Life, 1925-05-21 · page 37 of 40
Life — May 21, 1925 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Content:** This page is primarily **advertising** (General Electric, Major's Cement, Horlick's Malted Milk) interspersed with a serialized diary column ("Mrs. Pep's Diary"). **The Diary:** A society woman's gossipy account of social events—a friend's weight-loss panic, a birthday celebration, a wedding, and a dance party. The humor is gentle domestic satire: a husband pretending to forget a gift, a woman's anxiety over gaining three pounds, and an embarrassing telegram gaffe from boarding school days. It satirizes upper-middle-class concerns and female social anxieties. **The GE Advertisement:** Features a sketch of a working man with a hod (a V-shaped carrier for bricks/materials). The ad compares modern electric hoists to manual labor, arguing that mechanization provides "better work for men to do"—a progressive argument justifying technological displacement as creating superior employment rather than eliminating jobs. This reflects early-20th-century optimism about industrial progress. **Anecdote:** A brief quip from a Minneapolis visitor marveling that New York would be perfect "if it were not so damn far from any place"—frontier-era American humor about distance and isolation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Mrs. Pep’s Diary (Continued from page 22) a-flutter because she has gained three pounds since taking up the latest reduc- ing system day before yesterday, and talking wildly about setting the Dis- trict Attorney on a man who will take two hundred dollars in advance and let such a thing happen to her, but I did finally get her calm, and out of the notion of casting herself into the river. Lydia Loomis did join us for luncheon, and we fell a-reminiscing on our days at boarding-school, Lyd bringing up the first time I ever sent 2 telegram, when, assuming that every message must contain ten words, I had added “cucumber” irrelevantly to my nine- word statement, and sent my family into serious concern for my sanity. May This being my birthday, 16th awake betimes and at the post, “looking for loot,” as Samuel put it. And he, poor wretch, did pretend till an unseemly hour that he had no present for me save the flowers on my breakfast tray, but I took it in such good part that he got no pleasure for his cruelty and finally did produce the gold bead bag on which I Wh hj h had long since set my heart....To the ere 1s t e Winston wedding in the afternoon, all ‘ very resplendent and lovely, and I was Man with the hod? minded again that I never fail, when the clergyman reaches the injunction for anybody who knows any good cause When you pass the next tall why these two should not be joined building under construction. ’ together to speak now or forever after hold his peace, to look about in pleas- watch the hoist run by an ant expectancy... This night did the electric motor. Bannings hold a great rout in my honor, with such fine dance music that all stayed till dawn, and a tenant on Compare the work, and the the first floor summoned a policeman, Motors made bythe Wages earned by the skilled Baird Leonard. Genera Bisctsie man whoruns the hoist, with A; Sipeiie sean aLraneapalia (jus 42 men and materials the old-fashioned painful turned from his first visit to New York, thetop ofthe tai, ~=—- Methods, and the dollar daily on being asked what he thought of the building. They will do wage. city, replied: “New York would be a lee hed your good town if it were not so damn far sewing. Almost every Each generation provides from any place.” day, a new use is found for them, better work for men to do. GENERAL ELECTRIC cy Schaum, Upping pitard cues, x : The Philosopher utters The Magic Phrase, KINDS, 200 per SUBSCRIBE TO LIFE _ bottle at deal- For the Student—Relaxation—a laugh on every page. Try it. Special Offer Enclosed find One Dollar (Canadian $1.20, Foreign $1.40). Send Lire for the next ten weeks to The ORIGINAL Malted Milk For Infants, l es es Children, Invalids, One Year $5.00 Nursing Mother: LIFE, 598 Madison Ave., New York (XL) “foreign #860" Avoid Imitations comicbooks.com