Life, 1915-10-14 · page 28 of 44
Life — October 14, 1915 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Cartoon: "A New Financial Worry"** The large illustration depicts bankers being overwhelmed by cascading money—coins and bills pouring down upon them. The satire mocks bankers' perpetual complaints: they worry money circulates too fast or too slow, concentrates in wrong regions, or people hoard/spend excessively. Now they're distressed by "undigested affluence"—too much money accumulating in banks, giving financial managers confusing excess lending power. The cartoon's irony is sharp: it ridicules bankers for complaining about *having too much money*, treating this as a genuine hardship worthy of sympathy. **Secondary Content:** "The Skeleton in Armor" shows a woman being dressed, accompanying a humorous "Progress" piece about a man's changing assessment of a woman's beauty over ten days—from "most beautiful" to "at times she is beautiful"—suggesting disillusionment or shifting romantic perception. The page satirizes both financial anxiety and human nature through visual and textual humor typical of Life's social commentary.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
712 A New Financial Worry T seems as if something were always happening to keep our poor bankers in hot water. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. Either the money circulates too rapidly or else not rapidly enough, or else it gravitates toward the in- terior when it ought to be gravitating toward the coast, or else people are boarding too much of it or else they are spending too much of it. The lat- est is that they are worrying because the country is suffering from undi- gested affluence. According to the Su financial writer: They are worrying about the way in which money is accumulating in the country, not only in the hands of the people, but more especially over the way in which funds are piling up in the banks and endowing the managers of financial institutions with a superfluity of lending power which bewilders even the most stolid of practical financiers. It is indeed distressing, and we deeply sympathize with the country and with the bankers and with the people and with everybody everywhere who has an excess of funds and a super- fluity of lending power. Above all, we sympathize profoundly with those prac- tical financiers whose stolidity seems to be imperiled by this sudden rush of cash to the exchequer. Guide: MERE! UNTIE THE ROPE FKOM YOUR WAIST AND PASS IT AROUND THE ROCK TWICE AND TIE WITH A CLOVE HITCH. Quick! Progress . Seventh: She has beauty. fighth: Beautiful? Well—yes. Ninth: 1 shouldn't’ say she is beautiful, but there are times when she The second day: She is one of the #§ $00d-looking. most beautiful girls I have ever seen. Tenth: For the past ten days I have Third: She is certainly a beautiful been trying to find out whether she has girl. any brains or not. I have decided that fourth: She is beautiful. she has not. And I remember very Fifth: She is rather beautiful. well the first time I met her I thought “THE SKELETON IN ARMOR” Sixth: At times she is beautiful. her beautiful! HE first day he said: She is the most beautiful girl 1 have ever seen. comicbooks.com