Life, 1917-08-16 · page 35 of 40
Life — August 16, 1917 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **tire advertisement**, not satire. The page appears in *Life* magazine (page 275) and promotes Marathon Tire & Rubber Co., based in Ohio with a Canadian factory. The ad employs a rhetorical strategy: it opens with the skeptical consumer's self-interested question—"What is there in it for me?"—then answers by emphasizing quality craftsmanship. The key claim is that Marathon tires are **hand-made**, not machine-made, allowing individual adjustment of each component. This was a significant selling point in the early automotive era, suggesting superior quality over mass production. The illustration shows a classical female figure (likely representing quality or victory) holding up a tire, a common advertising trope of the period. The advertisement's tone—addressing reader skepticism directly—reflects early 20th-century marketing that emphasized brand integrity and personal attention, values that would appeal to prosperous automobile owners.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
275 ee = e] & 2 a fey ‘ . . . What is there in it for me? the 7 HAT’S the usual question, isn’t it? | This is a practical, hard-headed ved world. It’s the one question you ought to ask when you buy an auto- ive mobile tire. And there’s just one answer to it. at There’s nothing in it for you that the maker of the tire didn’t put in it. ike Good materials are not everything in a tire; most good tires are made of ike good materials. The way the materials are put together is as vital as the ae quality of the materials. ce. off the Marathon tires are hand-made; a machine can’t do it as we do it; the ma- chine has no intelligence; it does the same thing the same way. With us each tire is a separate piece of construction; each part is separately adjusted to the whole. Each part is as strong as the strongest part. W: look upon Marathon tires as our business representativ are willing to build our reputation on the satisfaction you get in using the a your complaint made to us about a Marathon tire that doesn’t properly represent that spirit, will get as prompt attention as if you complained about the act of an employee of our company’. The Marathon Tire & Rubber Co. Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio Canadian Factory, St. Catharines, Ontario INS | xu | comicbooks.com