Life, 1923-01-11 · page 25 of 36
Life — January 11, 1923 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humorous story mocks Prohibition-era rural life. A young West Virginian, seeking chicken-farming profits, complains to a neighbor that his hens won't lay eggs. The neighbor suggests feeding them "moonshine" (illegally distilled whiskey)—a joke implying bootleg alcohol was more readily available than proper chicken feed in rural areas during Prohibition. The punchline reveals the scheme backfired: the hens do lay fine, but the boy's father has become addicted to drinking the eggs, presumably because they absorbed the moonshine. The four illustrated dog pairs at top appear unrelated—a standard decorative element quoting Robert Burns' poem "Comin' Through the Rye." The satire targets rural Prohibition realities: illegal liquor's ubiquity and the social damage it caused.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Gin a body meet a body _—_ Gin a body kiss a body Comin’ through the rye, Need a body cry?” It Didn’t Do Any Good N earnest young West Virginian, who had been A few days later the neighbor happened to be passing the farmhouse where the boy lived, and stopped to ask misled by the stories of profits to be made from chicken raising, complained sorrowfully to a neighbor him how the experiment was working. “The hens are layin’ fine,” the boy told him, as gloom- that his hens wouldn’t lay. “Feed them moonshine,” suggested his friend. ily as ever. “But paw has took to suckin’ the eggs.” comicbooks.com