Life — November 25, 1920 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "How We Saved Our Little Home" This satirical piece mocks a couple's scheme to make money through pearl farming. The accompanying cartoon shows a woman ("Annabelle Fyfe") who "would lead her own life"—she's depicted cutting her hair short and wearing knee-baring clothes, embodying the "rebellious" flapper aesthetic of the 1920s. The satire targets the get-rich-quick mentality: the couple raises oysters for pearls to pay their mounting rent. The accompanying budget breakdown reveals the actual profits are minimal (net $17,000,000 appears to be a joke about inflated claims), and they're reduced to humiliating work—selling pearls to jewelers, using bathwater for oyster farming—just to stay afloat. The cartoon ridicules both the impractical business scheme and the woman's liberated pretensions.