Life — June 26, 1919 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis The top cartoon satirizes wealthy homeowners' anxieties about neighborhood character. A visitor questions an unsightly fence, which the homeowner identifies as belonging to John Greenleaf Whittier's home—a famous 19th-century poet known for children's literature and antislavery activism. The joke: the homeowner uses Whittier's cultural prestige to justify tolerating an eyesore, essentially name-dropping to excuse poor aesthetics. "The Coup de Grâce" below mocks a wealthy financier's tax avoidance strategy. He boasts of exempting his income from taxation by claiming everything—food, fuel, magazines, writing supplies—as business expenses. The satire targets wealthy tax-dodging through creative deductions, a common progressive-era complaint about the wealthy manipulating tax law.