Life — January 29, 1920 — page 15: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

**Upper Section - "At Any Afternoon Tea":** This photograph shows women at a social gathering, with a caption listing complaints: unpaid wages, a maid's six-week absence, refusal to cook, demands for higher pay, inability to find servants, and domestic staff leaving for hotels. The satire targets upper-class women's frustration with a domestic labor shortage—likely post-WWI, when working-class women had better employment options and refused exploitative conditions. **Lower Section - "A Way to Get Even":** A brief dialogue titled "Junior Warden" shows a clergyman suggesting the church could afford to pay a junior warden's requested fifteen-thousand-dollar salary by jamming clerical profits into advertising. The cartoon satirizes both clergy greed and the absurdity of institutional financial priorities during economic hardship. Both pieces mock class tensions and financial hypocrisy.