Life — March 18, 1926 — page 19: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a humorous advice column by George S. Chappell about commuter games to enliven tedious morning train rides. The satirical point targets the tedium of daily commuting in the early 20th century. The games described involve deliberately annoying fellow passengers—crowding into seats, monopolizing space with newspapers, elbowing seatmates, and generally creating minor chaos. The accompanying cartoons show commuters engaging in these petty conflicts: a man and woman quarreling over newspaper space, and another scene of physical jostling. The humor works by endorsing socially inconsiderate behavior as a "ramp" to shake off the day's stresses before reaching the office. It's satirizing both commuter frustration and the era's genteel social hypocrisy—suggesting respectable people secretly want to behave badly toward each other. The games mock the constraints of polite society while implicitly commenting on commuting's dehumanizing effects.