Life, 1914-08-20 · page 14 of 40
Life — August 20, 1914 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes various unpopular professions and social types through mock character sketches. The article criticizes: - **Head Waiters**: Described as conceited, keeping intellectuals from dining comfortably - **Surface-Line Superintendents**: Officials who use bureaucratic obstruction and tape - **Next-Door Neighbors**: Nuisances who borrow items, fire up cars early, and spread gossip - **Actors**: Self-important people disproportionately offensive relative to their talent - **Political Economists**: Disagreeable academics whose theories contradict each other - **Printers**: Workers who deliberately sabotage jobs through "typographical errors" The cartoon illustrations (a couple with a log, people at a doorway) humorously depict these social annoyances. The satire uses exaggeration and specific grievances to mock common frustrations with service workers, neighbors, and professionals of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
I LOVE HIM, CAN'T YOU GET HIM FOR ME? The Worst People (With Due Apologies to E. S. M.) H' AD WAITERS—These gentry may have concealed virtues somewhere, but I have been unable to find them. Their principal occupation, so far as I have been able to determine, is to keep me from sitting down at the table I covet, while reserving it for some wealthy snob not fit for an intellectual person like myself to associate with. Surface-Line Supcrintendents~No one has ever seen one of these individuals, His main occupation is to con- ceal himself in the center of a lot of red tape and ma- chinery, while constantly devising new ways and means to hoodwink and insult the public and make them generally as uncomfortable as possible. Next-Door Neighbors—A species of animal whose chil- dren, dogs and chickens infest your premises; who comes home at two in the morning and fires off his auto under the window of your sleeping chamber; who borrows your books, your butter and your pet step-ladder ; who inveigles your servants to Ieave; who retails your secret weak- nesses to the rest of the neighborhood, and whom you have been instructed to love as yourself. Actors—There is a reasonable and just sense in which all actors are offensive, some of them being more so than others in proportion to their talent. They see everything TIME AND PLACE through their own environment, which in itself is enough of a vice; but to make matters still worse, they insist upon everyone else doing the same. Political Economists—That the number of these crea- tures is increasing is undoubtedly a fact. That no two of them ever agree is another fact. That our government is constantly becoming more extravagant in its expendi- tures—or shall we say in proportion to the increasing number of political economies published ?—is no apparent detrimént to their propagation. Knowing no reason, like the green bay-tree, they continue to wax and flourish. Printers—There are some people so misled as to claim that the race of printers is growing better; but, then, some people are willing to believe anything. I cannot do justice to printers. I know them too well, When I think of all the calm lies they have told me about having certain jobs ready at a certain time, words fail me. I am certain that every printer makes a point once in his life to ruin e human. being by making a typographical error. comichooks, ‘Oinl