Life, 1915-01-21 · page 17 of 44
Life — January 21, 1915 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon**: "Decorated on the Field" depicts a wounded soldier on horseback asking officers, "I say, is there anything in this for me? I carried him." The satire mocks the gap between military sacrifice and personal reward—the soldier expects compensation for his service but receives none. **Main Article**: "Wall Street and Business" satirizes circular reasoning in financial reporting. The *New York Sun* claimed "Wall Street signals Business to go ahead" during the 1914 stock exchange reopening. Life's editorial ridicules this as meaningless—both institutions are merely copying each other's moves, yet newspapers present it as meaningful economic leadership. The satire suggests Wall Street and Business have no independent authority; they're mutually dependent and both ultimately irrelevant to actual commerce. **"Joy?" Poem**: A dark joke about an automobile accident. A young woman riding with her chauffeur dies in a crash, leaving "nothing to show for the chauffeur"—meaning no survivor, no witness to what happened, and implicitly no one to blame or compensate. It's early-1910s dark humor about automobile dangers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Us, ang Holland if she keep an he time casures, are try. dy, but © most circum. Present with rantec Sand ity of 0 take cerns, Minis. | DECORATED ON THE FIELD 1 SAY, IS THERE ANYTHING IN THIS FOR ME? I CARRIED HIM life. At the opening of the war Wall Street stopped and signalled to Business to do the same. Business, especially the gun and ammunition business, paid little attention. are, | iety er ps, Ds, Is, J The Horse: / Wall Street and Business ke o "THE New York Sun has a wonderfully oe a altitudinous opinion of Wall Street. wae | This has been observable for a considerable period, but we were hardly prepared for this title to an editorial anent the reopening of the Stock Exchange: “Wall Street Signals Business to Go Ahead.” In the body of the editorial, however, it appears that Wall Street signalled Business to go ahead, because Business signalled Wall Street to go ahead. tt The idea is, of course, that Business is i = Business and Wall Street is Wall Street. No more futile than the age-long effort to discover whether the bird or the egg came first would it be to try to find out from the said editorial whether Wall Street or Business came first. but there they are signalling away to each other for dear ‘Then Wall Street finally decided to start up again, where- upon it signalled to Business to go ahead, and Business replied, as before, by going along just about as it had been. With all due respect to whatever inside information the Sun might have, it may be hinted that Wall Streets may come and Wall Streets may go, but Business goes on forever. Joy? HERE was a young lady from Gopher, Who went out to ride with her chauffeur. They found her remains scattered wide o’er the plains, But nothing to show for the chauffeur! comichooks.