Life, 1919-11-13 · page 17 of 36
Life — November 13, 1919 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon depicts a crowded ship departing America laden with prohibition-era restrictions. Signs reading "NO DANCING," "NO GOLF," "NO THEATERS," "CURFEW AT 6 O'CLOCK," and similar prohibitions cover the vessel—visualizing the escape of pleasures under Prohibition (enacted 1920). The accompanying article discusses broader social upheaval: it references Senate opposition to the League of Nations Treaty, labor strikes, and Bolshevik activity ("the Reds"), invoking biblical imagery to suggest America faces transformative forces beyond its control. The secondary article addresses Jewish representation in newspapers, arguing that publications avoid criticizing Jewish people due to reliance on Jewish-owned dry-goods advertising. The author claims this silence parallels biblical patterns where Jewish authorities disciplined their own wayward community, and suggests modern Jews similarly resist outside criticism. **For modern readers:** This reflects 1920s Prohibition backlash and antisemitic attitudes common in that era's ostensibly "sophisticated" magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CURFEW RINGS AT 6 O'CLOCK THE GREAT EXODUS OF 1925 Europe may have to be drubbed into us before we are good enough to do our work. That makes all that is going on now seem part of a process, and makes the observer feel more or less like Elijah at Horeb when the Lord passed by. A great wind rent the mountains, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. One can readily accept the Senate as the wind that broke the rocks and admit that the Lord is not in it. One may con- jecture, pending developments, that the Reds and the strikers are the earthquake and the fire’and that the Lord is not in them. But when and whence and how will come the still, small voice that brought Elijah to the mouth of the cave with his face in his mantle? When and how are we going to get our mandate if the Treaty fails? The great movements that are pro- ceeding are not going to wait for us. They have started and will go on inexorably. We can lead the pro- cession, or join it, or let it run over us. We have that much choice, but that is all. Mr. Lodge may keep us out of the Treaty, but he cannot keep us out of the world. Our duty will find us, and when a duty finds one it does not taste so good as if he bucks up in good time and goes and picks it off the tree. Overripe duties are no pleasure. Best pick them while they are fresh. Our Peace Treaty duties 823 would have been mucn more palat- able if we had begun on them nine or ten months ago. Be VERY little while there comes to the office of this paper someone with a request to print some infor- mation about Jews, or contradict mis- information that has been printed. the explanation of the scarcely any paper but is willing to print anything about the Chosen People but compli- ments. The daily papers, it is pointed out, live by dry-goods advertising and that is so largely Jewish that a proper attitude towards Jewish defects, mis- demeanors, or misinformations, is in- compatible with the pecuniary welfare of a newspaper that maintains it Once has only to browse along in the Jewish end of the Bible to notice that no people whose documents have come down, needed and received h constant attention as the Jews. From day to day, fram month to month, from reign to reign, they were all the time being yanked out of the by-paths of’sin by their spiritual masters and rushed back into the fold. They were forever going off to set up golden calves or bow the knee to Baal, or dally in the Temple of Rimmon, and their home authorities were forever instituting pogroms to cut off those that were too far gone and save the rest. But in spite of all efforts, five sixths of Israel’s descendants got ay and disappeared in the general mass of us other sinners. All of which is only mentioned to make clear that Jews, like other people, need watching, and admonition at times, and tars on the bean in special cases. Those persons who are called by the nature of their occupation to duties of public admonition and dodge it in the case of Jews, because it is less lucrative to admonish Jews than other people, have a serious neglect to answer for, while the Jewish brethren them selves, by howling with a uni a voice whenever a brother is rated, shut themselves off as far as they can from one of the most wholesome things in life, to wit, seasonable correction comicbooks:com ~