Life, 1919-09-18 · page 18 of 48
Life — September 18, 1919 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Article & Cartoon ("As Man to Man"):** A satirical proposal that some prominent public figure should wear mismatched shoes and patched trousers to make thrift fashionable during economic hardship (likely post-WWI). This would reduce waste and help citizens afford living expenses. The accompanying cartoon shows a man asking Mr. Brown for apples, illustrating the general economic strain. **Lower Section ("A League"):** Gertrude Stein's experimental free-verse poem about emigration and uncertainty, published alongside a young man's anxious visit to his girlfriend—he worries about heredity ("anything in heredity" caption). The poem's abstract language reflects Modernist style. Life's editorial note links it to President Wilson's League of Nations proposal, suggesting contemporary political preoccupations. **Overall Context:** This page reflects post-WWI America's economic concerns, cultural modernism, and debates over international cooperation and national identity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
496 everybody has several pairs of shoes, with one shoe of each pair in excellent shape and the other shoe in a frightful condition of disruption. Almost every- body has a few old pairs of trousers, with the seat of one pair among the missing, and the right leg of another pair suffering from acute melancholia, and the left leg of another in a hope- less state of senility. What is needed is someone whose standing in the nation is sufficiently prominent to make the wearing of mismated shoes and __ parti-legged trousers a fashionable and highly commendable proceeding. If one could go out on the street wear- ing the good boot out of his old Ilack pair, the undamaged portion of his old tan pair, and trousers whose left leg came from the checked suit that got partly burned when the lamp tipped over and whose right leg came from the blue suit that had the sul- phuric acid spilled on the left leg— if one could do all this, then the high cost of living would receive a kidney punch that would leave it gasping for breath and struggling to stay on its feet. Some public-minded and prominent citizen is earnestly requested to come out in something that will conserve the nation’s usable trouser-legs and solitary shoes. AS MAN TO MAN —T WAS JEST LOOKIN’ FOR YE, MR. BROWN. I WANTED TO ASK YE IF 1 COULD HAVE ONE OF YER APPLES” YOUNG SPARKIN, ABOUT TO VISIT HIS BEST GIRL, BEGINS TO WONDER IF THERE IS ANYTHING IN HEREDITY A League By Gertrude Stein HY don't you visit your brother with a girl he doesn't know? And in the midst of emigration we have wishes to be- tow. We gather that the West is wet and fully ready to flow. And we gather that the East is wet and very ready to say so. We gather that we wonder, and we gather that it is in respect to all of us that we think. Let us stray. Do you want a baby? A round one or a pink or (Miss Gertrude Stein is one of the pioncers of Free Verse. We ly publish her poem as a fit accompaniment to Presi- dent Wilson's elucidation of the League of Nations — ow Lire.) HE only thing that prevents Cupid from laughing in his sleeve is the fact that he hasn't any. comicbooks.com