Life — October 30, 1919 — page 15: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This *Life* magazine cartoon satirizes post-World War I inflation and domestic economics. A well-dressed man reads a newspaper while his wife sits nearby, and she asks if he's economizing on household expenses. His response reveals the joke's bitter point: their table costs **twice as much as before the war**, despite supposed belt-tightening. The cartoon mocks the gap between wartime promises of frugality and postwar economic reality. Families were urged to conserve during the war effort, but peacetime brought not relief but increased prices—inflation that made pre-war costs seem impossibly cheap. The satire targets both the husband's false assurances of economy and the broader economic disappointment many Americans faced after 1918.