Life, 1928-03-01 · page 38 of 42
Life — March 1, 1928 — page 38: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1925 *Life* magazine page satirizes Prohibition-era America through multiple pieces: **Main Cartoon ("Embarrassing Moments"):** Shows three people under an umbrella. The caption jokes about social awkwardness—meeting someone after a decade and forgetting their name—solved by coolly lighting a MURAD cigarette (product placement/advertising). **"Glossary of Prohibition Terms":** A cynical humor piece mocking Prohibition's failure. It defines terms like "Law Enforcement" as confiscating bootleggers' stock, "Government Warehouse" as where seized liquor is stored (implying it's later released), and "Wet Issue" as liquor leaking from a congressman's hip flask. The satire suggests Prohibition authorities are corrupt and the law is widely flouted. **"A President Is Born" (Book Review):** A poem reviewing Fannie Hurst's novel about an idealized future president (David Schuyler). It's earnest promotional verse about a farmboy who learns to lead. **"Modern Methods":** A brief joke where a child asks if her father's bootlegger can obtain a baby, suggesting black-market bootleggers can procure anything during Prohibition. The page captures 1920s cynicism about Prohibition's ineffectiveness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
=” ——_4 i oS, a EE x k EMBARRASSING MOMENTS When you meet Cynthia, the college widow, for the first time in ten years and call her Helen . . . be non- chalant .. . light a MURAD cigarette, © 1925, P. Lorillard Co., Eat. 1760 Glossary of Prohibition Terms PEAK EASY: What is said by way of caution to a bootlegger when he goes to turn over the rake- off to the Prohibition Authorities: Authori- ties on Prohibition, some of whom say it means this and some that when you ask them whether it’s against the law to make a batch of Home Brew: The stuff you put up in beer bottles and then pour down the drain pipe in the cellar after you've taken a taste of it, and for which you bought a Bottle-Capper: A little machine that’s on sale in all hardware stores just to show how big a success Prohibition is, especially under the present Law Enforcement: Confiscating the stock of a bootlegger who has neglected to come across with the split and putting it in a Government Warehouse: Place where liquor is stored until time for it to be released for Medicinal Purposes: Getting it on a doctor's prescription to put in your Hip Flask: Another thing on sale everywhere to prove that there is no such thing as a Wet Issue: The little trickle from a Congressman’s hip pocket when he falls on a slippery sidewalk. read Life regularly — EVERY week! Rhymed Reviews A President Is Born By Fannie Hurst. Harper & Brother IX Nineteen-forty-four, A. D., Or thereabouts, by sure prediction, One David Schuyler’s bound to be The greatest President in fiction. His tale, conjoining past events With those to come, by artful suture, Is told in that unbridled tense, The vivid retrospective future, His parents, who as lad and Had crossed the sea with scarce a testern, Were honest, thrifty, middle-class And middle-aged and Middle Western, When Dave was born his brothers two And sisters three were over twenty; They told him nearly all they knew, And Brother Henry told him -plenty. While sudden poverty restrained Our hero’s formal education, He farmed, he read, he dreamed and gained A world of Useful Information. And when he’s added legal lore To what he knows of fauna, flora And everything he grasped before, He'll forge ahead and marry Dora. In town amid the varied throng, In fields among the sheep and horses, He learns, clear-visioned, sane and strong, The Nation’s needs, the land's re- sources, Behold our Peerless Candidate Whose record shames the base re- viler! Defer to Fannie Hurst and Fate And cast your vote for David Schuyler! Arthur Guiterman. ‘ Modern Methods OTHER: No, we can’t have an- 4" other baby so soon, Marjorie. The stork just brought us one, you know. Lirtte Girt: But can’t Papa's bootlegger get one for us? Mi!ss MARGARET COWLES, # typist, has been chosen Eng- land’s “typical flapper.” Over here they’re all typical. comicbooks.com