Life, 1919-06-26 · page 12 of 43
Life — June 26, 1919 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
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.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Visitor: Wio CAUSED THAT UNSIGHTLY FENCE TO GE PUT UP IN THIS BEAUTIFUL NELGHEOK- H, THAT IS THE HOME OF JOHN SWEETSINGER, THE FAMOUS CORTRAYER OF THE POETRY OF “LIFE, AUTHOR OF ‘SONGS OF CHILDHOOD’ AND *PRATTLING VOICES AT TWILIGUT.’ HE IAD THE PENCE BUILT TO KEEP OUT THE NEIGHBORS’ CHILDREN,” The Coup de Grice HE Great Financier rose from his government-purchased swivel chair and looked over his force. “Has every one’s income ‘been taxed?” he asked thundcrously, “ANE” came the chorus. “Has any necessity, luxury, sick-bed sweetmeat, any form of food, gasoline, magazine, hairpin, corkscrew, letter, cradle, coffin, editorial writer, profes- sional humorist or public conveyance h verlooked?” he thundered. None!" came the chorus, “We have taxed everything out of sight!” “ Then put a tax of a thousand dollars a word on all who enter a protest!” HE trouble with Walt Whitman's influence on literature is that he started so many idiots writing free verse. PROGRESS comicbooks.com