Life, 1919-08-21 · page 27 of 40
Life — August 21, 1919 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Section ("What Goeth On at Present"):** Three cartoons satirizing contemporary issues: 1. **Congress cartoon**: A congressman, labeled "benignantly," tells someone burdened with taxes that he'll "try" to remove the soda-water tax—mocking Congress's ineffectual response to taxpayer complaints. 2. **"Love is Blind"**: Two figures on a ladder; likely mocking romantic naïveté or foolish infatuation. 3. **"Proper Punishment"**: References forcing someone to pay inflated "Broadway prices" as punishment—satirizing wartime price gouging or theater profiteering. **"The Sense of Humor" essay**: Humorous commentary on how humor appreciation evolves with age, from infants finding faces funny through old age, when people repeat tired jokes ("chestnuts"). **Bottom cartoon**: An employer offering someone $40/week for a yard job requiring French and Spanish language skills—satirizing either unrealistic job expectations or exploitative hiring practices paying minimal wages for demanding positions. **Context**: References to I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) and Bolsheviks suggest this is WWI or immediate post-war era satire addressing labor disputes, government inefficiency, and economic hardship.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
IT THAT THE TAX ON YOUR SODA WATER IS REMOVED! The Sense of Humor It Develops with the Boy T six months the first glimmer over > the paternal watch. At three the man who makes faces , “mM is really a scream. up & _ nhis sixth yes r he begins to wonder why grown-ups laugh at each other. For the lad of ten there is nothing like a Charlie Chaplin film. “One on the teacher” is the twelve-year-old’s idea. At fifteen he is at a loss to ide whether to mix pepper with father’s tobacco or to let a mouse loose in sister's room. c—-4 He has a practical mind “Say, fellows, here’s a rough one,” says the youth of nineteen. In college he must be at once mildly risqué and sublimely mature, At twenty-five he is simply convulsed by her father’s jokes, It's the man of thirty who wants to tell you what baby said this morning. Bears and lambs are funny as the forties draw near Toward fifty: “The remarks of the last speaker remind me of the story of the Irishman,” The days follow when he relishes what he hears at the midnight roof-garden show. Last stage: the older the chestnut, the sweeter the taste. THE I, W. W. can show the right spirit by writing an open letter to the Bolsheviks advising them to strike for a better government. “Lire? What Goeth On at ‘Present wr % vii Congress (benignantly) : iy’ A SiAMy Love 1s mLtNe THE PROPER PUNISHMENT YOR A ¢ OU KE SO OVERBUKDENED. TLL TRY AND TAIN GENTLEMAN WHO WH Dp JUICE ON US, MAKE HIM D ir BROADWAY PRICES Employer FOR THIS JOB YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW FRENC AND SPANISH, AND TIE PAY IS FIGHTERN DOLLARS A WEEK “LorD, MISTER! f AIN'T GOT NO EDICATION | I'M AFTER Joo IN THE YARDS.” “SEE THE YARD-bOsS. We'LL, START YOU IN AT FokTy.” nN comicbooks.com