Life, 1922-09-28 · page 9 of 36
Life — September 28, 1922 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon depicts two children debating whether to make mud pies. The girl asks; the boy refuses, warning that mud pies will get them "dirty" and "first thing ye know somebody springs a bath on ye." The joke targets early 20th-century sanitation reform movements. Progressive reformers promoted bathing and hygiene as moral imperatives. The boy's fear of bathing reflects children's genuine resistance to the era's frequent enforced washing—which involved heating water and was genuinely uncomfortable. The satire mocks both the reformers' zeal and parental enforcement of cleanliness standards. The humor lies in the child's logic: avoiding mess to escape the consequences (a bath), suggesting reformers' hygiene campaigns created unintended resistance among their targets. The page's right column lists various prohibition signs, likely satirizing overcautious property management or municipal restrictions of the period.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
He: evidence confiscated four id a pie-board. rolling-pins \cting on information given to the police by an angry wife, a mushroom- cellar located in the fashionable Beacon !lill section of Boston was raided dur- « the small hours Tuesday and a zen frequenters of the place, foiled in their efforts to escape, and said to represent some of the oldest and most lecrepit families of the Hub, were tuken into custody. A search of the emises disclosed six porterhouse steaks and Lowell Emerson, owner, un- era bed. Later all were held in $1,000 \il each for appearance Friday before United States Commissioner. Mrs. Rosi Krumbolz, a widow, who es on the third floor rear of a five- story apartment house at 38 Koster Street, Bronx, was given a summons \ednesday by Agents Maxwell, Potter and Rosen to appear before Commis- sioner Hitchcock to answer a charge of niaking doughnuts. 1 Hearing in admiralty proceedings in the action brought by the Government She: Shall we make mud pies? for the condemnation and forfeiture of the schooner Happy Days, captured as a blockade runner off the Jersey coast December last by coast guards, was started before Federal Judge Hazel in the Federal Court Annex yesterday. The action is also for the condemnation and forfeiture of 1,250 cases of plum- pudding and 14,752 cold mutton pies. Evidence was introduced to show the vessel had run more than one cargo of these abominations from the Bahamas to American waters. A well-dressed, middle-aged man, evi- dently suffering from the influence of food and with a bag of cream-puffs in his possession, was picked up overcome in a doorway at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street Tuesday eve. Rushed immediately to St. Vincent's Hospital, where later he died, he con- fessed in a moment of consciousness that he had obtained his supply from a low doggery of a bake-shop on Sixth Avenue, where later the baker was ar- rested and the joint closed. This makes the sixth death as the result of cream- puff poisoning to occur in a week. . W. J.D. > CE, TM No, mud pies gets ye all dirty an’ first thing ye know somebody springs a bath on ye. Signs a Boy Doesn’t Believe In Keep Off the Grass Admittance at Main Entrance Only Private Property—No Trespassing No Swimming Allowed Here Hunting Strictly Prohibited Keep Out—This Means You Wet Paint Do Not Feed the Animals Silence Unaccompanied Children Under Age Not Admitted Bananas—5¢ Each Painless Dentist “THEsE reformers don’t seem to be very logical in their demands.” “No, they apparently want to run the country without rum or reason.” comicbooks.com