Life, 1913-05-29 · page 9 of 44
Life — May 29, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes corruption and power dynamics in the post-Civil War era. Two well-dressed men appear to be conducting business at what looks like an official window or counter—one leaning in to speak with the other, who sits in a position of authority. The title "The Man Higher Up" references a common phrase for hidden power brokers who pull strings behind the scenes. The satire suggests that while ordinary soldiers fought and died for causes like preserving the Union and ending slavery, corrupt officials and influential elites profited or wielded power without personal sacrifice. The accompanying text emphasizes this contrast: soldiers risked everything for righteousness, while a privileged few exploited the system for personal gain. The cartoon illustrates public frustration with institutional corruption masquerading as legitimate governance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
EMORIAL DAY stands for two things. One of them is political union. The Civil War was fought, im- mediately, to save the union of the States. It ended all discussion about the right of States to secede. The other is political righteousness. The reason why the union needed sol- diers and bullets to save it was that it included slavery; an institution that civilization had outgrown, and that to nineteenth century Europeans and Americans had come to seem morally wrong, and more intolerably wrong with every year that passed. Slavery ought to have died in the United States about the time it died in other Christian countries of a like de- gree of civilization. The protection given to it by the Constitution pro- tracted its life beyond its natural term. It was uncconomic; a burden and a threat to the States that main- tained it, but it had become so im- plicated in the production of cotton, and the prosperity of all the business, North and South, and all the soci apparatus, dependent upon cotton, that it could not find its way to a natural death, It should have died of its own diseases; died because of the immense injury, moral, mental, social, it did to the States that harbored it; but be- cause it was recognized in the Consti- tution and involved the doctrine of States rights, a few thousand men, who derived from it a pecuniary or so- cial or political advantage, were able to excite and enlist in its defense hun- dreds of thousands of their fellow: who went, some to their death, some to wounds and sickness, all to privation and all to defeat, in behalf of an in- stitution, to which they owed nothing but ill will, and from which they had never derived anything but harm. That was wonderful. Equally wonderful it was that of the Northern soldiers who fought the bat- tles of righteousness for the extinction of slavery, comparatively few were deeply concerned about that issue. Vastly more of them fought to pre- serve the union which slavery threat- ened, and more still fought because their side called for men, and duty, THE MAN HIGHER UP and adventure, and gallantry con- Strained them to go. Nevertheless they fought on the side of rightcousne: fought to wipe out an institution which in the progress of human intelligence had come to be a crime; fought to cure an evil for which the forbears of many of them had been quite as responsible as the forbears of those against whom they contended. Scatter flowers on their graves, and flowers, too, on the graves of those whom they fought. Great national sins still have to be wiped out in blood. When such expiation is due, it is paid by all whose blood is shed, and on which side they fall is more a mat- ter of lineage and geography than of personal choice. Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns! Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs. A mighty mother turns in tears The pages of her battle years, Lamenting all her fallen sons. comicbooks.com