Life, 1915-09-16 · page 9 of 48
Life — September 16, 1915 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Main Cartoon** depicts a conversation between a mother and sailor about marriage prospects. The mother asks if he can provide luxuries for her daughter; the sailor boasts he can offer "town and country houses, motor cars, a string of polo ponies and dancing lessons" plus "a divorce and alimony within two years." This satirizes early 20th-century marriage instability among the wealthy—specifically the ease and prevalence of divorce, which was becoming more socially acceptable but remained scandalous. The joke mocks both the sailor's cynical assumptions and the mother's mercenary focus on material goods. **The text sections** address unrelated topics: cabinet communications delays, labor hours debates, and German suicide rates. These appear to be separate satirical commentary pieces typical of Life's format.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Mother: “LIFE: ENJOYED BY THE MARRIED WOMEN OF HER SET? R TOWN AND COUNTRY HOUSES, MOTOR CARS, A STRING OF POLO PONIES AND DANCING LESSONS AT ONCE, AND A DIVORCE AND ALIMONY WITHIN TWO YEARS, Suitor: 1 CAN GIVE ¥ The Psychological Moment THE celebrated English statesman who had just been elected a mem- ber of the coalition cabinet called his head secretary and said: “Have orders for enough ammuni- tion to last three or four weeks, to be delivered, barring accidents, in three or four years, been given?” “They have.” “ Have the usual pleasing and digni- fied appeals to our sturdy English laboring men to cut down on their gin and seriously consider the advisability of working a few hours a day been issued?” “Yes, your honor.” “Have the usual daily reports been issued, saying that our army of three million men will positively begin a wonderful campaign in a couple of months or so?” “Yes, sir.” “Then you might issue our semi- weekly statement, which I will arrange to have go past the censor, that England has at last waked up.” HE poor get nothing from the rich but what they pay for. That is why the rich are rich. ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN GIVE MY DAUGHTER ALL THE LUXURIES AND PRIVILEGES Suiciding OME light on Germany's recent behavior may be thrown by a study of the suicide tables for the past few years. Berlin shows a rate three times that of London, a half more than New York and a fourth more than Paris. Life is apparently so com- plete in Berlin that the happy inhabi- tants get through with it quickly, and now the entire nation has become so satisfied with its career that it wants to put an end to it in the same way. As the individual is bent the nation’s in- clined. comicbooks.com