Life, 1929-07-26 · page 13 of 36
Life — July 26, 1929 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page features a satirical diary entry by "Leonard" (author unclear) mocking domestic service and women's labor. The narrator—a shoplifter who now works as a servant—receives a call from "Mistress Hallam" demanding her name and address. The diarist sarcastically defends workers' privacy rights and criticizes the exploitative wages and conditions servants endure. The accompanying illustrations depict working-class scenarios: servants being treated dismissively by employers, and a taxi "cage" for crowded passengers unable to sit during traffic jams. The satire targets the hypocrisy and indignity of domestic service work, where employers treat servants as property while paying poverty wages. It's social commentary on class inequality and labor conditions in early 20th-century America.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
After years of success the shop- lifter went and stuck an anvil inside his shirt. Hoe Peps Jury 2—The telephone a-ringing early, and it was Mistress Hallam, a bridge acquaintance, inquiring the name and address of my sempstress, 2 piece of brash intrepidity which astonished me exceedingly, but I did glibly give her a false an- swer, holding firmly that secrecy as to her sartorial re- sources and the scent which she uses is amongst woman’s inalienable rights. Nor am I doing my sempstress an injustice, neither, she being so pressed with work that only God knows when she will get to the replacement in my rose-beige sports suit of the sleeves which removed some of the wet paint from Ruth White’s new bar, at which, ironically enough, I was imbibing nought but a beaker of to- mato juice. Moreover, the psychology of those who are predatory with other women’s servants seems to me on a par with that of the robber barons, for who steals my purse seldom steals more than nine dollars and sixty cents, but she who filches from me a good maid leaves me not only poor but on the verge of apoplexy, and I am certain that the Comic Spirit has devised a suitable Inferno for persons of such blunt sensibilities. To the hairdresser this morning for a permanent wave, bearing with me John Winkler’s engrossing book about John D. Rockefeller, and the veritable ten-cent piece glued to its front cover did so enchant the young woman who attended me that she must needs show it to various customers, thereby giving considerable impetus to its sale. But there was one woman there who must already have read the book and profited by the thrifty principles on which its subject imagines he achieved his great for- tune, for that she had brought in her handbag the eggs to be used in her shampoo, thereby minimizing its cost. Mayhap it would be a good idea for me to: benefit in a similar fashion by commencing to give only a ten-cent tip for a short-distance ride to taxi drivers, even when they are gray-haired and the weather is bad. Juty 3—Lay late, pondering this and that, in es- pecial how refreshing it is to encounter mid-Victo- rians in these days of free speech and uninhibited con- (Continued on Page 28) Taxi with running cage for fares who cannot sit still in @ traffic jam, comicbooks.com