Life, 1916-11-16 · page 27 of 46
Life — November 16, 1916 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page contains two distinct satirical pieces: **The Cartoon (top):** A visual joke about "Truth" and propriety. A sage confronts a woman claiming to be "Truth," sarcastically noting that Truth traditionally goes around naked—so why is she dressed for church? The humor mocks hypocrisy: people invoke "truth" selectively while adhering to social conventions. **"Extravagance" (essay):** A philosophical defense of spending and excess. The author argues extravagance is relative and often necessary (citing nature as example). The real sin isn't spending money but wasting *time* doing so, which steals from life's genuine pleasures. **"The Limit" (joke):** Dark humor about automobile fatalities. If one family owns a car, a motorist can only kill seven families maximum—implying one family member will be the motorist themselves. It satirizes the period's growing concern about automobile deaths as a modern social problem. The page reflects early 20th-century anxieties about consumer culture, morality, and new technology's dangers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Sag¢: AND SO YOU ARE TRUTH! BUT I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION, MADAM, THAT IT WAS CUSTOMARY WITH YOU—YOU WILL PARDON ME—TO GO ADOUT—ER—IN FACT—NAKED. The Truth: on! 1 po—BUT, coop Gracious, Not TO CHURCH! Extravagance XTRAVAGANCE is a_ relative term usually misapplied. If a man is worth a hundred million, it would not be considered extravagant for him to spend a hundred thousand dollars on goldfish, if he wanted to. If a family of ten people living on one thousand dollars a year should get their pictures taken, that would be ex- travagance, Extravagance, however, is not exact- ly buying something you cannot afford. What you cannot afford now you may later, and the very fact that you have bought it may have been the cause of your future prosperity. Extravagance is an exceeding of the speed limit. But who shall say what this is? One of the chief difficulties in de- fining extravagance is the general as- sumption that it is something wicked. Yet extravagance is often necessary. The sun is extravagant—the greatest heat prodigal. So is nature. So is a river. Rain clouds are horrible exam- ples of extravagance. They pour out all their possessions without regard to what they get in return, and then fade away. How like some people that is, and what a glorious time they have doing it. Think of spending a million rain-drops a minute, knowing it will break you, and not caring! The chief fault of extravagance—whatever it may be—is not so much in the results it brings about, which may be good or bad, as in the time it wastes. It is immoral because it takes away from our capacity for indulging in the real joys of life: It isn’t the money you spend; it is the time you take to spend it that canses the damage. The Limit NICKER: One eight has an automobile. Bocker: Then a motorist can run over only seven families. family out of comicbooks.com