Life, 1917-06-28 · page 4 of 39
Life — June 28, 1917 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **subscription advertisement** for Life magazine, using satire to promote readership. The cartoon depicts a fashionable woman juggling life's luxuries—clothes, food, money, tea, coffee, whiskey, tobacco, limousines, relatives, and expensive goods. The visual joke plays on the word "LIFE": the ad argues readers must sacrifice nearly everything *except* LIFE itself (the magazine). The accompanying text suggests subscribing to Life during uncertain times (references to "Congress" and "unrest" suggest post-WWI economic anxiety). It appeals particularly to soldiers on the front who need "a cheerful message from home." The satire mocks conspicuous consumption and social anxieties of the era while paradoxically promoting the magazine as an essential, not a luxury.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
We must give up clothes, food, money, tea, coffee, whiskey, tobacco, limousines, relatives, editions de luxe, Chinese rugs, and in fact, practically all of the necessities, except LIFE But if you have to give up Lire also, we make the following sugges- tion. Begin gradually. Subscribe, say, only for one year. Then at the end of that period you can take counsel with yourself whether you will subscribe for another year or, say, for nine months. But now don't do anything rash. Remember that, even if Congress is a bit slow, and there is now a feeling of unrest, we are actually and inevitably on the edge of the biggest business boom that this country Special has ever experienced. Why? Because it’s the law. A whole nation ft . eed cannot suddenly be thrown into hard labor, with the whole world fad One Det clamoring for its products, without something happening. It doesn’t Bg Foreige take any kind of a political economist to know that. Meanwhile, fot thice “combs. better subscribe for Lire for the boy you know who is going “out there.” To him, Lire is always a cheerful message from home. Thou- sands of soldiers on the western front are now reading Lire every week. Open only to new subscribers; no sub Several sample copies will scriptions renewed at this rate. be sent to any address LIFE, 17 West 31st Street, New York. 94 ikeaccrea cle fen feenty, One Year, $5.00. (Canadian, $5.52; Foreign, $6.04.)