Life — March 6, 1924 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Life Magazine War Prize Contest, March 6, 1924 This is a satirical cartoon contest entry titled "Life: Oil Number." The image depicts an underwater scene with a whale spouting oil instead of water, accompanied by text reading "Tea-pot Dome" and the tagline "Thar she blows!!" The cartoon references the **Teapot Dome Scandal**, a major 1920s corruption affair where Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leased federal oil reserves (including Wyoming's Teapot Dome field) to private oil companies in exchange for bribes. The whale-as-oil-geyser is a pun on whale hunting imagery ("thar she blows"), treating the scandal as a resource to be exploited. The satire mocks both the scandal itself and the government's role in facilitating private profit from public resources.