Life — December 11, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page satirizes the New York Board of Education's decision prohibiting teachers from becoming mothers. The "Push It Along!" editorial argues this rule is absurdly expansive—if we deny motherhood to teachers, why not extend the prohibition to suburban women, farmers' wives, slum women, and society women? The accompanying aerial photograph shows a crowded urban street, with the caption joking about a woman missing her chance to "drop" a baby on an organ grinder—dark humor mocking the absurdity of the proposed restrictions. Below, "A Pro-Suffrage Equation" uses a visual math joke: a man plus a ballot equals a man minus a woman—satirizing how women's suffrage advocates worry that voting rights would somehow diminish women's traditional roles, particularly motherhood.