Life, 1915-04-29 · page 32 of 44
Life — April 29, 1915 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine contains three satirical pieces targeting early 1900s American society: **"The Dividend"** mocks corporate financial practices, describing how dividend payments to wealthy shareholders (magnates, lawyers, editors) are determined by secretive boardroom decisions that ordinary people—living on dividends or modest incomes—cannot influence or understand. The satire's point: your basic needs (food, heat, companions) depend on the arbitrary moral choices of strangers. **"Sorrows of a Lost Leader"** references Theodore Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, suggesting he receives letters from troubled men seeking his advice. It describes W.H. Walters, sentenced for forcing his eighteen children into brutal sawmill labor. The satire implies Roosevelt enabled such abuse through casual encouragement. **"The Old Stand-by"** satirizes suburban church culture, portraying perpetual church debt as a social fixture that keeps congregations occupied with fundraising rather than genuine spirituality—a convenient excuse for avoiding real moral engagement. The cartoon "Cupid: One of My Mistakes" (bottom) appears to show Cupid outside a courthouse, illustrating romantic follies.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ERE * tea FIRST ARRIVALS AT THE CAFE EDEN The Dividend DIVIDEND is what is left over from the rent paid by any large financial body for the privilege of taking up room, after everybody else has gotten through with it. On the other hand, the dividend of a railroad may in some cases be the amount of its earning incapacity. Dividends are paid on assets, Also liabilities. Frequently the question as to how much a dividend shall be is gov- erned by the sum total of all the company owes. Dividends are enjoyed by magnates, corporation lawyers, metropolitan editors, and occasionally by widows and orphans. Dividends come in all shapes and sizes—large and small, cut, reduced, doubled, passed and deferred. They are usually declared by a company of men whom you have never seen, and under circumstances which, if you knew them, would probably cause you to “shudder and grow sick at he: Thus—if you are living on your income, or trying to— next month's breakfast, the warmth of your clothing, the heat of your rooms, and the quality of your companions, may all be determined by the decision of a set of total strangers, meeting around a board and trying to decide the highly moral question as to just how much they may be warranted in deceiving you and others with regard to their continued capacity to keep up their obligation to you Who Knows? AFTER the Bible has been at last successfully adopted by the public schools, the next important movement will be to get it introduced into the churches, where at present it is only read from occasionally. In this way it might in time come to take the place of flutes and harps, popular lectures, vaudeville performers and other more or less unpopular forms of entertainment. Sorrows of a Lost Leader (ERERE is due to be received at Oyster Bay another letter beginnin, “Dear Colonel: I am in trouble.” W. H. Walters, of Cripple Creek, who received from an ex-President a few years ago a letter of congratulation on the birth of his eighteenth child, was sentenced on March 24th to ten years in the Colorado State Penitentiary for “inhuman treatment of his children”. Walters was using his children, girls and all, to do heavy lumbering for his sawmill. His girls said he treated them like slaves. Poor man! He over-did. The Old Stand-by HAT would suburban life be without its church debt? When all other subjects have been exhausted, when there is nothing else to do but sit around and look un- pleasant, there is the church debt staring one in the face, dropping into spend ‘the afternoon and evening with its knitting and its plans for enlargement. Why are there church debts? For various and sundry purposes. They furnish a background for church fairs and other equally shady enterprises. They serve as a guide to all the niggardly souls in the community who refuse to contribute, They give the clergyman a chance to brighten. up his sermons by original remarks about the “reduction in interest”. Cupid: ONE OF MY MISTAKES by fi know rubb: fabri (and and 1 a lou ural fricti stran requi fabri endu and ¢ freedo as tho S. When out of The | comicbooks.com