Life, 1922-12-14 · page 36 of 36
Life — December 14, 1922 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Prudential Insurance advertisement disguised as satire**. The page uses the ancient Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus as an extended metaphor for life insurance planning. The text compares Lycurgus's requirement that Spartan husbands maintain well-stocked storehouses for their widows to modern life insurance. The joke: ancient Sparta achieved widow protection through forced savings; modern America achieves it through insurance policies. The advertisement's final tagline—"If every wife knew what every widow knows, every husband would be insured"—implies that widows who faced financial hardship wish their husbands had purchased life insurance. The circular portrait shows Lycurgus in classical style; flanking scenes depict Spartans in period dress, visually reinforcing the historical comparison. This appears designed to appeal to husbands' sense of responsibility toward their wives by framing insurance as both ancient wisdom and modern necessity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
YCURGUS, probably the Z world’s first Bolshevist, lived / in Sparta ages ago, and was worshipped after death as a god. Lycurgus set the style for caste equality. Nobles and _ half- nobles did not appeal to him. He provided for common table board and fixed it so that everybody, rich and poor, should gather in the market place for breakfast and dinner. Inci- dentally he decreed that the food eaten should be offered by all hands, and that it should be food, not money with which to secure it. In other words the rich chap had to go into agriculture and raise his share of the provender. This kept the country busy, although Lycurgus “yf, hee ry hy exempted himself from such labor. And another wise arrangement he made was to insist that the first man of the household should either plan ahead to protect his wife or fix it so she would get a second husband when he had died. Cash protection was not what Lycurgus sought. All he wished was that the husband keep a storehouse well filled so the wife would have this to sustain her until she could get her bearings anew. Actually this was insurance against the proverbial rainy day. In these times a well filled store- house is not considered entirely sufficient. The thoughtful and loyal father uses life insurance to provide an estate. The Prudential Insurance Company of America EDWARD D. DUFFIELD, President HOME OFFICE, NEWARK, N. J. IF EVERY WIFE KNEW WHAT EVERY WIDOW KNOWS EVERY HUSBAND WOULD BE INSURED ABIA NN comicbooks.com