Life, 1914-05-28 · page 17 of 44
Life — May 28, 1914 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Cartoon (left):** A grotesquely tall figure labeled "The Burden of the Month" towers over two small businessmen below. The satire mocks easy financial solutions—the caption reads "So Easy / If You Happen to Be Short of Funds Just Say, 'Charge It'"—criticizing frivolous spending and credit during what appears to be economic hardship. **"Another Way Out" (text):** This section sardonically reports a Boston Presbyterian minister's suggestion that prayer and faith—not economic policy—solve unemployment. The satire pointedly critiques this religious approach as dismissing actual economic science and blaming the poor themselves ("the poor man has gone back in sin"). **"The Children's Litany":** A mock prayer parodying religious litanies, listing societal problems (factories, hospitals, state militia violence) from which deliverance is sought. It critiques industrial conditions and government suppression. **"Etiquette":** A brief satirical essay defining etiquette as protective pretense masking ignorance, invented by "Bigotry, Tradition, and Mendacity." The page overall reflects early 20th-century progressive critique of economic inequality and institutional hypocrisy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LAWN TENNIS TERM TAKING HIS PARTNER'S SHOT Another Way Out PRESBYTERIAN mi Boston offers prayer as a remedy for unemployment: “Tf the unemployed believe that God will help them find positions we know that He will help them. God never made a man to starve. The rich have got to open their doors if the Lord says so. In the Scriptures the Lord promises to provide for us on this carth as well as in the world to come, “The trouble with the unem- ployed army is that they don’t have faith enough. The poor man has gone back in sin and the Lord is thrashing him for This dispenses with the science of political economy, if there is such a science. A few prayers indulged in in the right spirit and employers all over the land will open their pay- rolls to employees they didn’t: know they needed. The only problem re- maining is how to get this encourag- SO EASY 1F YOU HAPPEN TO BE SHORT OF FUNDS JUST SAY, “CHARGE IT” The Children’s Litany (Revised Version.) ROM civic associations, faddists, ideati lators—Good Lord, deliver us. sts and legis- From school systems, canning and cotton factories, mil!s, mines and the I. W. W.—Good Lord, deliver us. From hospitals, scrums and surgeons, from new diets and hygiene, from bacteriologists and sentimentalists— Good Lord, deliver us From murder, battle and sudden death at the hands of the State militia, controlled by capital—Good Lord, de- liver us. ing news to the unemployed with sufficient. emphasis, plausibility and celerity to make them realize it. Etiquette TIQUETTE is compromise in a frilled shirt. Professional etiquette is a system of protection, in- vented as a barrier to prevent outsiders from finding out the extent of your ignorance. The three angels, Bigotry, Tradition, and Mendacity, once met in an idle moment, after their main work had been completed, and invented professional etiquette to show the world for all time that they could work together in harmony, Etiquette, professional or ordinary, is based upon the permanent incapacity of the human mind to produce any- thing original. Without etiquette we should all do as we please. comicbooks.com