Life, 1917-06-21 · page 25 of 38
Life — June 21, 1917 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon satirizes the hypothetical scenario of women entering Congress en masse. Titled "Daniel Is Much Lionized While in Babylon," it depicts female representatives as frivolous and incompetent—giggling uncontrollably, unable to speak due to hair-waving appointments, becoming hysterical during roll calls, and prioritizing fashion over legislation. The accompanying "Congressional Notes" mock the idea by listing absurd bills women would supposedly introduce: funding for manicures and hairdressers, penalizing dressmakers for duplicate designs, and weeping over domestic help retention. The satire's point is clear: women lack the serious temperament for legislative work and would transform Congress into a trivial, emotion-driven space. This reflects early-20th-century anti-suffrage and anti-woman-politician sentiment. Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to Congress in 1916, making this cartoon's timing significant—it mocks the prospect of more female representatives following her precedent, portraying them as stereotypically vain and incompetent rather than capable legislators.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
— Oto Cushing — DANIEL IS MUCH LIONIZED WHILE IN BABYLON When Miss Rankin Is One of Many Congressional Notes as They May Have to Be Written When Every State Sends at Least One Woman to the House of Representatives LADYCE BROWN, Congresswoman from Delaware, vas seized with a severe attack of the giggles while speaking on the River and Harbors bill, and was obliged to leave her speech unfinished. The Lady from Kentucky was unable to address the House to-day, as planned, because the wet weather pre- vented her from having her hair waved. Hortense Smith, newly elected member from the Fourteenth Massachusetts district, became hysterical while answering to her name in yesterday's roll-call, and cried for three consecutive hours. Miss Green, the charming representative from Utah, has introduced a bill providing for the expenditure of $25,000 per annum to maintain modistes, manicures and hair-dress- ers for the use of lady members of the House. Florence Brown, Democrat, of Illinois, is engaged in drafting a bill which makes it a penal offense for any dressmaker or ladies’ tailor to make more than one dress from a piece of goods, and for any milliner to duplicate an imported model. Eunice Jones, representing the Eighth New York district, is paired with Representative Myrtle White of Nebraska, both having lost their maids-of-all-work. Clara Gray, of the Second Maine, on being called to order by the Speaker during her speech on a Bill to Pre- vent Cooks from Leaving Employers Without Two Years’ Notice, wept so bitterly that the rules were suspended for the day in her case. A Technical : Inquiry HEN a human being dies after being injected with a serum, how do the doctors discover what caused the death? They do discover it, because they have to prepare death certificates, and because they compile elaborate tables of mortality statistics, but they never “discover” that the serum had a malign influence. To discover that a serum was anything but beneficent would be “ unprofessional” and self-abasing and sacrificial and things like that, which even doctors, being human beings after all, shy at. So long as the same people who inject the serums also compile the statis the true causes of death will be shrouded in mystery. OSSIBLY the fear that the Chautauqua circuits will be abandoned temporarily has something to do with the objections that Mr. Bryan and Mr. La Follette have to war.