Life — February 2, 1922 — page 25: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This illustration satirizes the "See America First" campaign, a 1910s-1920s push encouraging Americans to vacation domestically rather than abroad. The cartoon depicts a watch factory presented as a tourist attraction, complete with viewing stands, carnival elements (tent, food stall labeled "TESTING"), and crowds of leisure visitors. The satire mocks how industrial manufacturing was being repackaged as entertainment and national pride. Rather than showing actual workers, the image portrays the factory floor as spectacle—families and tourists casually observing precision metalwork as if at an amusement park. The juxtaposition of heavy industrial machinery with carnival atmosphere and well-dressed visitors ridicules both the artificiality of industrial tourism and American boosterism about domestic manufacturing. The "minute hands" reference underscores the tedious, repetitive labor being trivialized as tourist entertainment.