Life, 1916-06-08 · page 22 of 46
Life — June 8, 1916 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon depicts three military/political figures in an ornate vehicle labeled "PRESIDENT, VICE-PRESIDENT" with "HENRY FORD, WOODROW WILSON" visible on the side. They sail under flags reading "PEACE OUR HONOR" and "OUT OF THE TRENCHES ELECTION DAY"—referencing Wilson's 1916 re-election campaign slogan promising to keep America out of World War I. The satire mocks this pledge as hollow: the vehicle is comically oversized and unstable, suggesting the candidates' peace promises are unsustainable. The military dress of the figures undercuts their pacifist rhetoric. Below, the article "Perfectly Comfortable" sarcastically critiques a Brooklyn Eagle writer who defended child labor in canneries as acceptable since poor children are "accustomed" to hard work. Life's editors use devastating irony—if discomfort is normalized, why not celebrate prisoners' and tuberculosis patients' suffering too? The piece attacks indifference to exploitative labor conditions masked as social realism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
——— —~ Peg Zee HONOR LA vice: Dxeswew si secoae oa OUR CANDIDATES Perfectly Comfortable HILDREN are perfectly comfortable working in can- neries,” says a writer in the Brooklyn Eagle. “ Those who work in the canneries come from a class of people who are accustomed to labor hard, who have nothing, and if their children didn’t work in the canneries they would probably starve to death.” It is wonderful to have a sunny nature such as this writer must possess. Anyone who can look upon children toiling in canneries and find them “perfectly comfortable” can find comfort everywhere. Let him go to the prisons and felicitate our prisoners upon being “perfectly comfort- able” because they are accustomed to it. Let him go to the unsanitary tenements and fclicitate the dwellers therein upon being “ perfectly comfortable.” Let him congratulate the sufferers from tuberculosis upon being “ perfectly com- fortable” because their constitutions are suited to that particular form of disease. Who could conceive of a simpler method of quieting all social unrest? Fifty ! IFTY to-day! And suddenly I saw my years as a series of pyramidal gray heaps, Tiny ashen mounds lying in the golden receiver of the Past. What god has used my soul as a cigar? Benjamin De Casseres comicbooks.com