Life, 1918-03-07 · page 8 of 40
Life — March 7, 1918 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1925 Life magazine page satirizes contemporary American social attitudes and behaviors during Prohibition. **"A Citizen"** (top poem by Clinton Scollard) depicts an ordinary middle-class man who owns a corporation, takes small bribes, loves cigars and pleasure, and uses morphine—presented as unremarkable and commonplace. **The 1925 scene below** shows club members openly discussing illegal drugs (cocaine, morphine, hashish) during Prohibition. One member boasts of making private whiskey, another claims opium use, and a visitor describes wrecking his health through drug abuse—all treated casually. The satire criticizes widespread hypocrisy: respectable citizens openly flouted Prohibition laws while society maintained a facade of propriety. The cartoons mock how drug use and illegal alcohol consumption had become normalized among the middle and upper classes, despite official prohibition and moral posturing.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A Citizen E has an aldermanic air In that he owns a “corporation”; The passing parting of his hair Gives him small reason for elation; His shoes, once narrow, now are wide His speech some deem a bit bombastic; And when we walks the street his stride Is hardly what you'd call clastic. It may be said he likes his case, His little dozes after dinner ; And if he’s not a saint, one Assuredly he’s not a sinner. He loves his pleasures, his cigar, His wife, who has become a voter; He loves his children and his car, In which he often goes to motor. He doesn't much believe in “ grace,” And nods a bit o'er Sunday sermons; He seems a trifle commonplace, Yet you should hear him curse the Germans. He has two boys in khaki clad, And though he’s nothing of a scholar, He'll back the land he loves, I'll add, And back her to his final dollar! Clinton Scollard, 1925 (Are We Drifting to This?) CENE: A club, in almost any state. First Mesner (stcalthily taking a small vial out of his pocket Have a little cocaine? Srconp Memner (drowsily): Thanks, old fellow; my wife and I are taking morphine at present. First Memn Well, cocaine is a little easier to get. Tuiro Memark: Ever tried hasheesh? Ortter: No. Tutr> Memner: Great stuff. When prohibition came I looked around for something that would go the limit, and I must say hasheesh does the business. Fourtn Memner: Straight opium for me. Terribly ex- pensive, but pays in the long run. And I believe in being temperate with it, too. I never take more than three hun- dred grains a ; Firth Memper (sighing): I wish I had begun on straight opium. I started with hypodermics; infernal nuisance with so much machinery; but of course I can’t stop it now. Visitor (from the South): Excuse me for saying so, gentlemen, but I never saw such a hopeless lot of wrecks as you chaps are. Now, I live down on my own plantation, make my own whiskey in my own private still, and never drink more than a quart a day. Frente Cuorus of Att tHe Otters: Mollycoddle! O* touch of Prussianism makes the whole world kin. David: 1 WANT TO ENLIST. “NOTHING DOLNG, SONNY, YOU HAVE FLAT FEET.”