Life — August 12, 1920 — page 19: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a single-panel cartoon satirizing wealth inequality and labor complaints. The scene depicts a working-class family in a modest bedroom—a woman tending to children in bed while a man (appearing to be the father) enters holding a bucket or container, likely returning from work. The caption presents his complaint: "the big stiffs only give us a rotten little six hundred million"—an ironic statement suggesting even massive sums feel inadequate to workers. The satire targets the disconnect between enormous corporate/wealth figures and their perception as insufficient by laborers, likely reflecting Depression-era anxieties about wage disputes, corporate greed, or the disparity between rich industrialists and struggling working families. The cartoonist (signed "Webster") mocks both the absurdity of the complaint and the broader economic inequality of the era.