Life, 1920-02-05 · page 23 of 52
Life — February 5, 1920 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes Republican Party efforts to crowdsource platform ideas. R. Truxton Beale, a Republican, offered $10,000 in prizes for convention platform suggestions—but restricted entries to people under 25. The cartoon's joke: the age restriction is absurd. Life's caption sarcastically suggests Beale believes older Americans, who've "thought so long" and "worried so much" about the country's problems, are too mentally exhausted to write coherently. Only the young, presumably less worn down by reality, remain competent. The lower dialogue appears unrelated—a brief joke about a woman marrying someone foolishly. The overall satire mocks both the Republican Party's platform-building process and the notion that youth equals better judgment on serious political matters.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MEDALS FOR MEDDLING Limited R. TRUXTON BEALE has offered through the Re- publican National Committee prizes aggregating ten thousand dollars for the best suggestions for a platform for the next Republican Convention. But why does he limit the contestants to those under twenty-five? Perhaps he feels that those over twenty-five, who have thought so long about the fix their country is in, have worried so much about it that they are more or less incompetent to write any kind of a platform. RIGGS: They say Gilday’s wife, at the end of three years, still loves him passionately. Griccs: Well, he would marry her! comicbooks.com