Life, 1919-10-16 · page 14 of 36
Life — October 16, 1919 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page critiques **roadside advertising billboards** that were proliferating in early 20th-century America, particularly along highways like New York's Riverside Drive. The article argues such advertisements constitute visual pollution that defaces natural landscapes and indicates public apathy toward environmental degradation. The top cartoon shows a frustrated fisherman complaining there's "nothing to do but fish" with only "two worms on board"—a darkly comic reference to billboards as parasitic "worms" infesting the countryside. The two lower cartoons titled "Going from Bad—to Worse" depict a man discovering successive storefront signs (CLOSED, then a DOPE pharmacy). This sequence illustrates how tawdry commercial signage progressively worsens the urban/rural aesthetic. The satire targets both irresponsible advertisers and an indifferent public failing to oppose landscape desecration.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Noah: Disfiguring the Landscape WONDERFUL this Western civilization of which we thing is Wonderful are the camels while straining wonder- fully at gnats. Wonderful the things it discovers and understands, and even more astonishing its complete lack of are a part it swallows comprehension of other things. For example, roadside advertising, ival of general busi- which, in the r ness since the war, seems to be pick- The people whose money pays for it seem the hei- ing up in volume and atrocity. to have no appreciation of nousness of the defilement that they in- duce. They are reputable people en- gaged in lawful business, and active in promoting it by all permissible means. They seem not to see any- thing culpable in disfiguring the land- scape with huge and hideous signs. It would not occur to them that by so doing they are conniving at a public outrage. They have not progressed far enough in civilization to take that view. And neither has the public. It does not squirm as resentfully as it should at seeing the face of Nature slapped and her beauty violated, All the outdoor advertising ought to How sTuPID OF ME! THERE'S NOTHIN G TO DO BUT FISH, WORMS ON BOARD be either abolished or put under strict regulation. We believe that has been done already in some states, and doubtless it might be done in many others if enough trouble were taken. Such outrages as the billboard alon; side of the viaduct on Riverside Drive in New York, that fits like an ugly scar on the throat of the Hud- AND THERE ARE ONLY TWO son, ought not to be allowed to exist overnight. It is the most impudent thing in New York, an abuse of oppor- tunity so gross as to be interesting as a measure of public patience, or pos- sibly public stupidity. Such defile- ments remind one of the habits of Germans in captured chateaux in the war. They could defile; they liked to “GOING FROM BAD. TO WoRSE” comicbooks.com{ly