Life — December 27, 1923 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Right of Way" - Life Magazine, December 27, 1923 This cartoon satirizes pedestrian traffic safety, a growing concern in 1920s America as automobiles proliferated. The image shows a well-dressed woman whose head has been replaced with a "University of Minnesota" seal/emblem, suggesting she represents institutional authority or academic pretension. She appears to be confronting or yielding to a small dog in the street. The title "The Right of Way" is a legal/traffic term referring to who has priority in traffic situations. The joke seems to criticize how institutions or educated elites handle practical street safety—perhaps suggesting they're so absorbed in formal authority that they fail to notice actual dangers (the dog), or conversely, that pedestrians foolishly assume their status grants them traffic privileges over actual obstacles. The satire targets urban safety absurdity.