Life, 1928-10-05 · page 26 of 48
Life — October 5, 1928 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon depicts an aviator's wife reminding her husband to observe Parisian women's fashion while traveling—a light domestic joke about husbands' attention to detail. The main article, "Progress of Prohibition Enforcement," is satirical commentary on the failures of Prohibition (1920-1933). It catalogs widespread enforcement chaos: corrupt agents selling confiscated liquor, bootleggers using violence with impunity, Prohibition officials like Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt contradicting themselves politically, and absurdly lenient sentences. The satire's point: despite aggressive dry-law enforcement efforts, the policy has created criminality, corruption, and hypocrisy rather than reducing alcohol consumption. The sidebar items are brief satirical observations: a movie actress joking marriage is monotonous; a newspaper typo creating an absurd classified ad; and bureaucratic inefficiency (old phone directories recycled). These mock everyday American life and institutional incompetence during this era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Avutor’s Wire: Now, don’t forget, Joe—see what sort of hats the women are wearing in Paris. Progress of Prohibition Enforcement An Illinois farm hand, crippled by a dry agent’s hick, goes to the poor farm, and rum runners use machine guns on rich men’s yachts for target practice; the Mayor of Philadelphia invites Billy Sun- day to clean up liquor selling by a piety drive, and wholesale liquor dealers in that city buy bullet-proof vests; Congressman Sirovich reveals how grafting Prohibition agents sell raided liquor in their own akeasies, and a citizen of Galesburg, Illinois, insists on being listed as a boot- legger in the new city directory; a Cali- fornia bootlegger in jail asks the police to collect his charge accounts, and a New Jersey traffic cop is found taking orders for whiskey while at work; dry agents with diplomas hunt gin in New Haven, and two Yale students face charges of hijacking in Pennsylvania; in Rochester, Indiana, a Prohibition spy uses a snappy car to lure flappers to speakeasies, and a man in Minneapolis gets a jail sentence of five minutes for illicit possession of liquor; the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury warns Prohibition adminis- trators that Civil Service rules forbid their taking part in politics, and Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney General in charge of Prohibition, urges Methodist pastors to preach against Smith; the same Mrs. Willebrandt in a political speech calls New York the worst spot in the country in its opposition to the dry laws, and ai investigation reveals that the greater part of all the liquor sold in the Eastern states comes from Philadelphia. W. W. Scott, Reporter: What is your opinion of marriage? Movie Queen: Well, I suppose it’s all right but it does get to be such a habit. a d, CIEE 4. ee | A Nose for News “MR. OTTO FREI wanted at 6121 Seminole ave. to finish plumbing work." —Want Ad. in Detroit News. Tuis is the sort of thing that never hap pens outside the comic magazines. L “When telephone directors become of they are usually gathered and sold to waste-paper companies for conversion into pulp and the manufacture of new paper. They are torn in two lengthwise, then chopped into small bits in a powerful machine.""—boston Traveller. Ano it serves them right! aL “Governor IRoland Hartley wil to me about- shrdlu £ cmfw wiom fia to Spokae and Inland Empire citizens on ‘state affair’ from g to 10 p» M. Thursday over the radio station KGA, according to an Associated Press dispatch today from Llympia. The address also will be broad- cast over station KJR, Scattle."* —Spokane Daily Chronicle. Procram coming in fine. comicbooks.com