Life, 1928-06-14 · page 26 of 42
Life — June 14, 1928 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Main Cartoon** depicts a distracted boss scolding his secretary, Miss James, whose daydream bubbles show her engaged in leisure activities (fishing, boating, swimming) while he sits at his desk. The caption reads: "The Boss: Miss James, will you kindly keep your mind on your work?" **The Satire**: This is workplace humor mocking the tension between employer demands and employee desires for freedom and pleasure. The 1920s setting (evident from fashion and "speakeasy" references in the text) shows early-modern office dynamics—the boss represents corporate authority; Miss James embodies the working woman's mental escape fantasies. **The Social Context**: The accompanying diary entry references "Ruth Rumsey" visiting a "speakeasy" (illegal bars during Prohibition), dinner party political discussion, and casual name-dropping of philosophers like Kant. This satirizes upper-middle-class social pretensions and the era's social contradictions: discussing serious topics while violating laws, combining intellectual references with frivolous gossip. **The Point**: Gentle mockery of both workplace power imbalances and the era's fashionable but shallow society life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ss: Miss James, will you kindly keep your mind on your work? actually derive, for I did read page after | President and the political issues at stake, | vote for any man whose platform would page of it without being more than mildly diverted and without learning aught saye that nothing ages a man like living all his life with one woman, which I did Know beforehand. To luncheon with Ruth Rumsey, who announced that the place to which she was taking me was not a speakeasy although it would serve us a cocktail, and when I did laugh at her description she added, “What I mean is, it has a canopy.” Ruth consid- erably upset by the latest development in the communications, evidently intended for another person of the same name whose morals are not all that they should be, which she has received for several years, the last one being a letter reprov- ing her for having been seen drunk on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and reminding her that she was too nice a girl to be taken to the Island. But when I did remind her that some people never get aught in the mails save pleas for charity and announcements of shoe sales, she did feel somewhat cheered. To a great dinner this night where there was much talk of the various candidates for but the latter do seem of small importance to me beside the installation of traffic lights on Lexington Avenue, and I should “Oh, yes, the concert was wonderful, but you know when you are sitting so far from the acoustics it’s simply terrible!” assure them to me. Up betimes and did on my new sleeveless frock of figured blue and white silk ond’ my care digan made of the last three yards of dark blue crepella left in the world, judg- ing from the difficulty with which it was procured, and so off to the country by motor to lunch with Tippy Eden, and the foliage so lovely, the viands so delicious, the laughter so light and the discourse so merry that it was difficult to realize that there was once a man named Kant who did write a book called “The Critique of Pure Reason.” And when we did dis cuss the most depressing thing which we could be called upon suddenly to do, Manie Howland won with “Being sum monsed to the morgue to identify 2 body.” But they did agree with me that the pleasantest thing which could happen would be to read in the Personals column of the Times that a firm of English bar- risters was looking for one in connection with the settlement of a large estate. We did also talk about the ups and downs of May matrit shall forgot nin f donna it wa admis wears ‘once t subseq secrect dinnet shell readin aalled Sam « questi studyi length establi sion j! libel ¢ comicbooks.com