Life, 1913-12-18 · page 27 of 40
Life — December 18, 1913 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon ("The Optimist"):** A car flies off a cliff while the driver cheerfully remarks they're "saving tires." This is dark satire about wartime rationing—suggesting that people find absurd silver linings in catastrophic situations. The prisoner's escape and "Luxury" character appearing in court suggests commentary on social inequality and frivolous priorities during serious times. **Bottom Section ("Hysteria"):** This is a satirical essay mocking women's suffrage activism. It distinguishes between "higher hysteria" (upper-class women's emotional behavior) and "lower hysteria" (suffragettes' militant tactics like bombing buildings—referencing actual pre-WWI British suffragette violence). The text uses "hysteria" dismissively, equating political activism with emotional instability. This reflects early 20th-century anti-suffrage rhetoric that portrayed women's rights advocates as irrational and dangerous.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE OPTIMIST “CHEER UP, JAMES! WE'RE SAVING TIRES, ANYWAY.” The prisoner was then triumphantly permitted to escape. oe eee “ And just to think,” tittered Luxury, who was sitting in a back corner of the court room as the blushing prisoner passed, “that they didn’t even call on me.” Hysteria YSTERIA began in the Garden of Eden, achieved world wide dis- tinction during the declining days of the Roman Empire, and reached its culmination in England in 1913. There are two kinds of hysterics; namely, the higher and lower. Lady high-brows have the higher, and suffragettes have the lower. If you are married you may have both. Everything comes to her who has hysterics. The higher hysteria is composed of equal parts of energy and emotion, with a sprinking of mind. The lower hysteria grows bombs and burns buildings. Nothing exceeds like hysteria.