Life — March 30, 1922 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily a W.L. Douglas shoe advertisement, with several satirical articles on the left side addressing taxation and other topics. The main cartoon shows a bootlegger's wife ordering supplies, captioned "The Fitness of Things." The satire references Prohibition-era bootlegging—illegal alcohol production during the alcohol ban. The joke is that the wife casually orders a "green car for eleven-thirty," a coded reference to bootleggers' use of fast cars for transporting illegal liquor. The caption's irony suggests the "fitness" or appropriateness of organized crime becoming normalized in American domestic life. The articles discuss humor taxation and pessimists during what appears to be post-WWI America. A separate cartoon about cartoonists making money indicates the profession's growing commercial success during this period.