Life, 1915-03-18 · page 30 of 40
Life — March 18, 1915 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This article satirizes Progressive Era obsession with scientific management and bureaucratic control. The author mocks the impulse to apply "efficiency" and government regulation to everything—even nature itself. **The Satire:** Spring is personified as a chaotic, irresponsible woman who violates every rule of order: she dresses immodestly, wastes resources, ignores fashion magazines and proper procedures. The author suggests that society's solution would be typical of the era: appoint college professors, government committees, and notable figures (including "Mr. Brandeis" and "General Wotherspoon") to study, regulate, and "reform" Spring itself. **The Joke:** It's absurd to imagine controlling natural forces through committees and publications—yet this reflects real Progressive confidence that expert management and publicity could solve any problem, even seasonal weather. **The Bottom Cartoon:** Wordplay on fees: a doctor and lawyer argue about charges—one for winning a lawsuit, one for removing an appendix—illustrating how professionals exploit situations for payment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LPP 'E - The Spring Efficient HERE must be something wrong with — science, when it has not yet been able to produce an efficient spring. Those of us who are thor- oughly disorderly and irre- sponsible and reckless and exasperatingly care- less, and wish to \ quote some high au- thority as an exam- <* ple, can point to Spring with superb confidence. Spring has no regard for anybody’s feelings. She went out into Nature’s back yard one day and got hold of the paint-pot when the nice, orderly painter was away looking up the plans and specifications. She slammed the brush into the pot, and the April tears fairly running down her blooming cheeks with laughter, slapped on all the colors of the rain- bow in all the places that you wouldn’t think of—that you wouldn't dare think of. No interior decorator to whom you pay a hundred dollars a day for his adi and presence and moral uplift would think of doing a thing like that No color scheme is safe with Spring. There are so many things the matter with her that we feel that it is some- thing which we ought not to talk about. It's had enough to be disorderly, to he so utterly regardless of all system, to defy all the rules of intelligent philosophers and other well-known experts ; but Spring is much worse than this. She is an unmoral person. She would be arrested and locked up in ES % makes her own clothes—and she never bought a sewing-machine on the installment plan or threaded a needle. They are always blowing off of her, and she’s always slapping on new ones without the slightest regard to what's being worn, You never see her reading Vogue or the Ladies’ Home Journal or taking the dressmaking course in Pratt Institute. She kicks off the coverlets, jumps out of bed, runs out of the house with scarcely anything on, and dresses shamelessly in the open. No wouder she draws crowds, And how she wastes! Eventually, we feel certain, Spring will be under government control. All she needs is a little healthy prelimi- nary publicity. Exposure will come once too often. Science must do this for us. We need a few stirring and masterful ar- ticles on Spring by some leading col- lege professors. No one would dream of instituting a great reform like put- ting Spring on a paying basis without first having it appropriately written up by a bevy of college presidents. The poets have tried it and failed. Poets have written about Spring so much that nobody now would believe any- thing they said, even if it were true. Doctor: LAWSUIT That shows you how careful you must be in using your power. Spring makes us shiver at the hope- lessly irrelevant things she does. She needs to be taken in hand by some committee of representative citizens. Investigation by itself will do no good. ‘erybody has investigated Spring from time immemorial, and where are they? But what may not be done with her by our modern machinery? Eugenics, college presidents, representative com- mittees, editorial writers, Mr. Brandeis, General Wotherspoon, Colonel Roose- velt’s entertainments and the Industrial Commission—with all this help, what cannot be done with Spring to make her a good citizen—if we get after her right now? Tid, M. HOW MUCH ARE YOU GOING TO CHARGE ME FOR WINNING THAT : MOW MUCH ARE YOU GOING TO CHARGE ME FOR REMOVING MY APPENDIX?