Life, 1917-01-04 · page 30 of 38
Life — January 4, 1917 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine combines social satire with period humor: **Top Section ("Psychology of Salvation")**: Benjamin De Casseres satirizes religious revival tactics—manipulating crowds by offering false promises of an idealized "Elsewhere" rather than addressing present reality. It critiques evangelical methodology as escapist marketing. **Middle Comic**: A boy asks a pharmacy clerk for castor oil (a common laxative) with soda flavoring. The joke plays on the boy's attempt to make medicine palatable—he'll take the soda now but the unpleasant castor oil later, reflecting period attitudes about delayed gratification and childhood obedience. **Main Article ("When a Woman Wants Anything")**: The text argues women are psychologically "simpler" than men because their character and ability are unified, making them single-mindedly effective at obtaining what they want. Though intended as compliment to female determination, it reflects early-20th-century pseudopsychological gender stereotypes. **Bottom Puzzle**: A cartoon asks readers to identify what a woman is discussing—likely a visual riddle typical of the magazine's entertainment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Psychology of Salvation G a crowd. Find out what it wants in a world that doesn’t exist. Use adjectives galore and short de- clarative sentences a-plenty. Abuse the world you live in. Tickle the palate of the imagination with the goody-goodies to be had Somewhere Else. Collect. Benjamin De Casseres, v onvenier Separate levelopm MALL BOY: I want to take some castor oil and soda. Cterk: Flavor? WHEN THE PRODIGAL RETURN “Vanilla. I'll take the soda here OPIGAL RETURNS and the castor oil when I get home, ivilization: NOTHING DOING. NO FATTED CALF FoR YoU please.” When a Woman Wants Anything HE main difference between men and women is no- where so marked as it is in the distinction between character and ability. A man’s ability is entirely separate from his character. A man may have genius and no character at all. He may have small abilities and large character. In a man the two things appear to be entirely independent of one another. But a woman's character is determined by her abilit; and her ability is determined by her character. In reality, therefore, women are-much more simple than men, al- though they do not appear to be so. Women are more complicated outwardly than men. They offer more super- ficial variety. But closer observation and association among them tend to make them more alike. Men, on the other hand, grow more complicated as you come to know them better. That is because their abilities and characters being unrelated and the proportionate measure of each subject to variations, new combinations are constantly being pre- sented. The various things which go to make up the motive power of a woman, on the other hand, are more closely related. Women, therefore, concentrate more than men although they do not seem to do so, the process being unconscious. That explains why, if a woman wants a thing and a man doesn’t want her to have it, she always gets it. When a man wants a thing he plans to get it just as much as he can through the orderly processes of his mind and will. When a woman wants a thing she makes no plan at all—but she gets it much more often than the man because everything in her whole make-up—conscious and uncon- Now YOU SEE! I TOLD YOU THEYD BE SOLD OUT scious—is working for it. If you want to see conservation of energy and the per- fection of efficiency, watch the working of that perfectly co-ordinated machine—a woman—getting a thing from a man that she wants. A Corliss engine, in comparison, is PUZZLE PICTURE a soap-box on wheels. TL Mi WHAT IS IT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT? comichooks}