Life, 1925-02-26 · page 3 of 36
Life — February 26, 1925 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a satirical advertisement for the Alexander Hamilton Institute, a business education service. The cartoon shows a golfer mid-swing, illustrating the article's central joke: **golf as a metaphor for business success**. The text argues that the Institute's value lies in hiring expert consultants to handle business problems—just as one might hire a professional caddy or coach to improve their golf game. The satire suggests that businessmen obsessed with golf (a status symbol of the wealthy) should apply the same principle to their actual work: employing outside expertise. The article claims the Institute has helped grow golf club membership from nearly zero to 3,034 clubs in sixteen years, positioning business education as equally transformative. The humor targets wealthy executives who prioritize leisure while neglecting professional development.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
4 Se indians ec eeenite began business, there were barely a thou- sand golf clubs; now there are 3,034. We do not claim to have supplied these new clubs with all the new mem- bers; but we do know this: A couple of hundred thousand men are getting a lot more joy out of life than they used to. Some of them who now swing a wicked mashie never had anything more inter- esting in their hands than a briefcase full of back work. Life, of course, is just a matter of squeezing much or little out of your allotted twenty-four hours. The equipment is standard: two eyes, two ears, two legs, two arms, a slight difference in the wheel-base of brains— but not much. The real difference is in what you do with what you’ve got. It keeps some men busy the whole twenty-four hours to earn $50 a week, and they are almost nervous wrecks at that. Others have it coming in at the rate of about $50 a minute; and work never interferes with their golf. The secret, of course, is employing outside forces to help you; to put it bluntly, in getting someone else to do the work. The idea behind the Alexander Ham- ilton Institute is simple. If you could hire the biggest man in every line to attend to the particular part of your business that he knows most about, you would be sitting pretty. We Have Done abhor for the Game of Golt Well, we hire him for you. We put his ideas, his methods, his experience at your service. We have lectures by other men of his type. We have problems based on actual business situations — what the law books call the “case system.” You squeeze everything you can out of the minds of these big men and use it as your own. What you pay us for it is a tiny frac- tion of your increased earning power. In fact, we are sometimes accused of giving too much for the money. ‘‘Peo- ple would be more impressed,” it is said, “if you charged them ten times as much.” But we are doing very well, thank ‘ou; and so are the 250,000 men who have joined our ranks. Their average salary has gone up and their average score has gone down something won- derful. Let us send you the book that tells all. A good many men have read it and found it worth an evening’s time. Among them are numbered the ad- ministrative heads of just about 50,000 concerns. Alexander Hamilton Institute 286 Astor Place New York City I am interested in what you say. I should like to read your booklet, “Forging Ahead in Business.” I am not to be obligated by this in any way. H. Position comicbooks.com