Life, 1913-07-17 · page 9 of 44
Life — July 17, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical illustration depicts wealthy American women literally throwing money into the air—"flying dollars." The cartoon critiques conspicuous consumption and frivolous spending by the leisure class, particularly women with disposable income. The accompanying text humorously explains two concepts: "Microbes" (imaginary beings invented by doctors to scare people into unnecessary medical treatments) and "Proper Celebration" (discussing a new baby, with the dark joke that "progress is only a new combination of atoms"). The overall page satirizes early-20th-century American excess, medical quackery, and upper-class women's perceived wastefulness during an era of significant wealth inequality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Microbes A MICROBE is an imaginary being invented by doctors to scare people out of dying a natural death. Microbes have taken the place of the evil spirits in vogue before the Period when people grew so intelligent that they wouldn’t believe anything they didn’t hear. Microbes come in assorted packages, and spend their entire time in multi- SPORTS OF THE AMERICAN GIRL FLYING DOLLARS plying, adding, subtracting and divid- ing. They multiply serums, add to the fears, subtract you from your money, and divide all the profit among, the doctors. Just as everything was once repre- sented by a deity, so everything is now represented by a microbe. Some men are born with microbes, some achieve microbes, but all at some time have microbes thrust upon them, Proper Celebration VISITOR: What have you there, ie? Este (proudly): That's a bomb we made, and we're going to blow up the nursery. “Oh! Oh! What for?” “Perhaps you don’t know that the new baby is a boy.” ROGRESS is only a new combina- tion of atoms. comicbooks.com