Life, 1928-08-16 · page 11 of 48
Life — August 16, 1928 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page features Will Rogers's satirical challenge to Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith. Rogers criticizes Smith's acceptance of support from wealthy Democratic donors and party figures, arguing Smith cannot claim to represent common people while accepting money from political machines. The cartoon depicts Smith as unable to escape Democratic Party entanglements—shown literally crushed under a General Motors vehicle labeled with names like "Bryan," "Cox," and "Davis" (likely previous Democratic candidates/operatives). The critter asks how Smith will escape this "mess," implying he's trapped by Democratic establishment interests that contradict populist appeals. The satire targets the hypocrisy of claiming common-man appeal while dependent on wealthy backers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OUR CANDIDATE CHALLENGES AL SMITH ‘You Can’t Make Any Commoner Appeal Than 1 Can” Gove At Dean Paterson At I hate to do this but when a man enters the Presidential race, he is no longer his own keeper, he is public property, as you probably have found out by now. Now this is the open season tor De- bates, and I believe you and I could put on about as good a one as one of these others. So I hereby challenge you the way I challenged the other fellow last week. Now the trouble with most Debates, they are confined to a subject. Now we won't let that worry us, we won't let issues or questions worry us at all, we'll just rent Madison Square Garden, The chances are Rickard would want his money in advance, now that his fight has flopped on him, but all we do is sell tickets, and let the money go to poor Democratic widows who have given their husbands’ lives to trying to get elected to some office in the Democratic party. Those Saute by WILL ROGERS are the most deserving women I know of. I think you and I can do a Dempsey, and get in some real jack for those poor old souls. I see where William Randolph White has been kinder snooping around for a Debate with you, Now don't you go and debate him, he will go and dig up a lot of old records. I hate old records, Bert Williams’ is the only old records that are any good. This White will dig up how you voted on every bill since you been in office. Now I won't do that, I think what a man did years ago has nothing to do with what he is doing today. If you stuck with Croker and Murphy and all those, why more power to you. Suppose you had stuck with Bryan, and Cox and Davis, and all those, where would you have been? You were a wise guy and everybody gives you credit for stringing with a win- ner, So your old records mean nothing to me. What you and I want to talk about, Al, is, “What will we do if we get in?” The first thing I will do is to have that White House painted green, so they can’t call it the White House any more. Prohibition,—let’s not mention that. It has stirred up enough trouble already. Farm relief,—the Republicans give the farmers good prices every four years, so they are about to forget to holler. You know how a Farmer votes. When he gets to the polls he reaches in his pocket and sees how much he's got. If it’s only a few cents why he says “Throw the rascals out,” and he votes Democratic. But if he’s got as much as a dollar he guesses that the rascals is on his side after all, so maybe he'd better leave ‘em in. This year Al, the Republicans has ar- ranged things so the farmer has got his “Hey, Al, how are you going to dispose of this critter?” comicbooks.com