Life, 1918-03-14 · page 19 of 40
Life — March 14, 1918 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a single political cartoon with accompanying satirical text about World War I-era American issues. **The Cartoon:** A manufacturer of army overcoats complains to "Sammy" (Uncle Sam, representing the U.S. government) that he's only made a 200 percent profit on military clothing supplies during a harsh winter. The joke satirizes war profiteering—contractors were making enormous profits supplying the military while soldiers suffered cold. **The Text Below:** Discusses President Wilson's second term priorities, including the need for agricultural workers (many men were in the military), income taxes, and war financing. The final section humorously debates whether the biblical figure Enoch descended from Cain, then absurdly suggests that since Lamech (Enoch's descendant) was a murderer, modern Germans—presumably implying they're descendants of Lamech—are inherently warlike. This is obviously tongue-in-cheek ethnic stereotyping used for satirical effect against Germany.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Memneecaracaien 148 Manufacturer of Army wercoats: SORRY YOU'VE HAD SUCH A COLD WINTER, Sammy: O1, WE ARE ALL RIGHT; BUT SORRY YOU MADE ONLY TWO HUNDRED PER CENT. PROFIT ON THE CLOTHES VOU SENT Us. in task of the first year of Mr. One cannot say the m: Wilson's second te that it has been done yet, but it has got to the point where it moves with method and power, and we can begin it really working. Presently we ctive parts of it, Everybody to se shall all be conscious, as many of us are already. belongs to it, and not merely: as con- tributing members, but as actual fur- therers of its activities and partici- pants in what it does. Spring is prevalent in the south and marching in this direction. The gar- den movement is about to begin, and simultaneously in this latitude all the exertions, now familiar, that attend a new bond issue, complicated this time with preparation for income-tax dis- bursements far beyond any we have ever had. More kinds of money are ex- me out of the American than of wine from a pected to ¢ pocket this y conjurer’s bottle. It will come because 419 it must come, and because the wealth that it must come out of exists and is to be tapped. Getting money seems to be the simplest of all our Agriculture this year will not be so easy. The farmers will be short- handed, and must have help, There are people enough in the country, in- cluding the able-bodied women, to raise the crops, provided they can be connected with the work. We need to raise an agricultural army. SEVERAL respected clergymen have remonstrated the tion, made in this corner of fortnight ago, that Enoch, so much re- spected, who walked with God, was the son of Cain. It seemed so on a curso nd insuffi it examination of the against sugges- Lire a ory 1 was so set down uragement it offered nt and use- Ger- of Scripture, a the en about the possibility of hecause o ful descendants of the mans. Unhappily, the suggestion wash. Cain did have a son Enoch, but he was not the one who “was not, for God took him.” On the contrary. he had a city named after present locs not descendants were actively eng One of them, Lamech, slew f his the business. man, repeating the offense great-great-grandfather, and father of Jubal the musician and Tubal- ain. the iron-worker. The Enoch, father of Methuselah, who was so highly regarded, was the descendant not of Cain, but of Adam's later son, Seth, There is no r was m, therefore, for op= timism about the future Germans based on the relation of the good Enoch to Cain, The su gathered from Lamech, that Mood with n estion the family homicide rv in may he record of the and handiness in metals, is only a suggestion, after all Lamech may have been a German, but there is no proof of it, and the fact that his misconduct worried him argues against it, comicbooks.com