Life, 1923-12-06 · page 71 of 84
Life — December 6, 1923 — page 71: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not satire or a cartoon**, but rather **corporate advertising** for Western Electric Manufacturing Company. The page uses multiple photographs of factory workers performing different manufacturing tasks to showcase the complexity of telephone receiver production. The message celebrates industrial labor and manufacturing precision: even just the outer "case" of a receiver requires many skilled workers, implying the finished product represents hundreds or thousands of person-hours. The central image is an actual telephone receiver, positioned like a trophy. The headline and accompanying text serve as promotional copy emphasizing quality and craftsmanship—a common marketing strategy of the era to build consumer confidence in manufactured goods. This represents **industrial-age boosterism**, presenting factory work as dignified and the modern corporation as impressively organized. There is no satire intended; rather, it's genuine advertising celebrating American manufacturing capability.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE It took all these people to make your telephone receiver case ~right! 'HESE pictures tell a story of the amazing detail that enters into telephone manufacture. If allthese people are needed just to make the outer shell of each receiver, think of the hundreds that are engaged in producing the magnets and coils and diaphragms that go into these shells— the vital parts you do not see. Or take your telephone as a whole, and the men and women whose daily work it repre- sents would number among the thousands, Step by step, from raw material to finished product, your Western Electric telephone is made right. Western Electric comicbooks.com