Life, 1916-03-23 · page 28 of 52
Life — March 23, 1916 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon satirizes profiteering from the Lusitania tragedy. Two businessmen sit at a table laden with money, discussing how the ship's sinking provided "small profit." One says they'll "do better next time"—darkly joking about future disasters as profit opportunities. The **Lusitania** (a British ocean liner torpedoed by Germany in 1915, killing 128 Americans) was a real event that inflamed American public opinion. The satire targets war profiteers and munitions manufacturers who benefited from international conflict and tragedy. The "Nation-Managers" article proposes extending city-manager government to states and the nation itself—a Progressive Era reform idea treating government as a business needing professional management. The lower cartoon mocks 1920s women smokers, with a mother horrified her daughter enjoys cigarettes—commenting on changing social norms around women and smoking.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“RATHER SMALL PROFIT FOR US IN THE LUSITANIA DEAL, SAM.” “H’M !—LUSITANIA? SMALL PROFIT, EH? WELL, NEVER MIND, WE'LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME.” 4 Will it be Taft, or Hughes, or (softly now) Roose- Nation-Managers velt—who will oppose Meh hewn Virginian, I" needs no prophet to foretell the coming triumph of the commission-government of cities. Already three W hundred and fifty of our cities have adopted the plan, and every month sees additions to the list. Recently, indeed, the cities have gone a step farther toward common and thirty-eight of them have hired skilled men as -managers. One of these gets the very respectable sal- ary of $12,500, and all are well paid and earn their money many times over. These city-managers are drawn from any part of the country and the world, wherever men have shown themselves capable of running cities. As to their politics, that does not figure in the matter at all. Now this sensible arrangement is to be extended to states before long, and, sometime, to the nation itself. The best city-managers will be drafted to manage states, and the best state-managers will be hired to manage the nation. We grant that this seems too reasonable ever to be true, but reason will make its way even into politics; give folks time. 'HO can say? The logical candidate against Mr. Wilson would be Mr. Moses Taylor Pyne. Medical Item OUNT that day lost whose low descending sun “GRACE, DEAR, CAN YOU IMAGINE OUR MOTHERS HAVING Views from thy hand no cancer cure begun. BEEN SATISFIED WITH CIGARETTES? comicbooks.com