditions, to peace and a hopefully pro- gressive condition. The appeal of the Chinese Government to the Christian churches in China to set aside April 27 as a day of prayer for China is an extraordinary and affecting attestation of desire to get anything out of the West that will do the country good. Certainly this part of the West, at least, respects that desire, and is anxious to help China in any way it can. “AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM” e T looks a little as though our great wave of reform was beginning to reach the newspapers. Senator Works of California has a bill before Con- gress to make it unlawfu) for news- papers in the District of Columbia to publish details of crimes, accidents and tragedies. Senator Works does not expect his bill to pass, and we guess it ought not to, but he uses it to call the attention of the country from time to time to the need of “cleaner and more reliable journalism.” The Senator comes from Los An- geles, where a paper, the Municipal News, was published at the cost of the taxpayers, to tell nothing but the truth and not too much of that. But the other day it died, discontinued at the age of seven months, because the demand for it failed. Mr. Choate spoke the other night at the Civic Forum on this same subject, deprecating the propensity of even the most reputable newspapers to develop the criminal spirit by devoting so much space to reports of crimes. He wanted the newspapers to abolish the headlines on reports of crimes, and thought that would help to discourage the activity of criminals, Ex-Candidate Bird’ of Massachu- setts is another good citizen who is out of all patience with newspapers, and thinks that most of them make a thoroughly bad use of valuable paper stock. Some newspapers are better than others, and the worst, even the sys- tematic and intentional liars, are use- ful in some measure as vehicles of publicity, but some day the people, the great mass of newspaper readers, will begin to suspect that the papers they read are worse than they are, and when that suspicion hardens into cer- tainty, the better papers will profit by it, and the worse ones will have to reform. It is extraordinary what blatant and unworthy publications can succeed in these times; succeed without character, any high intelligence or regard for truth, by mere attention to the com- mercial end of their busines: comicbooks.com