Life, 1921-01-20 · page 22 of 36
Life — January 20, 1921 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This article satirizes the "Reform Element"—Progressive Era activists pushing "blue laws" (strict Sunday regulations banning work and recreation). The cartoonist mocks these reformers as joyless busybodies who want to eliminate all pleasure from American life under the guise of moral purity. The top cartoon shows a stern figure (representing the reform movement) confronting children playing on Sunday, enforcing these restrictions. The text ridicules the "Reformatics" as hypocritical—they claim to protect morality while serving wealthy interests ("the Payroll"). The author references Prohibition ("made the Nation dry") and wartime rationing (Garfield's "heatless Mondays," Hoover's "wheatless Tuesdays"), suggesting reformers use crisis to expand control. Patrick Henry's famous "liberty or death" quote is inverted bitterly: he got death instead. The bottom cartoon about "the Animal Court" appears unrelated, depicting animals as a legal jury—likely another satire on institutional absurdity. Overall, this reflects 1920s backlash against Progressive social engineering and Prohibition.
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-LIFE: WHEN THE SUNDAY BLUE LAWS ARE OPERATING “CUT OUT THAT STUFF ! DON’T YoU KNOW WHAT DAY IT Is? The Sunday Blues AVING bleached a lot of red noses, the Reform Ele- ment now turns to blue laws. They will make Sunday a blank on all the calendars, a vacuum between the Satur- day night bath and the Monday morning shave. eee There are fifty-two Sundays them is on the black list a year and every one of The idea of the Reformatics is to make us Americans a six-day race. They will make Sunday a day of reverent meditation if they have to raise $5,000,000 to do it. A Reformatic is a chap who takes the joy out of life and gets paid for it. He inspects the milk of human kindness and sees only bacteria while the cream is floating by. [le lelieves in law and order. The laws for you and the orders from him. He is for Purity, Perfection and the Payroll. But the greatest of these is the Payroll. The Reformatics are our modern James Boys. They want to hold up the trains on Sundays. They're willing to let Uncle Sam cancel the postage stamps if they can cancel the Sunday mail trains. If the Halo Society ever gets its they'll make Sunday time-tables obscene literature and you'll be buying Sunday newspapers from your favorite bootlegger. On Sunday everything will be quiet, not only along the Potomac, but along the Hudson and the Rio Grande. Even the Green River will be hushed as it flows from source to mouth, Sunday will soon be as pleasant for a Regular Feller as the fourth of March to a Democratic Postmaster. The Antis have made the Nation dry and now they want to make it dull. They have started a bear movement to make Lib- erty look cheaper than Liberty bonds. eee Garfield gave us heatless Mondays and Hoover handed us wheatless Tuesdays. The Lord's Day Lobby starts much earlier in the week and is going to give us lifeless Sundays. The only things that will be legal then are pray- ers and counterfeit coins in the contribution box. The Holy-Polies say so, and what they say goes, with a dull, sickening thud. see Work of all kind is taboo. Any organist caught playing “The Love Nest” for “The Holy City” will be given an octave of years in Sing Sing, with no discount for good behavior. There shall be no laughter on Sunday, not even when the minister cracks his larynx on a slippery metaphor. Coney Island on a Sunday will be between the deep blue sea and the deep blue laws, But lifeless Sunday is made to order for the chap with a Saturday-night hangover. What could be fairer than that silence and stillness should prevail, except for the twitter- ing of the cuckoo clocks, as Sunday wends its way toward nothingness? eee Sweet land of liberty! Patrick Henry asked for liberty or death. He got his second choice—he is now dead. Thousands of others have died for liberty. But there are still 110,000,000 of us left and it looks as if we'll get liberty ouly by going where Patrick Henry went for it. see If the Reform Ticket steals our Sundays, we might as well give them the other six days and call it a week. Then let Columbia jump into the ocean and let the Star-Spangled Banner float at half-mast! Veal R. O'Hara, IN THE ANIMAL COURT THIS IS HOW THR “HIGHLY INTELLIGENT GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY” APPEAR TO THE “LEARNED CO! wo Is) TO MAKE “THE EFFICIENT WITNESS” FEEL THE WAY HE LOOKS, comicbooks.com