Description
Full color 9 3/4″ x 13 3/4″ ad for the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company. This ad shows a drawing of a man preparing to vote in an election as he is just walking into the voting booth and, as he is parting the curtain, the American flag is visible on the back wall. The ad text has him saying that “Today, I’m the boss. Today, November 4, 1952, I will walk into a voting booth just around the corner from home and tell everybody how I want my country run. Today, I am the boss. In a way, of course, I’m boss in my country every day of the year. Government by the people, they say. The people, when you come down to it, is me. But I don’t work full time at governing. I’ve got my own job to do – a living to earn, a lawn to mow, kids to play with and bawl out and love and look after. So, for the hard job of running the country, I hire other men – smarter fellows than myself, I hope, but with the same kind of heart and purpose. They govern for me – but I keep tabs. I listen to what they say. I watch what they do. It’s a big country I live in, and there’s room for different ways of looking at things. I vote for the people who see things as I do, and if enough other people agree, that’s the way the thing gets done. That’s what it means to be the boss in your own country. Now there are places in the world where a man like me is not the boss. They don’t let him vote. Or they march him to some public place and tell him whom to vote for. I think the voiceless people of these lands are watching me as I leave my house today saying “There goes a lucky man”. In this country of mine we love freedom so much, and hate force so much, that I an not even forced to vote. I could stay home today if I liked. I could sleep late and take it easy and let others do the job of choosing. I could – but who would want to. What spirited man or woman would loaf through a day like this, when he can go out and write boldly on the page of history: “Here’s how I want things to run in my country”. No, today I am the boss and I must act like a boss. Today, I must vote. My freedom, my happiness, my pride as an American, are bound up in that simple and wonderful act”.
Source: October 20, 1952 Life magazine.
