Life, 1923-05-24 · page 35 of 42
Life — May 24, 1923 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not a cartoon or satire**, but rather a **straightforward product advertisement** for Royal Cords tires, manufactured by United States Rubber Company. The page appears in *Life* magazine (circa 1923, based on the date reference) and promotes tires through reasoned persuasion rather than extravagant claims. The ad's central argument is that Royal Cords succeed through reputation built on quality and "personal responsibility"—not through advertised mileage claims or impulse buying. The image shows a large tire with text promising that "one million new users will say this year: 'Royal Cords!'" **For modern readers**: This reflects 1920s consumer marketing strategy emphasizing trust, word-of-mouth reputation, and understated product claims—a stark contrast to today's aggressive advertising with quantified performance metrics. The appeal to "growing understanding among men" assumes a male car-owning audience typical of that era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
If this happens to be the year you come over to Royal Cords ‘HERE'S not much difference between the way a man buys his first U.S. Royal Cord and the way he buys any other tire. But there comes atime a little later when he thinks back to see how he came to ask for a Royal Cord. And why he didn’t do it sooner. * * If 1923 happens to be the year you come over to Royal Cords you are likely to notice this— You didn’t buy Royal Cords on the strength of any advertised extravagant mileages. The makers of Royal Cords believe in letting each tire user make his own com- parisons on his own car. That provides every man with the facts in the form most useful to him. You didn’t buy Royal Cords on an impulse. The conviction that the Royal Cord is a good tire had been growing with you for some time. You didn’t buy Royal Cords merely because they are the product of the largest rubber organi- zation in the world. More than anything else, it has been the simple, understandable policies of the Royal Cord people that have made the Royal Cord seem a tire of personal responsibility. * * * It has been the growing understanding among men that Royal Cord value conscientiously out-tops all other tire values today. United States Tires are Good Tires 1823, united States Rudder Company, New York comicbooks.com