Life, 1915-04-15 · page 29 of 44
Life — April 15, 1915 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine article mocks reformer Francis Patrick Walsh's investigation of the Rockefeller Foundation, which he views as an uncontrolled "menace" to government authority. The satire's point: early 20th-century America was obsessed with identifying "menaces"—the article lists absurdly disparate threats including the Catholic Church, pacifism, rum, feminism, child labor, eugenics, capitalism, and trades unionism. By cataloging this bewildering array, the piece ridicules the era's reflexive panic about social dangers. The bottom cartoon (captioned "Croesus and Lazarus") depicts a burglar requesting to see "the boss" briefly while instructing not to wake him—he's just gotten the boss to sleep. This likely suggests wealthy industrialists control law enforcement, rendering it useless against actual crime. The underlying critique: American reformers and authorities scatter their attention across countless supposed threats while real corruption flourishes unchecked.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Menaces Multiply ON. FRANCIS PATRICK WALSH, now working ona four- hundred-thousand-dollar industrial in- vestigation, is worried heeause the Rockefeller Foundation “is entirely without the realm of government con- trol”, and finds it to be “a power which many Americans have come to look upon as a menace", Oh, well, that’s nothing. There are menaces now at every turn. The Catholic Chureh is a menace ; the anti- Catholic Menace is so fierce a men that there was a bill started to have it thrown out of the mai is a menace; militari isa horrid menace; pacifism is alittle worse, if anything; rum and grape- rowing menaces ; sm, feminism and act: ; also white slavery, child labor, eugenics, divorce, the boll- weevil, the shipping bill, trades union- ism, capitalism and efficiency. Anything that has a little more than average life in it is a menace, and that thought Mr. Walsh om find consoling rf there are folks, a good many, who see a menace in it when chaps like him Burglar: SAY, 1 WANT TO SEE DE BOSS JFs’ FER A MINIT are able to arm their natural impudence “WELL, LOOK AT HIM, BUT DON’T WAKE HIM; WE'VE JUST GOT HIM with governmental powers of inquisi- 70 SLEEP” tion. comicbooks.com