Life, 1915-06-24 · page 12 of 45
Life — June 24, 1915 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes **divorce and marital discord** through multiple angles: **Top section:** Six portrait medallions of famous men (Cain, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Bismarck, William) are juxtaposed with domestic chaos imagery—suggesting even history's greatest figures experienced relationship turmoil. **"Declaration of Domestic Independence":** A mock-serious legal document parodying the U.S. Declaration of Independence, listing marital incompatibilities (strife, quibbling, incompatibility) as grounds for dissolution—treating divorce as a logical, inevitable outcome when marriage fails. **"The Auto Distance":** A brief joke about automobiles and repair shops, likely contrasting domestic repair with mechanical repair as equally challenging. **Bottom illustration:** An angry man confronts a cowering figure—depicting domestic conflict visually. The satire targets early-20th-century marital breakdown while mocking the legal and social pretense surrounding divorce.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime.” A Declaration of Domestic Independence HEN, in the course of domestic events, it becomes necessary for one of a pair of parents to dis- solve the hymencal bands which have connected them with each other and to assume among the widows, widowers, spinsters and bachelors of the earth that separate and isolated state to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god are so abhorrent, a decent respect for the sensation-mongering newspapers requires them to spare no slightest salacious detail of the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all hus- hands and wives are created equal; that they are endowed tor with certain inalienable frailties, among which are strife, quibbling and incompatibility of tempera- ment, and that when a union possesses an overburdening amount of these it is to the interest of everybody con- cerned to alter or abolish it in favor of a condition more conducive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Auto Distance “LIJOW far.” asked the one automobilist of another, as they met at a turn in the road, “is it from here to the next town where there’s a repair shop?” “Eleven hills, three bad bridges, one long stretch of deep sand and two arrests.” AR—(1) A place where one becomes intoxicated by spirituous liquors, (2) Also a place where one be- comes intoxicated by legal technicalities. ester 6B thay Sete oe IN AN EDITORIAL SANCTUM