Life, 1921-02-10 · page 10 of 42
Life — February 10, 1921 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical article argues that car owners should drive their own vehicles rather than hire chauffeurs. The piece mocks wealthy car owners who employ drivers, suggesting this practice is wasteful and unnecessary. The accompanying illustrations show chauffeurs in various uncomfortable situations—waiting in cold weather, standing idle outside theaters at night—highlighting the expense and inconvenience of maintaining hired drivers. Glass sardonically presents the counterargument: that some owners believe employing a chauffeur elevates their status, even if it costs substantial money. He attacks this pretension, arguing that self-driving is more practical, economical, and independent. The satire targets early 20th-century class consciousness and conspicuous consumption among the wealthy, advocating instead for practical self-reliance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LE EEE » Drive Your Own Car By MONTAGUE GLASS KEFP ON DRIVING YOUR OWN CAR F you are the type of car owner to I whom driving an automobile is just being bathed in one cold perspiration after another, you will hire a chauffeur. Precisely! You haven't nerve enough to run a car, so you imagine you will have nerve enough to run a chauffeur, My ad- vice to you is to keep on driving your own car. Suppose you do run over a few people, the chances are they will be utter strangers to you, and you carry insur- Va (f ARE YOU GOING TO DRAG A HUMAN BEING DOWN TO THE LEVEL OF DRIVING A € AT FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS O8 LESS anyway. Under the ordinary acei cy you are protected against two fatal accidents up to and including $s per accident. By payment of a slightly higher premium, you could even indulge m two accidents at $iacco apiece, but if you insist upon sticking to the lower rate, very little extra care is needed. You will soon find yourself running over the less-than-five-thousand kind almost by in- stinct, as it were. No doubt you shudder at the idea. Well, if you haven't the firmness to in- convenience people who have never been introduced to you, how do you expect you are going to be properly hard-hearted to a chauffeur! After a chauffeur has been driving a man of your tenderness for a few days, you will find it just as easy to run down a regiment of strangers as to keep him hanging around outside in the cold until daybreak, waiting to take you home from a poker game with a twelve- o'clock time limit and just one round of consolations. Anyone who cannot run a car as it ought to be run—I mean without reck- oning the consequences in terms of casu- alties—will be spending a fortune in tax cab fares so as to maintain a chauffeur in the bosom of the chauffeur’s family all day Sundays and legal nvlidays and on week days before 9:00 A. M, and after 6:00 rh M sufficient hardihood to make a chauffeur keep on the job from 7:00 A. M. to 12:00 The only car owner who has midnight or later is the kind of man who regards pedestrians as thank-you-ma'ams, and if he reduces the speed of the car when approaching one, he is a reasonable prec: nly taking m against a broken leaf in the front spring or something like that. Of course, that type of car owner doesn't necd a chauffeur, and if he hired one, and thereafter kept him waiting in front of a theatre a rero night until t fellow was frozen stiff, the only object such a car owner would probably have in trying to revive him would be t fire him on the spot for getting frozen. Search your heart and find out if you are that type of an employer. In other words, if as a driver of your own car you insisted on regarding pedestrians as human beings, with children to be or- phaned, instead of identifying them with the roadbed, you are unfitted to employ a chauffeur. To get the best out of a chauffeur, he must be treated as an tegral part of the chassis and engine. li he has a bilious headache, the correct titude to assume is that the chauffeur i working right, and if the biliousness per- sists, the only thing to do is to send car to the service station and have chauffeur tuned up or have the old taken out and a new one put in. Should this conception of a chauffeur revolt you, however, and you still believe you will be benefited by employing « before doing so 1 implore you to ask yourself: “Can I support a chauffeur in the manner to which he has become ac- customed?” Do you own a car listed at $8,000 f. 0. b. Detroit or even Bridgep Connecticut? Or are you going to di human being down to the level of drivir a car listed at $3,000 or less, transporta- tion charges and U. S. revenue tax in- cluded? I am aware that there are car owners who can sit back bursting with pride in t Never-mind-what Sedan, reduced dur- ing the recent depression of the automo- bile market to $710.35 f. 0. b. almost ar where, while a broken-spirited chauffeur KEPT HIM WAITING IN FRONT OF A THEATER ON A wiaMT, comicbooks.com