Life, 1914-09-03 · page 17 of 48
Life — September 3, 1914 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This "News of the Day (As It Ought To Be)" section satirizes contemporary issues through imagined legislation and reversals. **Upper content** mocks: - Medical ethics (doctors testing serums on themselves) - Consumer culture (abolishing store credit, causing women to faint) - Film censorship and gentlemanly conduct - Theodore Roosevelt's post-presidency criticism of current administration - Corporate exploitation (United Fruit Company's imperial dominance) - Income taxes and society gossip columns **The cartoon** depicts a frightened golfer's nightmare—likely mocking the emerging golf culture among wealthy Americans as absurd and dangerous. **Lower text** sarcastically attacks English suffragettes, suggesting their WWI suspension of militant activism implies they'd support invading armies. This reflects anti-suffrage sentiment, framing women's rights activism as unpatriotic extremism rather than legitimate political protest. The page uses humor to critique wealth inequality, corporate power, social pretension, and opposition to women's suffrage—typical Progressive Era concerns for Life magazine's educated readership.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
News of the Day (As It Ought To Be.) LAW went into effect making it compulsory that every doctor who invented a new serum should be first compelled to try it upon himself and all of the members of his immediate family. All charge accounts in department stores were abolished. Women fainted everywhere at the fatal news. No more death-bed scenes will be exhibited in moving- picture shows, Also, actors who take part in moving pictures, who pose as gentlemen, will hereafter remove their hats in the house or in the presence of ladies. That Colonel Roosevelt, instead of criticizing the present administration, will devote all of his time to explaining why, during the seven years he was in the White House, he didn’t do any better. Colombia will turn over to Lire’s Fresu Air Funp the twenty-five million received from the United States. The income tax will be readjusted so that everyone will have to pay something, if only five cents a year. The name of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish will not appear any more in the metropolitan papers. The tropics will own the United Fruit Company instead of the United Fruit Company owning the tropics. All the excursion boats now used along the Atlantic seaboard will be destroyed in order that a new set may be built that are seaworthy and reasonably designed and con- structed. BA “OH, PAPA! COME QUICK AN’ SEI 'CAUSE IT’S WAITIN' R THE LILAC BUSH. GHASTLY NIGHTMARE OF A GREEN CADDY—AFTER HIS FIRST DAY ON THE LINKS Bravery Energy Love of Home Glory Inheritance Union Mettle HE announcement of the English suffragettes that in time of war they will suspend their operations may be a prelude to enlistment in the army of the first invader of England's soil. The next best thing to destroying by fire and hatchet the property and art treasures of your native land would naturally be to join a hostile army, where your depredations would be more “regular”. Hurry!