Life, 1919-08-21 · page 11 of 40
Life — August 21, 1919 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon:** A domestic dinner scene where a servant offers the host options ("Scotch broth or rye bread, sir?"), satirizing wartime food rationing and scarcity. The joke plays on limited, unappealing meal choices during what appears to be WWI or WWII. **Article "No More Trifling with Life":** Discusses air-mail pilots refusing to fly in dangerous weather conditions. The Post Office Department wanted mail delivered on schedule regardless of danger, but pilots invoked self-preservation rights—a wartime labor dispute about balancing commercial obligations against human safety. **Bottom Cartoon:** A child named Effie refuses spanking, claiming moral superiority. This satirizes how the child has learned to weaponize ethical arguments against parental discipline. The page reflects wartime anxieties about duty, sacrifice, and civilian expectations.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ SCUTCH BROTH OR KYE BREAD, SIR?” No More Trifling with Life S the papers represented it, some of the air-pilots who carry mail went on a strike because the Department expected and ordered them to go out in dangerous weather. The Department wanted its mails to start on schedule time, as mails should, and arrive as nearly on schedule time as possible. One can understand and applaud the aspirations of the Department; also the objections of the air-pilots to taking extra big risks. There is a great law, suspended during the war, which may now again with propriety become operative. It is called self-préservation, and has been known as the first law of nature. In war it was wa ‘able to risk life to any extent to accomplish a military purpose. In peace it is not warrantable so to risk life for a merely commercial end. If the Post Office Department sends men wantonly to their death under conditions known to be dangerous, for a mere commercial purpose, it should be held account- able to the laws that protect human life. CONOMY is a necessity that has been clevated by the impecunious to the rank of a virtue. “YOU OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF, EFFIE. I'VE A GooD MIND TO SPANK you.” “Ip YOU WON'T SPANK ME, MOTHER, I'LL AWFUL ASHAMED,” PROMISE TO BE comicbooks.com