Life, 1920-04-08 · page 8 of 44
Life — April 8, 1920 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon titled "Nothing Doing" depicts two men holding protest signs confronting a group of onlookers near a body of water with mountains. The signs appear to reference current political debates (text is too small to read clearly). The accompanying article "Notes on Current Noises" discusses disputes within the New Republic magazine's editorial board regarding Hoover administration policies, specifically about the Plumb Plan and Peace Treaty. It also addresses Cardinal O'Connell's statements about male authority in households, with contributors Frank Crane and others offering satirical counter-arguments. The cartoon likely visualizes the frustration of activists or reformers being ignored by the public—"nothing doing" suggesting their message isn't gaining traction—while the text satirizes various contemporary political and social controversies of the post-WWI era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ NOTHING DOING” Notes on Curent Noises Y a letter printed in the New Republic of March 3rd, Bro. Charles Merz disassociates himself from the policy of that paper in so far as it is defined hy the Hoover editorials of January 2ist and February 4th. Bro. Merz deposes that he saw neither of these editorials before they were published, because of absence from town. It is implied that he might have seen them if he had been on deck, and that implication is sup- ported by the fact that his name is on the published list of the members of the NV. K.’s editorial soviet. That is all right. Bro. Merz is excused. He isn’t sure that Hoover is right on the Plumb plan, the sedition bill and the Peace Treaty, Awful thought! Bro. Hoover! But, after all, why be so meticulous? Must Hoover be right about everything! Come across, eee Cardinal O'Connell, rushing in where common prudence fears to tread, has been saying that man is the head of the house, and should assert his proper authority in it. The papers quote him as thinking that men are getting soft and women hard, and as urging male Catholics in Boston to have more domestic pep. Who but a bachelor, guaranteed the protection of that state, would venture on family advice on so large a scale! Of course the ideal home is the one in which the man exerts “his proper authority.” But what is his proper authority? The woman, who is the pulse of the machine, has also a proper authority and an obligation to exert it The first thing a beginning husband has to do is to dis- cover where his wife’s proper authority leaves off and his begins. And does the Cardinal realize, when he thinks he sees men getting soft, that the great reason for preferring men for bosses in the family is that they are so much gentler and easier than women? Man's great instruction, balance and discipline, is woman. Man's fitness to be boss is the fruit of suffering ; of considering, hour by hour and day by day, how to contrive that there shall be pe: and 4 food in his dwelling, and that his wife shall be kind to him. for the mildest person available who has the necessary punch; also for the Where a boss is necessary, the choi person who will be most bored hy bossing, and will reduce it to its least. In domestic life that person is usually the man, Frank Crane says: In the canticle of the ass you hear the soul utter- ance of all galley slaves, of all them that lie in prisons, of wretched life-flames sputtering out in stinking sweat shops. Here is the cry of them that built the pyramids under the taskmaster's lash, the ant swarm. that erected the Parthenon and the Cathedrals and laid out the gardens of Hadrian's villa. Gosh! Does Bro. Frank suppose the cathedrals and the comicbooks.com