Life — April 16, 1925 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Betsy Ross Submits a Design to the Sub-Committee on Flags and Bunting" This cartoon satirizes the **Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)** and their obsession with historical authenticity and committee procedures. The historical figure Betsy Ross presents her American flag design to a group of formal committee members—"National Fathers of the Revolution, Inc." The joke mocks how the DAR bureaucratizes patriotism: even the iconic founding moment of flag design is reduced to committee approval, complete with businessmen's deliberation and nitpicking. One man comments on "layout," another on "visualizations" being "good, but will it sell?"—applying modern advertising language to 18th-century history. The satire targets both the DAR's stuffiness and 1920s corporate culture's infiltration of even patriotic institutions.