Life, 1916-05-18 · page 15 of 48
Life — May 18, 1916 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes the U.S. Parcels Post system, likely from the early 1900s when this service was new. The illustration shows a postal worker overwhelmed by an enormous pile of parcels, packages, and mail in chaotic disarray around his desk. The joke appears to target the inefficiency or chaos of the newly-established Parcels Post—the worker is literally buried under the volume of packages. "Spring" suggests seasonal increase in mail volume, but the cartoon implies the system itself is fundamentally unmanageable. The accompanying text discusses marriage as a commercial transaction, unrelated to the cartoon's visual humor about postal system mismanagement.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
i i SPRING IN THE PARCELS POST DEPARTMENT the beginning. Then the priests got hold of it, and as usual, pushed it into the ground. They saw plainly that just as the doctors grabbed the vaccination idea at three dollars a treatment, if they could get people into the habit of marrying and obtain as a fee all the way from five dollars up, it would be a source of regular income. That’s the way marriage started. At its base it is purely a commercial idea. There has been some competition from the justices of the peace, but these gentle- men don’t get up early enough. You can ring the bell of any clergyman at any hour of the night and get married for five dollars. In certain parts of Jersey it is only a dollar. Nobody really wants to get married any more. It is what the scientists call a “sport” idea. It’s a survival of a past age. We do it because we don't stop to think. Consider all the married men with a sense of humor (thank God that still remains!) who are now almost laughing themselves to death to think what they did! When children lived at home instead of passing their early years in clinics, hospitals, schools and camps, it was all very well. But we should remember that this is the abbreviated age—abbreviated morals, abbreviated thoughts and abbreviated women. Marriage is a back number. It ought to be abolished. Thomas L. Masson. With Magnified Vision, Too WHEN people make spectacles of themselves, other people see through them, 939 Ballade of Golf Scores I LIVE again each drive and putt, Each brassie shot of weeks ago; “Tf with my mashie I had cut Enough, I had not whaled it so!” My scores had been much less, I know, If my left arm I had kept stiff— Ah, what a wondrous game I'd show If I might only score each “If.” My iron shots were splendid—but I gripped the club as 'twere a hoe; Then, Wilson-like, I said: “ Tut-tut!” And petulantly tapped my toe. Some holes I played with joy aglow, But others only served to miff— There'd be no retrospective woe 1f I might only score each “If.” What time I've glanced on ience or hut, Or wildly sliced balls to and fro, Or seen them drop into a rut And fight me as a trenched-in foe! What time the ball was dead as dough And idly loitered with each biff! A truer light on me 'twould throw If I might only score each “If.” Handicap: Prince, call me “dub!” though, Betimes the best the air will whiff. I claim my scores will all be low If I might only score each “If.” Wilbur D. Nesbit. In golfing, “HOW DO YOU SELL YOUR LIMBURGER CHEESE?” “OH, I DON’T KNOW, MA'AM—I GUESS WE JUST HAVE To GET USED TO IT,” comicbooks.com