Life, 1916-12-28 · page 8 of 41
Life — December 28, 1916 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Illustration: "An Old Man"** This sequence shows five male figures progressing from youth to old age, each pointing outward in identical poses. It's a visual metaphor for life's progression and aging. **Main Article Text** Discusses American saloons as social institutions and argues against prohibition. The author contends that banning alcohol won't work because it contradicts human nature. He suggests reforming saloons instead—improving them and training managers to discriminate between drinks and educate patrons about moderation. **Bottom Cartoon: "I Just Know There's a Woman Under the Bed"** A man in nightclothes holds a candle over a bed labeled "Second Term," appearing to search beneath it. This likely satirizes political anxiety about a president's second term, using domestic paranoia as metaphor for political uncertainty.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
than his to devise means to abate the rum-devil. The American saloon, as conducted, is a ridiculous institution. It has no friends except its patrons, and not all of them are its friends. Everyone admits that rum is one of the greatest nuisances society has to fight, but many of the good drinks as well as most of the bad ones are alco- holic, and to make a clean sweep of all alcoholic drinks by a measure of na- tional prohibition would be to do some- thing that wouldn’t stay done. That would be Puritanism, and Puritanism always fails in the end. It does not adjust itself to human life, and human life will, not long suffer itself to be cramped by it. The saloons can be vastly improved, and probably will be; the rum nuisance can be very much reduced, and ought to be, and probably will be, but Mr. Bryan's function in these desirable reformations will be to scare competent persons into the labor of working them out. He cannot do it himself; he doesn’t know about drinks and cannot discriminate between them. But he may have a good Billy Sunday effect in scaring saloon-keepers and rum- sellers into an ambition to be good, and in stimulating competent advisers to show them how, ELS. M. “AN OLD MAN” UGGESTION for advertisement which is offered fret to the first underwear manufacturer that grabs it: You can lead one of our Non-Scratch- able Undershirts to water, but you can’t make it shrink, “1 JUST KNOW THERE'S A WOMAN UNDER THE BED”