Life, 1925-10-08 · page 6 of 46
Life — October 8, 1925 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily an **advertisement**, not satire or editorial content. The A.B. Dick Company is marketing the **Mimeograph**, an early duplicating machine, to businesspeople and educators. The ad uses an analogy to nature—one grain of wheat multiplied becomes valuable—to argue that duplicating typewritten documents in bulk serves important business and educational purposes. The oval illustration shows the mimeograph machine itself with wheat stalks, visually reinforcing this multiplication metaphor. The pitch promises the booklet will demonstrate how the Mimeograph can "speedily and easily" reproduce documents by "hundreds, thousands or millions." This is straightforward commercial messaging typical of early-20th-century trade magazines, with no political satire intended.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MULTIPLY One grain of wheat is of little use in the world. But duplicate it a million times and it becomes a thing of high service. The most vital law of nature has to do with multiplica- tion. Only by the lavish reproduction of her best efforts dges nature succeed. It is equally natural that the business man who makes the utmost use of his best ideas should win. Let us send you a little book indicating the mightiness of the power of duplication in business and edu- cational work—and showing you how, as a means of speedily and easily multiplying the typewritten sheet, by the hundreds, thousands or millions, the Mimeograph stands alone. Sent without charge by the A. B. Dick Company, Chicago, makers of the MIMEOGRAPH comicbooks.com