Life — August 19, 1915 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "A Self-Starter" - Analysis This page from *Life* magazine contains an article about short-story writing by E.S. Martin, accompanied by a cartoon illustration titled "A Self-Starter." The cartoon depicts a chaotic street scene: a car has struck a pedestrian near a drugstore, with the victim apparently propelled upward by the impact. The humor relies on the visual pun of "self-starter"—referencing both the automobile's mechanical self-starting feature (newly common in the 1920s) and the injured man's involuntary, violent propulsion from the car's collision. The joke is darkly satirical: the accident victims have become "self-starters" through violent impact rather than intention—a commentary on the automobile age's casual brutality and the era's emerging traffic hazards in urban America.