Life, 1916-11-02 · page 33 of 46
Life — November 2, 1916 — page 33: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **tobacco advertisement**, not political satire. It appears in *Life* magazine (page 775) promoting Velvet brand smoking tobacco. The ad features two men—likely representing aging friends or companions—examining photographs together while smoking. The imagery suggests nostalgia and the comfort of long friendship. The advertisement's central claim is that Velvet tobacco improves with age: tobacco aged two years in wooden barrels becomes "richer, smoother, milder" through a natural mellowing process. The copy argues this expensive aging method justifies the product's cost. The quote at top, attributed to "Velvet Joe," uses colloquial language to connect tobacco with timeless comforts: close friendships, comfortable shoes, and mellow flavor. This represents early-to-mid 20th-century advertising before health warnings were required, explicitly marketing tobacco's supposed quality and the virtue of patience in production.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OME folks can’t find any comfort in the flight of time, an’ yet — nothin’ else makes friends so close, shoes so comfortable, or tobacco patoer “50 mellow. lied from addressed e date of HAT VELVET which you smoke today left the fields of Old Kentucky two years and more ago. Two years it mellowed in wooden hogsheads, becoming richer, smoother, milder. This is Nature’s method of making good tobacco better. It is an expensive method, but we 10¢ Tins Sc Metablined Bags One Pound Glass Humidors With New Ash Tray Top believe you will agree with us that the result justifies the cost. By comparison, and by all tests, Velvet is the best smoking tobacco made.