Life, 1916-10-05 · page 25 of 42
Life — October 5, 1916 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoons:** The top sketch depicts a child misidentifying a fishing line as a sea serpent—a simple joke about misperception. "The Dead Planet" (right image) appears to be dark/fantastical artwork, likely unrelated to the political content. **The Political Content:** The main article satirizes President Wilson's ambiguous political positioning. Multiple prominent figures—Ida Tarbell, Colonel Watterson, and *The New Republic* magazine—praise Wilson as Progressive, yet simultaneously complain he's not purely Progressive or Democratic enough. The satire's point: Wilson successfully appeals to *both* camps by speaking their language without fully committing to either ideology. He's "good-enough" for Progressives and Democrats alike, which the piece presents as either admirable political skill or dishonest fence-sitting, depending on one's view. The final snippet mocks contemporary divorce attitudes, suggesting courts face absurdity when remarriage occurs.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“TAKE IT OFF, QUICK, MOTHER! IT’S A S-SEA S-SERPENT!" Efficiency SE time effectively, Actions collectively, Never disjointed but always connectively ; Making cach minute tell, And all that’s in it swell To full proportions for those who begin it well; Wasting no energies, throwing no strength away, Forming a system that cannot be beat, Running so smoothly that those but a length away Think it perfection and wholly complete. Fit it most carefully, Sometimes e’en darefully, Into cach action, but do it right prayerfully ; Two jerks for getting up, Three more for wetting up, Two score for dressing and appetite whetting up; For wife’s salutation two moves arc sufficient, For eating one’s breakfast, a dozen or two; Twelve strides to the office, if one is efficient, And while thus en route one his breakfast may chew. Work not erratically, But systematically, Preaching time-saving to all thus emphatically: “Half seconds thrown away, Saved ere they’ve flown away, May in a day make a minute if shown a way So, if one’s life is planned out thus sagaciously, And every moment’s squeezed dry of its powers, It can be shortened some years by tenaciously Using said system to save a few hours! Harvey Peake. THE DEAD PLANET As Between Two Goods, Be Both! ISS TARBELL says President Wilson is “the first real Progressive leader this decade has produced.” Colonel Watterson says: “This is true—strictly true. Mr. Wilson is rather a Progressive than a Democrat.’ The New Republic says there are two Wilsons, and one of them talks Progressive and the other Jeffersonian Democrat. Colonel Watterson objects that Mr. Wilson is not Demo- crat enough, while the New Republic. complains that he is not yet an out-and-out Progressive. It says he mixes old language with new, and that his two dialects don’t convey the same sense. This mixup qualifies the New Republic's faith in Mr. Wilson as a national leader, and disposes Marse Henry's Courier-Journal to give him no more than “a qualified support, reserving the right in event of his election—which it confidently expects—to decline re- sponsibility for what may follow.” So it looks as though Mr. Wilson was a good-cnough Progressive for Miss Tarbell and the New Republic, and a good-enough Democrat for Marse Henry until after elec- tion, which betokens an unusually fine command of lan- guage even for him. How shocking! This “MARRIED his former wife? disbelief in the sacred inviolability of divorce will make our courts a farce!”