Life, 1922-08-31 · page 36 of 36
Life — August 31, 1922 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Prudential Insurance advertisement** using the nursery rhyme "Old Mother Hubbard" as a moral lesson about financial preparedness. **The satire/argument:** The ad reinterprets the children's tale as a cautionary story about lack of foresight. It suggests "Old Father Hubbard" failed to prepare for his family's future by neglecting life insurance—the word "Afterwards" being paramount. His death left the wife, children, and dog facing an empty cupboard (destitution). **The illustration** shows Old Mother Hubbard at her bare storehouse with her hungry dog, visualizing the poverty resulting from her husband's failure to insure himself. **For modern readers:** This is early life-insurance marketing, using familiar folklore to argue that responsible men should purchase policies to protect dependents. The "empty cupboard" is a metaphor for financial ruin. The advertisement conflates prudent financial planning with basic decency and love for one's family—a common insurance-industry rhetorical strategy. The tone treats a nursery rhyme as containing genuine life lessons about mortality and obligation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ld Mother Hubbard What did she do? She visited her storehouse because of an unselfish and wholly worthy desire to feed her dog. And you know what happened. There was nothing on hand. History stops the story right there. As to what became of Old Mother Hubbard and her dog, their disappointments and subsequent difficulties, not a word remains. The dog and his mistress were evidently up against it, but to what further extent is not related. What is the relationship between the Old Mother Hubbard tale and life insurance? The analogy is very obvious, for while we are not absolutely certain, the suspicion exists that there was an Old Father Hubbard, who, however loving and unselfish a hus- band he may have been, had one fatal fault—he forgot about “Afterwards,” that greatest of all words. He did not prepare. He neglected to look ahead, and departed on the long, long trail leaving a wife, a dog, a family and a much depleted cupboard as a prop to windward. The Old Mother Hubbard tale may have been humorously intended for the little folks, but think it over— there’s a real lesson in it for the Prudent. An empty cupboard gets you nowhere in life. The Prudential Stio0dvan Insurance Company of America Incorporated under the laws of the State of New Jersey Forrest F. Dryden, President Home Office, Newark, New Jersey comicbooks.com