Life, 1921-08-25 · page 15 of 34
Life — August 25, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical page mocks a Navy morale committee despite Secretary Denby's disapproval. The cartoons depict various absurd scenarios: **Top panels**: The Winpottes' plan to summer at Bar Harbor was rejected, though the committee approved alternate locations (Pasadena, Banff). The committee recommends safety catches on scarfpins as "unfair restraint of trade." **Middle panels**: Show committee deliberations over department store issues, with a figure apparently demoted from a management position. **Bottom panel**: A theater audience scenario where Miss Tottie Babette allegedly "doesn't stop singing" during performances, with the house remaining full for customary three-minute intervals. The satire targets bureaucratic absurdity—committees addressing trivial social complaints while missing substantive problems. The exaggerated situations mock both the committee system and upper-class concerns.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
August 25 The Morale Committee Even Though Secretary Denby Does Not Approve of the Morale Com- mittee for the Navy, We Feel That Ashore the Committee System Is Exactly What This Country Needs. if The committee system will prove of tremendous benefit in bringing the problems and aspirations of bandits, burglars and bootleggers before the public. Willie the Weasel is showing the com- mittee of the Affiliated Pickpockets that the practice of wearing safety catches on scarf-pins is an unfair restraint of trade The Winpotters, from a serious blunder, had proposed to summer as usual at their Bar Harbor estate, which would have been thoroughly distasteful to their ser- vants. The committee, however, promptly vetoed the plan, and submitted through its chairman a list of places (Pasadena, first choice; Banff, second) that would prove acceptable. Thus everyone, except the Winpotters, was satisfied After all, the great question to be settled by the morale committees of department stores is, Floorwalkers. Is there any wonder, for in- stance, that the committee of the Notions and Small Ware counters should have gone into executive session when they saw what the management had given them in the place of Mr. Twirple (see inset), when that gen- tleman was demoted to the bargain basement? Hitherto a theatre audience has had to sit helpless before whatever enter- tainment the management chose to provide, but here we picture Mr. Wimbledon Briggs reporting that it is the sense of the committee that if Miss Tottie Babette doesn’t stop singing off the key, the house will empty itself in the customary three minutes comicbooks.com