Life, 1919-02-06 · page 14 of 38
Life — February 6, 1919 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Cartoon ("Who Pull the Strings?"):** This political cartoon depicts Russian Bolshevism as a puppet master controlling world events. A figure sits atop a globe manipulating strings attached to a caricatured entertainer below—likely representing how Bolshevik ideology was perceived as secretly influencing Western culture and politics. The text criticizes Cubist art as a dangerous "crystallization" of Futurist ideas supposedly exported by Bolsheviks to destabilize society. **Secondary Cartoon ("An Important Cablegram"):** A caricatured politician or public figure labeled "COMMON PEOPLE" is pulled along by what appears to be corporate or government interests ("FOR WHAT?"). This satirizes how ordinary citizens are manipulated by those in power. Both cartoons express early 20th-century American anxiety about foreign ideological influence and corporate manipulation of public opinion.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
wr ytere METHUSELAHL TELLS THE STORY OF MIS LIFE Who Pull the Strings? OMEBODY has been saying in a news- paper that Russian Bolshevism is the political expression of the Cubist move- ment, Cubist art ht defined (we quote irom memory) as the crystallization re- sulting from the impact of Futurist ideas on actualities, and he told of a resident of Petrograd who saved his house from plunder by inviting in the Bolsheviks to look at his gallery of Cubist pictures For true, these demons seem to be kins- folk. Do people still remember the Cubi: picture-show in the Armory on Lexing- ton Avenue before the war, and the dancing craze, and all that? How queer it was: how very queer, and how unwholesome and ominous! What put all that devilment and those fantastic ideas into people’s heads? What are the powers and forces behind that pull the strings that make the human puppets dance? The world is so obviously queer that it is time we had fuller and more convincing explanations of its peculiarities. Be Truthful, Gentlemen [7s t0 be hoped that many of our department-store friends will have learned enough from the war to adver- n article adver- ied by the state- This is misleading and tricky. It attempts to convey the impression that the article has been reduced. never play this tri advertisements. They give the facts been reduced in price, they say so. Their advertisement reads, “' Price $3.00, former price $3.30.” The buying public is composed largely of women, who are not very gullible. tise their wares honestly. tised, say, at $. The price of is too often accom) ment, “ Value $3.00.” Department-store owners who stand at the top They always tell the truth in their If an article has They read the advertisements closely. But when will the come to recognize the department-store that always tells the truth? An Important Cablegram Witson, Parts hurry home and look after the railroads. Tur American Prorit FOR WHAT?