Life, 1915-05-13 · page 43 of 52
Life — May 13, 1915 — page 43: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains **editorial commentary and advertisements** rather than political cartoons. The main text satirizes social climbing and class anxiety: it mocks people obsessed with acquiring markers of respectability—better houses, luxurious possessions, proper manners—to impress neighbors. The example about suspenders while playing golf illustrates the author's point: no amount of instruction can teach the indefinable "something" that separates the socially acceptable from the hopelessly beyond redemption. The satire targets American social pretension and the futility of trying to purchase or learn one's way into genuine respectability. The advertisements include **B.V.D. underwear** (emphasizing the Red Woven Label as a quality guarantee), **Cascade Pure Whisky**, and **"Eat and Grow Thin"** diet advice. The final item, "Poisoning the Blood," is satirical commentary on a Paris medical development: Dr. Weinberg's serum injected poison into blood to prevent blood poisoning—the irony being that fighting poison with poison may leave the patient "dead or alive."
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Without Without fact Thackeray’s high art would have had no excuse in painting him. Our ambitions lie all in one direc- tion—to be the equal and superior to our neighbor in social matters; to live in a better house; to drive in a more luxurious equipage; to set above him the standard of manners, Where there is to-day so much “efficiency”, is it not singular that no expert has risen who is prepared in a course, say, of ten les- sons, to equip us in that indefinable something which will enable us to acquire in our particular community the reputation of being “the real thing"? The truth is, that nobody can teach this sort of thing. It is not to be learned. What, for example, is the particular demerit in a man wearing suspenders when he plays golf? There is no harm in a simple pair of sus- penders. Indeed, they serve in many cases an admirable and necessary pur- pose. The man who plays golf in them may be of good moral char- acter; he may be kind to lus wife, and on good terms with his God; yet, when everything has been said in his favor, his utter hopelessness is only the more evident. Such a man is beyond the pale of human endeavor. Nothing can be done for him, His social redeemer has not yet come to earth, ASCADE we PURE WHISK) B Original Baling Has Old Gald Label GEO, A. DICKEL & CO. | Disiliers Nashville, Tenn. +5 "EAT AND GROW THIN: iakles have been successfully tried by thousands. but B.V. D. Underwear. I’m justas particular about | my uwnderclothes as 1 am about my outer clothes. The advice and the Mahdah menusin this book “That’s Your Friend, The B.V.D. Label, 199 Boys! AKE a mental snapshot of that Red Woven | Label, Tom, and you won’t be fooled as I’ve | been once. Now, they can’t sell we anything | “T prefer B. V. D. because it feels so soft and fits so good. Take my word for it, it’s certainly cool and comfortable, washes up like new and gives me no end of wear. I don’t buy, if the B. V. D. Red Woven Label is missing.” On every B.V.D. Undergarment it sewed This Red Woven Label B.V.D. Coat Cut Undershirts and Knee Length Drawers, 0c. 75c., $1.00 and $1.50 the Garment. .V.D. Union Suits (Pat. S.A. 4-30-07) $1.00, $1.50, 2.00, $3.00 and $5.00 the Suit. (trade Mark Ret. U.S. Pat, Of, and Foreign Countria) The B.V.D. Company, New York. London Selling Agency: 66, Aldermanbury, E. C. Poisoning the Blood N interesting advance step in the science of serumology is reported from Paris. Dr. Weinberg, of the Pasteur Institute, has concocted a serum made up of a number of different kinds of bacilli, The idea is to inject this poison into the blood in order to keep wounded persons and others from having blood poisoning. The common sense of the thing ought to be immediately apparent to all. In order to keep the blood from being poisoned all you have to do is to poison the blood. One good poison deserves another. If a maleficent poison enters your system, send right out for some of Dr. Weinberg’s beneficent poison. Squirt into your veins, Presto! The two poisons grapple in deadly combat, and, when they get through fighting, the patient is Na; $10 |. Beh DUTTON Lat, COSI N-GY: cither dead or alive. comicbooks.com