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Life, 1928-06-07 · page 46 of 54

Life — June 7, 1928 — page 46: what you’re looking at

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Life — June 7, 1928 — page 46: Life, 1928-06-07

What you’re looking at

This page combines three advertisements with a satirical essay on 1920s Wall Street speculation. The **ads** are straightforward period marketing: Beeman's Pepsin Gum aids digestion; Sport-Lite driving lights improve nighttime safety; Unity MFG promotes automotive accessories. The **main satire**, "The Wild World of Wall Street," mocks the frenzied stock market speculation of the era (likely mid-1920s, before the 1929 crash). The author uses flowery, breathless language to describe how speculation has consumed American life—from Wall Street traders to a mortician in Kentucky who keeps hours matching stock market times rather than serving the dead. The piece ridicules how margin trading (buying stocks with borrowed money) has replaced rational investment. It suggests speculators inhabit a chaotic "Temple of Chance" where "book values count for nothing" and the stock ticker's relentless pace creates nervous exhaustion. The mordant humor culminates in the mortician joke: even death itself must wait for the market to close—capitalism has invaded every aspect of American life, rendering normal business secondary to stock gambling.

📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Bee: you overeat Ig The fine quality that Doctor Beeman put into Beeman’s Pepsin Gum more than thirty years ago has always been maintained. That’s why it becomes a greater favorite every year. Chew Beeman’s after meals, it aids digestion. FLASHES FROM THE Sport-li The Optimist: “I can see good in anything.” The Motorist: “That so? Can you see good in driving at night without a SPORT-LITE?” UNITY MFG. CO. 2017 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ul. Please send information on SPORT-LITES. Make of car is..... Name Address... City, © iving lights Longer, Stronger Beam easiest to operate. Most beautiful appearing — moder- ately priced. A standard acces- sory with most cars. Complies with legal restrictions in all states. DeLuxe size $25.00— small size $17.50. Fill out coupon for information. UNITY MFG. CO. 2017S. Michigan Ave. Chicago The improvement on 7 The Wild World of Wall Street Wuie the ghost of Iconocles presides in the Temple of Chance within the shadow of Trinity all the idols of the Street are going to smash and the charts of the soothsayers, which are the smoke Screens of speculation, are being rent asunder by the awakening echoes of the new system of gambling whose name is Pandemoni um. Book values count for nothing nowa. days. Dream Book values alone are the guide of the gay players of the wheel, who are no longer mere denizens of the Street but have the whole wide world as their domicile. The wild dance of the war brides of a decade ago is a leisurely cadence compared with the delirious measures of the modern margin game. Even the keyboard of the old system of speculation cannot attune its stride to the pace that secks to syncopate the bars of the racing tape. No wonder that the ticker has the pulse of a nervous wreck eee Watt Street bears have been looking for a major break for months. But the prin: al break they have been getting is the Freak of another four-million-share day. And the Wall Street day does its dawning early. It actually starts at 6:30 o'clock in San Francisco and the customer's easy chair differs from the Editor's in that it has a nervous system in its sedentary dis position. When the first gray streaks of dawn stretch their shadow over its sua dial Trinity chimes are singing this morning anthem to the subway crowds in Wall Street: Sing song, hurry along, Skip Jack and hop it, By Trinity Time it’s half-past nine, And if you seek to profit— Take your place on the sucker line Or some poor fish will cop it. And that is just what is happening a the Golden Gate nowadays. Speculators are getting a corner on the easy chairs in the brokerage houses and you can’t get S. R. O. if you allow your margin to rua down below twenty points. eee Bur that is true of the whole county, from Wall Street to Main Street. The Babbitt thoroughfare is now _ located somewhere in the Antipodes, according to the chart makers of the Street. But the speculative meridian is just where you happen to be at a given time. For it stance, in Lexington, Kentucky, the other day, the leading mortician hung out this sign in front of his funeral parlors: “Orrice Hours, 3:30 P.M. TO 9:30 A.M No Consuttations BETWEEN 10 AND 3 And in these hours he was studying the ticker’s method of laying out the tap in the leading stock exchange mortuatr um of the town. ; Because of the press of speculation nowadays you can’t get a decent burial ——— between in clerks in to conde the mar that the your fun Ano spe: you ever pensive | a Stock but a se IF Al Pre Dit Dit IF A Pler Dit Dit could lic liath as brow, “| comicbooks.com