Life, 1920-03-18 · page 20 of 54
Life — March 18, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon**: "Honest John Brown" is a fictional candidate satirizing both major political parties ahead of the 1920 election. The joke is that he's the "only landlord" who hasn't raised rents since 1914—an impossibly ideal figure. Life mocks both parties by suggesting that if they could find such a man, either party would win, implying both are equally desperate and out of touch with working people's housing grievances during post-WWI inflation. **Text Section "Millennium of the Future"**: Satirizes government economic policy, likely referencing proposed labor or tax legislation. The dark joke is that the proposed "benefit" is allowing workers to keep only a tiny percentage of earnings as personal property—depicting government as extracting nearly all wages, painting a dystopian future of near-total wage confiscation. **Lower Sections**: Light satirical pieces mocking Southern California's boom-era spiritual crazes (mediums, ouija boards, "psychic belts"), treating occult fads as regional absurdity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| [HONEST JOHN’ BROWN \ ¥ ne ONLY LANDLORD IN 0 WAS NOT PYSED NTS SINCE 1914, A HINT TO EITHER PAR‘ Y IF YOU CAN LOCATE THIS MAN, A 1920 VICTORY 15 ASSURED The Millennium of the Future “T HEAR the government is going to pass a law which will he of real benefit to us.” “What is it?” “Every man will be allowed to retain a small per cent. of his earnings, which he may consider as his own prop- erty.” WHY NOT ILLUMINATED FURNITURE TO SAVE BARKED SHINS? The Doctor's Horse: THANK GOODNESS! WE CAN CO HOME PRETTY SOON ! The Great Psychic Belt Ir there is anything new under the sun Southern Cali- fornia gets it a-bornin’. In “ psychics" and crazes Southern California leads the world. What the “Great Pie Belt” was to the Middle West some years ago the “Great Psychic Belt” is to Los Angeles and thereabout. All the spirits, mediums, swamis, yogis and mahatm of the earth are lodged in the air down there; and the get you if you linger long enough. The ouija bi bourgeois. Everybody is walking along the streets forehead bulging with “glad tidings” of some kind There is a studio in Los Angeles where one may |:ar musical cat notes. Another school teaches the art of levitation ir lessons, There is a school of esoteric punctuation, where the tinuous use of the exclamation point denotes devil-px sion and the colon is a sign of the superman in you. Even the Pacific Ocean thereabouts is not quite human, but has a Los Angelic caper.