Life — November 7, 1918 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Right Man" - A Satire on Hiring and Class This story satirizes early 20th-century American business culture and class anxiety. Henry Kapps, a wealthy businessman, advertises a $25,000 annual salary position—an extraordinarily high wage for the era. Applicants eagerly apply, but when told the salary, each refuses, fearing the job is genuinely too demanding or dangerous to be worth it at any price. The punchline emerges when Kapps encounters a young man he previously fired for incompetence ten years earlier. This man accepts the position without hesitation, unaware of its true nature. The cartoon mocks both employer deception and working-class desperation: the "right man" is simply someone so financially desperate or naive he'll accept exploitative terms without question.