Life — October 10, 1930 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of This Life Magazine Page This page contains a letter from Jack Cluett, Chief Chemist at Ansonia Woolen Mills, responding to Mrs. Wilmer Coggins's complaint that her son Ralph returned home from swimming in the Naugatuck River with green hair and eyebrows. Cluett defends the mill, citing their legal right to manufacture green blankets and dump surplus dyes into the river. He offers solutions: soaking Ralph in their dye vat or dipping him in black analine dye. The tone is darkly humorous, treating the pollution as inevitable while mocking industrial disregard for environmental damage. The cartoon below depicts a clergyman offering prayer, apparently satirizing inadequate responses to industrial pollution—prayer being presented as society's only recourse against corporate negligence.