Life, 1928-11-02 · page 13 of 48
Life — November 2, 1928 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical cartoon depicts a crowd of working-class men gathered around what appears to be a campaign poster or notice board (visible on the left). The illustration critiques claims of national "prosperity" during an election cycle. The accompanying text discusses voting fraud and campaign manipulation, referencing candidates Rogers, Smith, and Hoover. The article sarcastically describes how voters were "murdered" politically through deception, with repeated mentions of "votes" and manipulation. The bottom caption reads "VOTE FOR ROGERS / VOTE FOR SMITH / VOTE FOR HOOVER / BUT—VOTE!"—mocking how politicians compete while ordinary citizens feel powerless. The cartoon suggests that despite claims of national prosperity, ordinary workers were skeptical of political promises and cynical about electoral choices.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
black. Any other little things that you can remember will help, too. We finally covered the entire nation with our personal canvass, twenty million odd voters (some of them odder than others, but all pretty bad), and it was}.. quite a task, you may be sure. Some nights we didn’t get home until after seven for dinner and we were so tired that we cried if anyone pointed a finger at us—especially if they added, “There is the murderer of Roger Preston!” (For, in- decd, we are the murderer of Roger PROSPERITY Preston and we don’t care who knows it. We murdered him because everywhere we went he followed us with those green eyes of his....those horrible green cyes . .. -everywhere.....We had to kill him. God! can’t you understand?) Re- . -Hoover.. ..so many votes ....S0 many votes.....Rogers.... so many votes, and such nice votes! From our conversations with voters we are able to tabulate some trends in pop- ular sentiment and perhaps even make a graph. (O Lord! keep us from making a joke about Graph Zeppelin!) It is the re- sult of these tabulations and graphs that we wish to bring before you tonight. ....Go on there, get back into your scat! In respect of the three leading issues of the campaign, Prohibition, Farm Relief and Water Power, it was found that the average voter likes Prohibition best be- cause he knows what the word means. He doesn’t dislike Farm Relief and Water Power, mind you, but he gets them mixed up with the Gold Standard and Nullifi- cation, which (please turn to page 37) VOTE FOR ROGERS VOTE FOR Sms Tt VOTE FOR HOOVER) ror VOTE! comicbooks.com