Life, 1922-08-31 · page 35 of 36
Life — August 31, 1922 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not a cartoon but an advertisement/editorial pitch** from Life magazine's advertising department. It uses Abraham Lincoln as a rhetorical device to promote advertising itself. The piece argues that Lincoln, famously self-educated and hungry for any printed material as a poor frontier boy, would have marveled at modern advertisements. It frames ads as evidence of progress—showing how products and services have made life easier compared to "rough pioneer days." The satire is subtle: by comparing modern conveniences to what pioneers lacked, the piece attempts to make readers appreciate (and thus read and use) advertisements. It's essentially a meta-advertisement defending advertising's social value. **The historical irony a modern reader might miss**: This earnest defense of advertising's role in progress was published during Life's era when magazines genuinely believed in advertising as a democratizing force bringing innovation to ordinary people—before widespread skepticism about consumer culture and manipulative marketing.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
When Lincoln Was A Barefoot Boy— z VERY scrap of printed paper that came to his hands was a treasure trove. He read it eagerly—conning every line—getting every worth while word. What a harvest he could have garnered from a modern publication! And not the least interesting to him would have been the advertisements, with their stories and their pictures of products, appli- ances and services that have smoothed the course of life toa degree unknown and unbelievable in the rough pioneer days. Nowadays new comforts and conveniences slip into our lives almost without our realizing it. We are liable to be rather matter-of-fact about it all. And advertising that has made it simpler to make and distribute profitably innumerable products at reasonable prices, has played a leading part in making our life so eminently easy to live. Read over the advertisements and try to think what the things you see there would have meant to our forefathers. Then you’ll realize what a service and what a convenience advertising is to you. Read it. Make use of it! Gee. Bee. Are. LIFE’S Advertising Manager, Madison Avenue, No. 598, New York B. F. Provandie, Western Manager, Marquette Bldg., 1537, Chicago comicbooks.com