Life, 1926-09-02 · page 17 of 41
Life — September 2, 1926 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon:** An illustrated scene showing two people in casual conversation. Jane complains about "Joe" and his poor English, while Joan responds that "his Scotch is terrible"—a double meaning joke about both his accent and his whiskey quality. **Main Article: "Why Pay Rent?"** This satirizes the early 20th-century home-ownership movement. The author describes how they purchased plans and specifications for a cheap prefabricated house ($500 architect fee, materials for $99.75), expecting savings. However, unexpected costs—asbestos lining, insulation, proper roofing—mounted significantly. The satire mocks the false economy of "budget" home construction and the misleading advertising promising affordable housing. **Small Illustrations:** Include a child-labor joke and a poisoned-berry anecdote, typical of Life's satirical humor format.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Jane: THERE’S ONE T NG I DON’T LIKE ABOUT JOE— 1 LISI IS BAD, Joan: yes—ad home. Not that those we saw at $15,000 weren't good, but we thought that if we had one built we might be able to save mone: And we certainly did! First of all we got one of those magazines; you know the kind—one hundred pages, eighty-cight of ad- vertising and twelve of reading mat- ter. We didn’t care, though; this time we were after the ads. We had figured on “paying an architect $500, but on reading the ads we found that we could get the plans, specifications, pictures, and what else do you want? of our very house for twenty-five cents. Net s: 99.75. Neat. Wife had thought we'd save money by having a frame house, but after reading a few more pages we learned that to keep the cold air in or out, and the hot air out or in, we'd have the house asbestos-lined, sulated, metal-framed, and stucco-finished. Expensive? Not at all. We could get the whole thing supplied in rolls ready to be nailed S% we decided to build our own D HIS SCOTCIE 18 TERRIBLE. Why Pay Rent? on (nails thrown in with each order) and save exactly $1,425 in wear and tear, upkeep and rep “Would You Sav 000 If We Showed You How?” That was the headline. Would we? We would. All we had to do was to install their latest heating apparatus; self-light- ing, self-adjusting, self-feeding; everything self except the installing. And plumbing? Nothing but the best; invisible, non-corroding, for- everlasting, at a cost less than the usual plumbers’-delight kind. 20 DEGREES COOLER INSIDE And wear-ever flooring, and stcel- framed windows, and paint that never wears off, and insulated pipes, and copperized spouting, and no more coal bills, and save on ice bills, and no fire insurance necessary with this roofing compound, and Why, the better we bought, the more we saved. 'S the truth; read the ads yourself, The house is all planned now, and by actual savings promised, we'll not only have it built free, but some one is going to owe us $3,426. Elliott Lester. Got a Lot Out of It “ HAT is your favorite Scrip- tural passage?” the child-labor employer was asked. “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” he replied without an in- stant’s hesitation. SMALL DOROTHY: What kind of berries are the Smarter Jane: ous. I ate some 3 "re poison- comicbooks.com