Life, 1924-07-17 · page 13 of 36
Life — July 17, 1924 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon depicts a chaotic "Business Men's Mass Meeting" with caricatured figures shouting "HOORAY!", "WE WANT WINDOSIS", and other exclamations—satirizing corporate enthusiasm and mob mentality among businessmen. The accompanying article criticizes businessmen as sources of propaganda threatening American institutions. The author argues businessmen should be respected public figures but warns against their influence on policy. The lower cartoon mocks Prohibition enforcement, showing officials examining a suspicious "Yukon Old Boy" specimen supposedly made in Newark—a veiled reference to illegal alcohol production during Prohibition. The final dialogue between "Mother" and "Betty" jokes about children's cannibalistic impulses, appearing unrelated to the main political content. Overall, the page satirizes both corporate influence on American democracy and Prohibition-era hypocrisy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HOW WE CHOOSE OUR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES TLEMEN, this meeting is led to protest against a dan- rous tendency in American litera- ture—to take action toward checking an insidious form of Propaganda that threatens to undermine the very foundations of this country through bringing the Business Man down to the level—yes, and even below the level— of college professors and pocts. A few years ago the worst thing they said about the Business Man was that he was tired. That was a benefit to us, for it reflected no discredit and covered a multitude of sins. Now they say the Business Man makes every one else tired. Confusing liberty with license, they proceed to prove it. They follow us to our annual banquets, to our conferences of depart- ment heads, to our Rotary luncheons, and they take our speeches and our advertising copy and make plays and novels out of them. I have no hesita- tion, gentlemen, in denouncing this outrageous conduct as Conspiracy in Contempt of Trade.... If the Injunction is our only weapon, then I say, use the Injunction!... The first step is to rehabilitate the Business Men’s Mass Meeting Business Man in the eyes of the public. Some of you, I know, are in favor of a Constitutional Amendment, but let us not proceed with rash haste. What we should do first is find a Big Man to stand before the public for us and what we represent. A Big Man—like Judge Landis or—I forget the names, but you “so YOU BAGGED THIS SPECIMEN IN THE YUKON, OLD BOY? I SUPPOSE THIS MADE-IN-NEWARK PLATE IS JUST A PRANK, EH?” know whom I mean. We should, of course, pay such a man $100,000 a year, but it would be understood that his principal motive in accepting the task was Civic Duty... Let us not rest until once more the Business Man is at least respected, however tired he may be. Let us make the highways and byways of this great land safe for Lodge Emblems, Let us look forward to the day when every newspaper editor will periodically state that what this country needs is a Busi- ness Men's Administration!... Stoddard King, Warning “you can’t keep an Englishman from liking his beer,” declared a British statesman, speaking against a prohibi- tion bill in the House of Commons. American experience indicates that the Honourable Member will have to think up a better argument than that. OTHER: darling? Betty: Those ch-children want to play cannibal, and I'm the {-f-fattest one in the whole crowd! What's the trouble, comicbooks.com