Life, 1925-09-24 · page 11 of 41
Life — September 24, 1925 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon depicts four fashionably dressed people on a trolley car taking an outing. The caption explains this is a "Red-Letter Sunday's Outing" where they've taken a new trolley past the water works. The joke centers on the trolley's wild, uncontrollable behavior—it pitched, swayed, and whined while racing around corners at dangerous speeds, creating what the text calls "hair-raising modern roller-coaster" thrills. The satire mocks both early electric trolleys (unreliable and unpredictable technology) and the era's leisure activities. The accompanying article "Why Speeders Speed" humorously offers absurd explanations for reckless driving—drivers claiming hot weather, mental defects, or needing to feed goldfish on time. The overall tone ridicules 1890s modern life's technological chaos and the public's dangerous behaviors.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
¥ a He i fakes a rf THE GAY NINETIES A RED-LETTER SUNDAY'S OUTING. LINE AND BACK. VITCHING TROLLEY OF THE NINETIES WAS REALLY THE DADDY OF AND WHEN IT HITCHED ITSELF PERILOUSLY AROUND A CORNER AT TOP SPEED IT W TAKING THE NEW TROLLEY OUT PAST THE WATER WORKS TO THE END OF THE THIS WAS NOT SO TAME AS IT SOUNDS; FOR, BETWEEN SWITCHES, THE WHINING, SWAYING, MODERN ROLLER-COASTER. CONSIDERED PERFECTLY PROPER THE HAIR-RAIS FOR LADIES TO SCREAM—IN FACT, IT WAS ALMOST COMPULSORY. Why Speeders Speed AS a result of careful and exhaustive investigations into “Xihe causes and effects of speeding, we are able to offer the following summary bearing on the subject: 347 motorists who plastered themselves and their cars against the sides of express trains were hurrying in order to get home in time to feed the goldfish at its regular hour. 41,502 drivers who ran over pedestrians stated that they were dashing to the drug store to get a mustard plaster for their little girl's pet doll. 11,021 reckless drivers explained that they stepped on it to avoid being rammed by the car behind 135,447 drivers participating in crashes said that it was a hot day and they were merely starting a breeze for the benefit of the poor people along the streets who had no cars. 1 driver charged with exceeding the statutory speed limit admitted frankly that he had no excuse, but it was afterwards discovered that he was a mental defective, which entirely discounted the force of his admission. R. K. Hall. HE first sign of autumn: the migration of the cooks from the outlying districts. comicbooks.com