But the illustration shows far more than passive conditions of living,—it shows the enormous development of new interests, the changing relationships between different elements in society, the quickening of the social conscience, and the widening sense of responsibility for all conditions that can be improved. New interests are seen in the illustrations of baseball crowds, college "bowls," golf links, open-air theaters, folk dances, playgrounds, and all conditions that show the development of out-of-door life and wholesome recreation. With equal clearness the illustration shows the dividing line between those who take their amusements vicariously, as in the views of opera houses with capacity audiences, and those who find their recreations in active participation with others in community singing and in other forms of collective activity .
But with this somewhat superficial jolting of society out of its traditional grooves through the development of new interests, the parallel illustration shows how other conditions move with glacier slowness towards perfectibility . The illustrator who satirizes modern society shows how universal and apparently fundamental are certain human characteristics; the braggart, the snob, the tuft hunter, the flunkey, the poseur, the social climber, the miser, the spendthrift, the slacker in peace as well as in war, know neither time nor country. Is it strange that this form of social satire has its complement in the illustrations that everywhere show the prevailing social and industrial unrest?[1]
The prevailing feeling, often however contradicted, that the relative position of children in society has changed, finds confirmation in the illustration. Once inconspicuous in the illustration, represented as dressed like their elders, evidently restrained in their actions, the newspaper now gives children their own illustrated pages, illustrates their own special fashions in dress, in toys, in amusements, in books; it represents the part they take in fashionable society,and shows them everywhere in the limelight.[2]
- ↑ The Survey, July 4, 1914, has an account of Michael Biro, the Hungarian cartoonist of social unrest. With change of names, this form of illustration is well-nigh universal.
The Liberator, 1918–1922, has many cartoons of this character.
- ↑ The illustrations of fifty, or even of ten years ago probably show nothing comparable to the exploitation of a child of ten in the collection of money for a battleship .
