Life, 1925-10-08 · page 26 of 46
Life — October 8, 1925 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1920s *Life* magazine page satirizes workplace inefficiency and male anxiety about women in offices. The main cartoon depicts an "efficiency manager" overwhelmed by managing 43 female stenographers (secretaries). The humor targets his nervous breakdown caused by obsessing over minutiae—silk stockings, shoulder-straps, perfume, dimpled knees—quantifying female employees' physical attributes rather than their work. The satire works on multiple levels: it mocks both the obsessive "efficiency" management craze of the era and the male gaze that reduces working women to decorative bodies. The opening caption ("If our boy friends could only know...") suggests these stenographers endure absurd scrutiny from authority figures. The smaller cartoon about a "ventriloquist broadcaster" and the "Irritants" section are unrelated humor pieces. Overall, the page reflects anxieties about women entering the workforce—portraying male managers as comically unable to manage professional environments once women are present.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Gee, MAE! é Bsa IF OUR BOY FRIENDS COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT WE GOTTA GO THROUGH FoR ‘eM! The Day the Efficiency Manager Had a Nervous Breakdown in an Office Employing Forty-three Lovely Stenographers IGURES and figures. and ank Sheer Sheer silk filed in S-S, drawer 57. Fifty-seven—fifty-seven varieties of figures. Figures in gossamer-thin silk. Silk figures. Overhead. Units, tens silk an What's overhead? Blonde and brunette bobs. Silky bobs. ing overhead but y. silk Bobs of faint perfume, Forty- bobs. Noth- , how many plain, Plain and dimpled. File in K-n, drawer 24. Pink What are they? They shimmer indistinctly under gauze- thin They shoulder- straps and these shoulder-straps are always falling down. Pink shoulder- straps of silk. File in Drawer 57-a. Why do they fall down? Inefficient. waists. have Couldn't Note. Figures. through sheer, gossamer s and shell. pink. es of si knees—rolled —jazz — bells — silk-clad ankles—they w six—in drawer var How ankles? sheer, three vague perfumes. many — silk-encased Eighty-six—eighty-six shiny silk ankles. Darn those machines. Their clicking, clattering—it drones and rolls forever. They roll their own. silk stockings rolled. And varicolored garters. Forty- three kin ighty-six in all. Eighty-six knees. Pow- dered knees. Dimpled. How many dimpled knees? Make note to compile statistics on how dimpled knees, Rolls. Sheer many THE PACETIOUS VENTRILOQUIST BROADCASTS they be tacked or stuck? Find out why. s. Figures k of orchid Perfume. Forty-three — perfume — dimpled Figures alw: and wave—cighty- '—silk—figures— And then the ambulance came and took him away. Harry Irving Shumway. Irritants HERE is nothing more irritating than the conceit of a bore, except, perhaps, the assumed modesty of a great personage. “Davvy. do bootleggers ever have a conven- tion?” “Yes indeed, my son—they have them all!” comicbooks.com