Life, 1913-08-21 · page 27 of 40
Life — August 21, 1913 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1910s *Life* magazine page uses dark satire to critique social indifference to poverty and child welfare. The top cartoon shows a crowded parade with a working-class man asking someone to lift his child to see—a humorous but sympathetic domestic scene. The main article sarcastically celebrates a 75-infant mortality reduction, but then poses bitter rhetorical questions: these 75 surviving babies were born into poverty; what future awaits them? Will they die anyway? Become child laborers? The piece attacks sociologists and politicians for celebrating statistics while ignoring systemic poverty. The lower cartoon warns children against "wireless traps"—likely referencing new electrical hazards of the era, or possibly satirizing how modern inventions pose dangers to the poor. The satire's point: celebrating lower mortality rates is meaningless if society does nothing to improve the actual lives of impoverished children.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“say! MISTER, WON’T YE PLEASE LIFT DE KID UP SO HE CAN SEE DE PARADE? HE AIN'T HEAVY” That Problematical Seventy-Five CCORDING to the records of the Depart- ment of Health, the total deaths of infants under one year of age in one week last summer were two hundred and fifty-three, while in the same week one year ago the total number was three hundred and twenty-cight. This. is a reduction in the death rate of seventy-five. That is to say, seventy-five babies are alive this year who would not have lived had they been born a year ago. What is now going to happen to these seventy- i sa~ five who ought to have been dead by rights they had been in too much of a hurry to be born? Is their procrastination going to be of any real benefit to them? Not one of them was born under advantageous conditions. Probably the most of them are below what is known as the poverty line. Speak up, O learned Sociologists, and tell us what will become of the seventy-five. Will most of them die a little later, after having been a total loss to the state? If they live will they swell the list of child labor employees? Will they fight to conquer other nations? Will they become politicians, white slaves, or statesmen? “YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL, CHILDREN; IN THESE DAYS OF WONDERFUL INVENTIONS. THAT MAY BE A WIRELESS TRAP”