Life, 1915-03-04 · page 23 of 48
Life — March 4, 1915 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical illustration depicts underwater figures (likely German U-boats personified as demonic creatures) asking "IS IT SAM OR JOHN?"—a reference to the contemporaneous boxing rivalry between Jack Johnson and Sam Langford during World War I era. The accompanying text uses this boxing comparison as social commentary. It contrasts Mexico's relative "peacefulness" (hosting Jack Johnson's prize fights in Juarez) with the actual horrors of American industrial life—specifically Roosevelt, New Jersey's fertilizer factories, where workers endure "toil, filth, disease, murder and misery." The satire critiques American Puritanism: society tolerates brutal working conditions at home while condemning boxing entertainment. The "submarine chorus" suggests dark forces observing American hypocrisy. The page also notes Madame Sarah Bernhardt's amputation and "Home Run" Baker's retirement from baseball as cultural losses.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
which has so often been remarked by visitors. WITHIN a single week the cause of Art suffered two bereave- Madame Sarah Bernhardt lost a leg and “ Home Run” Baker retired ments. from baseball, Madame Bernhardt is universally popular and, nowadays, uni- versally respected. The world in the thick of all its troubles has mourned her loss with messages of sympathy. Submarine Chorus: But a leg more or less is no great matter to a woman so largely mental as Madame Sarah. It seems to have been a question whether she would get up and out on one leg or lie abed with two, and she had no mind to lie abed in France in such a year as this. It is getting to be a toss-up whether it is worse to read stories of Belgium, Poland, Palestine, East Prussia or Mexico. The one bright spot in Mex- ico nowadays is the race-course at Juarez. One reads of grand bursts of sport in that border city and of the progress thither of Jack Johnson, who prepares again to fight some one there for large stakes. The peacefulest thing 1S IT SAM OR JOHN? one hears of in Mexico is this pros- pective prize-fight. Possibly if gov- ernment is rearranged for Mexico sometime, it may become an asylum for desperate characters from these States who like horse-races and even prize-fights and cannot have these pleasures at home. It is odd what we Puritans will tol- erate and what we drive off our premises. Juarez with its race-course and its prospective prize-ring seems a city of light compared with Roosevelt, N. J., and its horrors of toil, filth, disease, murder and misery, described by doctors, among the laborers of the fertilizer works there.