Life, 1914-11-12 · page 13 of 48
Life — November 12, 1914 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page critiques banking practices during an economic crisis. The article "The Sunlight Method" discusses how banks are exploiting wartime distress by charging high interest rates (up to 8%) while claiming patriotic necessity. The Secretary of the Treasury is mentioned as having oversight of this system. The cartoons illustrate the hypocrisy: - "Bachelors' Corner in Hades" shows damned souls, satirizing those profiting from others' misery - The second cartoon depicts a clergy member (identifiable by vestments) tempting a businessman with financial opportunity while urging him to "hang the expense"—mocking religious hypocrisy in endorsing war profiteering The satire targets financial institutions and moral authorities exploiting national emergency for personal gain.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
845 . The Sunlight Method I have a long list of banks which are holding ex- cessive reserves, and I shall not hesitate to publish it if it becomes necessary or desirable in the public interests—Secretary McAdoo. HE Secretary of the Treasury must have spent part of his boyhood in turning over flat stones. The banking system has been one of the biggest flat stones we have had. Exposing the underside to the sun- light is a daring but highly interesting experiment. The New York World stated recently: On the three hundred and twenty-seven million dol- lars of emergency currency now in circulation the national banks are paying a tax of three per cent., and are charging as high as eight per cent. for its use. Instead of foregoing some of their usual profit on loans to share in part a business distress caused by the war, they are exacting an extra profit out of this distress. Heretofore—under most of the Republican administra- tions, for example—banks have been able to take advan- tage of outward circumstances to make profits out of a general distress. But the flat-stone era, so far as many of the wicked among them is concerned, appears to be passing away. St. Peter: THERE! 1 KNEW WHAT WOULD MAPPEN IF WE LET DOGS IN HERE! “LET ME TELL YOU, MY DEAR SIR, THAT YOU CA: AFFORD TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY LIKE THIS,” BACHELORS’ CORNER “ STILL, I'M TEMPTED TO DO SO, HANG THE EXPENSE!” comicbooks.com