Life — March 22, 1917 — page 28: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes early 20th-century American wealth and consumption habits. A father reads aloud about a family surviving on $1,000 annually—apparently a modest income. His daughter dismissively responds that such a poor family "probably keep only one motor" (automobile). The satire targets upper-class obliviousness: the daughter cannot fathom extreme poverty because her own reference point is multiple automobiles as a baseline necessity. The joke exposes how disconnected wealthy Americans were from working-class economic reality. The automobile, still a luxury item in this era, represents conspicuous consumption and the vast wealth gap between social classes. The cartoon criticizes both class insensitivity and the automobile-obsessed materialism of the period.