Life — August 21, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Cartoon Analysis: "Supposing John W. Pride Come Down to Office Late" This cartoon satirizes **John W. Pride**, apparently a wholesale grocery insurance manufacturer mentioned in the letter. The sequence shows Pride's progressive transformation—beginning as a well-dressed man in the first panel, he deteriorates through increasingly disheveled states, eventually becoming barely human by the final panel. The joke relates to the letter's discussion about office worker salaries and prosperity. The implication is that if Pride—a successful businessman—were forced to live on the meager salary of an office worker (the salary Hon. Bryan supposedly couldn't survive on), he would literally fall apart, implying office workers are expected to function on impossible wages.