Life, 1913-07-31 · page 26 of 36
Life — July 31, 1913 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct satirical pieces: **"A Whaling Voyage"** (top illustration): A darkly comic cartoon depicting what appears to be a whaling expedition, using maritime imagery as a metaphor—likely social commentary, though the specific target is unclear from the image alone. **"Married?"** (main article): Satirizes Swedish "vaccination parties"—fashionable social gatherings where doctors vaccinate guests before dinner. The satire highlights the logical absurdity: if doctors consider vaccination a "self-inflicted disease" (as the medical profession admits), how can vaccinated people pass eugenic pre-marriage examinations? The piece mocks both the trend and medical hypocrisy. **"Some Recent Words"**: A glossary explaining contemporary political terms—*Syndicalism*, *Sabotage*, *laic* (anti-authority sentiment), and *stridulant* (applied mockingly to suffragettes). This reflects early 20th-century anxieties about labor movements, secularism, and women's suffrage. The bottom cartoon shows people on bicycles with the caption about "jolts," humorously suggesting adaptation to modern life's disruptions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A WHALING VOYAGE Married? Gothenburg, Sweden—“Vaccination parties” are now fash- ionable in Stockholm. Guests are invited to an “at home ~ at five o'clock and the doctor arrives and vaccinates them. When this is over the guests dine together. —London Mail. HUS we have a pleasant mingling of business and society. It would be extremely awkward, however, if this practice became too general. We are now being ed- ucated up to eugenic marriages. What is a doctor going to do when a young couple present themselves for ex- amination before marriage, and it is suddenly discovered that he has vaccinated them a few weeks before? Can he state that they are in proper condition when he himself has endowed them with the germs of a filthy disease? Vaccination is admitted by the medical profession to be a self-inflicted disease. It is declared to be a substitute for smallpox. But how can people who have been vac- cinated get married? Aren't the doctors tying them- selves up? Some Recent Words TEP up, ladies and gentlemen, and be introduced to some of the latest words in the English language. Of course you know Syndicalism, only waiting to get properly into the dic- tionaries, and which was born in France and Germany, and marks the high tide of labor control over capital as expounded in this country by the I. W. W. And of course you know Sabotage, which comes from the sabot, a wooden shoe, which was thrown by a striker into the machinery. Thus sabotage has come to mean what the labor men term the justifiable destruc- tion of property. But have you met laic yet? Permit us. This word, says a recent writer (Wm. Morton Fullerton), is as yet French rather than English. “On the continent of Europe, however, laic has for a long time now been growing in familiarity as a name for all the im- pulses that mark the temper of persons resentful of authorit Our laic time, therefore, means a time when a larger proportion of people than ever before are “agin” the government. Do you know stridulant? A dic tionary word, yes, but not in the sense in which Mayor Gaynor has used it, and which in its latest meaning applies to those suffragettes who, as somebody has said, don’t know what they want, Lut want it. These ladies chirr; they are stridulcus. JOLTS, AUNTIE. YOU'LL GET USED TO THEM!” comicbooks.com