Life — April 16, 1925 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "A Matter of Definitions" This two-panel political cartoon satirizes the American government's inconsistent application of patriotism versus treason charges. In the first panel, a well-dressed gentleman (likely representing a government official or wealthy industrialist) watches sailors dumping tea overboard from a ship, captioning it "Down with the tax on tea! That's patriotism!" The second panel shows the identical scene, but now captioned "Down with the eighteenth amendment! That's treason!" The cartoon mocks the hypocrisy of defining the same act of civil disobedience—rejecting government policy through direct action—as either patriotic or treasonous depending on which policy is targeted. This appears to critique Prohibition-era (18th Amendment) enforcement policies relative to historical American revolutionary ideals.