Life, 1913-08-21 · page 17 of 40
Life — August 21, 1913 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes polygamy in Utah, then a contentious national issue. The sketch shows two men in conversation: one appears to be a father negotiating marriage terms, the other a prospective suitor. The father refuses to let two daughters marry into the same family—calling it "unrighteous"—unless the suitor also takes a third daughter, Jane. The satire is darkly comedic: the father invokes morality to justify polygamy while actually promoting it. The joke exposes the contradiction between Utah's religious justification for plural marriage and mainstream American values, which viewed polygamy as immoral. The cartoon mocks both the practice itself and the sophistic reasoning used to defend it. The setting labeled "IN UTAH" emphasizes this as specific regional critique during the era when Utah's statehood was contingent on abandoning polygamy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
IN UTAH “so, YOU WANT TO MARRY PHYLLIS AND PENELOPE? NO, SIR, I WOULDN'T LET TWO OF MY DAUGHTERS GO INTO THE SAME FAMILY, 'TWOULDN'T BE RIGHTEOUS. THAT IS, UNLESS YOU TAKE JANE, TOO.”