Life — September 26, 1918 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page is **primarily an advertisement**, not a cartoon. It promotes Federal Double Cable Base Tires manufactured by The Federal Rubber Company of Illinois. The ad uses humorous language to pitch tire durability, asking rhetorically whether tires commit "suicide" through poor construction. It contrasts tires that fail prematurely with Federal's exclusive "Double Cable Base" design, which supposedly prevents common tire failures like rim cuts and blowouts. The visual shows cross-sections of three tire designs and a close-up of the double cable base feature. The ad's tongue-in-cheek tone—personifying tire failure as self-destruction—was typical early-20th-century advertising copy meant to entertain while selling. This reflects an era when tire reliability was a genuine consumer concern for early automobiles.