Life, 1916-01-13 · page 9 of 44
Life — January 13, 1916 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes high-society life in early 20th-century New York. The top silhouettes illustrate engagement and wedding progression from April through June. **"The Newer Uplift"** mocks Manhattan's hotel rooftops being converted to social spaces rather than practical infrastructure. The accompanying illustration shows fashionable people at a ball, with dialogue joking about wearing the same dress twice—satirizing both wasteful consumption among the wealthy and their pretense of novelty. **"Not Quite"** is a brief social commentary about Pacifists, suggesting they lack sufficient conviction to formally organize (like a patriotic society during wartime), mocking their perceived half-heartedness about their pacifist principles. The page targets upper-class affectation and social hypocrisy through humor about fashion, leisure, and moral consistency.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Newer Uplift OTEL roofs in New York are at last coming into their own. They are now being used as skating rinks. Instead of covering a multitude of sins, they are now also uncovering a multi- tude of shins. Every morning at about MAY EXCEEDING THE SPEED LIMIT nine o'clock, just as the New York sun is rising over the roofs of the fire- escapes, the hotel janitor pries himself loose from his warm eiderdown next to the dynamo and, vaulting lightly to the twentieth floor, gets out the hose and proceeds to lay the ice carpet for the day, skillfully extracting the heat from AT THE BALL She: AND 1 TOLD MOTHER I SIMPLY COUL! A THING TO WEAR, BUT—— N'T COME TO-NIGHT AS I ILADN’T Host: WEett, I'M AWFULLY GLAD YOU CAME JUST THE SAME, the water by means of a smelling-salts bottle full of ammonia. The guests then begin to arrive. Skating as a form of metropolitan amusement appears to have its distinct dvantages. It is good for the sport- ing-goods people, and creates such a demand for almost any kind of food that few will care how many thousands they spend in the rcstaurants after- wards in order to acquire enough solid nourishment to keep body and soul to- gether, But as a permanent adjunct to the effete civilization of Broadway, we doubt its staying power. At its birth it was not attended by the triple fairies—Bad Air, Tobacco Smoke and Booze; and what form of amusement can become permanent in New York without these attendants? 7. 1. Al. Not Quite Post: They say the Pacifists are unashamed. Parker: Perhaps, but no one of them is proud enough of the idea to start a Society for Sons of Pacifists during the American Revolution or the Civil War, SN'T it distressing to think of all the poverty in the world? “I never do; I confine myself ex clusively to thinking of my own.” comicbooks.com