Life, 1913-12-11 · page 8 of 40
Life — December 11, 1913 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main illustration depicts a skeletal soldier sitting on a grave, overlooking an industrial landscape with factories and troops—a WWI commentary on mechanized warfare's human cost, captioned "Coming! (As Seen Through Wall Street Eyes)." The article "May We Be Spared This?" criticizes financial writers for speculative, sensationalist reporting about wartime waste and inefficiency. It accuses them of drawing unwarranted conclusions and fashioning "sophisticated circumlocutions" to fill space with grandiloquent language—essentially mocking financial journalism's tendency toward verbose, unjustified doom-saying. A secondary piece humorously notes President Roosevelt's aide Dr. Wilson doesn't draw attention despite working hard, contrasting him with more ostentatious colleagues.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
COMING! (AS SEEN THROUGH WALL STREET EYES) May We Be Spared This? AY we hope that the statisticians will hold sacred from their defiling touch the amount of waste involved in the depredations of financial writers? It is, to be sure, an invit- ing field in its various branches. One branch would be to gather and set forth tabularly and graphically, the amount’ of energy con- sumed in avoiding the truth, ignoring facts, drawing unwarranted inferences, guessing at probabilities, backing and fill- ing, giving credit where credit is not due, fashioning sophisticated circumlocutions, enunciating adventurous ambiguities and suggesting sage suspicions. Another would interest more particularly the psy- chologists who could compile and dis- play the amount of potential gray matter that was spoiled by the attempt to fill space with ponderous hints, oracular prophecies and groundless grandiloquence. Still another branch would be to figure out the average amount of time lost per reader in poring over these dreary wastes and trying to elicit an idea. It would all be interesting, but, oh, so grief-impelling in its wonderful expanse. What a terrible blow-hole it would be in the armor-plate of our civilization if we had all those facts where we could get at them and couldn't get away from them. We beseech you to spare us, O Statisticians. version: Volts for women. ENGLISHMAN Dr. Wilson Not a Noisy Worker HEN Roosevelt was President the understanding came to be that the Presidency had become too exacting an employment for anyone but a giant in the top of train- ing. But Dr. Wilson seems to get along with it; and times have been middling busy since he went in; and he is not an ostentatious athlete, either. Some men’s exertions are so spectacular as to convince beholders that only superhuman energy could accomplish what they see being done. Other men simply get through a lot of work, One hears nothing of President Wilson's exertions. What one does hear now and then from someone who works with him is that he is “the most efficient man who ever sat in a chair”, ELS. M. comichooks.