Life, 1926-01-14 · page 33 of 40
Life — January 14, 1926 — page 33: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from Life magazine (likely 1920s) satirizes Prohibition through dark humor about bootlegging. The left column's article claims bootlegging is "our greatest industry," arguing that every American needs three bootleggers: one favorite, one backup, and one for emergency use. It mocks Prohibition's failure by suggesting the law (passed by Representative Volstead) actually *benefited* paint companies and created lucrative illegal markets for fast boats and contraband. The satire targets how Prohibition enforcement backfired economically—unemployed counterfeiters now work in bootlegging, bakers supply illegal distilleries, and the government loses tax revenue. The small cartoon at bottom shows a fisherman declaring "This is where I draw the line!" after a cork floater sinks—a pun suggesting even he has limits, contrasting the widespread moral compromise Prohibition created. The Bell System advertisement on the right provides sharp contextual contrast: respectable technological progress versus the criminal economy Prohibition inadvertently fostered.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Our Greatest Industry Statistics show that every person tes has at least th find the number of bootleggers in try simply mul the three by the mul population by Of course, the figures iplication will be very con servative, as most people have than three rotlerge Invest shows that the ave three be cond to get along with few leggers: one as a fall back on if th 1 happen to consume some of his own 4 t and a third to use if or both, the first or second. should be sent to jail, which has been known to happen occasionally Prohit about by a man named Volstead, ion enforcement was bre had the law passed for the large paint anies, in order to create a larger rket and higher prices for second grade varnish. The paint companies y intended to go into the re tail end of the busine ow handled ¢ gers. they hy The whol safer, but the wh n income tax. Perhaps. the d ty is one reason why people have 1 ; the retailers pay no tax from Even ted by the being overcrowded common baker has b advent of Prohibition, because vai is improved to a great extent by str: it throu nds of loaves of bread a day are used in the paint and varnish fact reat relief t etary em, for engravers hibition has been a our on who formerly employed themselves a counterfeiters have been turned this work to the more profitable occu pation of repro 2 the genuine Rum-r ket for faster motor boats, owii demand for fast boats by the he faster gers and for ones by the Gor nt agents. This will prot serve as a stimulus to marine If you have an asbestos stomach a eyes of steel, you can safely dri bootleg. If y ave not eyes you may possibly have eyes after drinking some of the high-priced beverage America has the best bootleggers in the world, and Proh has been an aid to the cou the instance of the pocketbook RR ral, except in nm person's Tue cork floater went under with a snap. “This is where [ draw the line!" ex claimed the fisherman. The Future of the Telephone It was fifty years ago that Alex- ander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and yet this anniver- sary is but a milestone in the progress of telephone develop- ment. As the giant oak with its complicated structure grows from the acorn, soa nation-wide system . has grown out of Bell's single telephone instrument. The interconnection of millions of telephones throughout the land, regardless of distance, has not come about easily. It has resulted from a series of scientific discov- eries and technical achievements embodied in a telephone plant of vast extent and intricacy. Great economies have already been gained by such technical im- provements and more are sure to follow for the benefit of telephone users everywhere. There are still to come many other discoveries and achieve- ments, not only in transmission of speech, but also in the material and construction details of every part of the network of plant. The future of the telephone holds forth the promise of a ser- vice growing always greater and better, and of a progress—the end of which no one can foresee. AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH ComPANY AND AssociATED ComPaNigs SYSTEM IN ITS SEMI-CENTENNIAL YEAR THE BELL SYSTEM LOOKS FOR- WARD TO CONTINUED PROGRESS IN TELEPHONE COMMUNICATION In Order To Live Long and Prosper Cultivat your Sense of Humor. Read LIFE and develop the Balance and Boise that make you valuable in any pe on F Special Offer One Dotlar (¢ $1.20; Foreign $1.4 1 LIFE for the next ten weeks LIFE, 598 Mad: comicbooks.com