Life, 1914-10-08 · page 19 of 44
Life — October 8, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1910s satire critiques the perceived hypocrisy in how societies value lives. The cartoon shows a doorman turning away a well-dressed man carrying a "Dodges" parcel, telling him to leave it "with the rest of the rubbish"—alongside labeled boxes of "Catechism," "Doctrine," "Sectarianism," and "Creeds." The accompanying article (titled after the ancient Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus, known for selective breeding policies) argues that Western governments protect those deemed "unfit" through eugenic laws while simultaneously sending millions of healthy young men to die in World War I. The author sarcastically questions this contradiction: if society preserves the "defective" on moral grounds, why does it celebrate sacrificing the "finest citizens" for commercial or patriotic interests? The cartoon's visual joke suggests that outdated religious dogma ("the rubbish") should be discarded, while the article challenges the era's eugenics logic by exposing its fundamental inconsistency.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Smell + ac. “BEFORE YOU COME IN YOU MIGHT JUST LEAVE YOUR PARCEL WITH THE REST OF THE RUBBISH" What Would Lycurgus Think > FEW wecks ago the Supreme Court of New Jersey rebuked the State Legislature, which, it held, had infringed the liberty of the citizen, The citizen in question was feeble- minded, and the Legislature had denied him the right to populate the State with more of his own kind, , Two months ago the leading nations of Europe stripped themselves of the chief hope of the next generation, fourteen million citizens, the flower of manhood, forbade these youths to think of establishing homes and fami- lies, and condemned them to far greater risk of violent death than a murderer runs in any country of the world. Imagine the outcry if one of these warring nations should set a regiment of insane men, of cripples or consump- tives, in the forefront of battle! Our civilization is tender only of the unfit. When a government proposes elimi- nating these defectives, to free the na- tion from a staggering burden, high disapproval frustrates every move; but if it proposes immolating its finest citizens to some fancied commercial advantage—that is a religious and patriotic occasion. Why is an idiot’s posterity more sacred than an engineer's? Why are insane asylums immune when colleges are to be decimated? If defectives continue to enjoy every right under the protection of benevo- lent governments, and normal young men by tens of thousands continue to die sweetly and decorously for their countries, isn’t it possible that in a few generations even an idiot may not be able to find a country worth dying for? comicbooks.com