Cock-Crow of the Bantam Car

I understand that '30s periodicals were not particularly sensitive -- offenses against God and Country excluded -- but I'm a bit surprised by the pictures in this March 1st, 1930 advertisement from The New Yorker. They represent the "American Austin" car as the victorious rooster in a bloody cockfight.

The rest of the advertisement is simply a list of statistics and celebrity endorsements. The cockfight metaphor is only addressed in the pictures. It's SO BLASE.

This is particularly strange because cockfighting was illegal in New York state in the 1930s, and I only know this because Morris Markey wrote a great piece about it ("Feathered Warriors") in an issue of The New Yorker just one month before. And while the magazine itself made lots of explicit (and complicit) mentions of the illegal liquor trade, the ADVERTISEMENTS never did so (though they did sell cocktail shakers and such).

In short, showing this cockfight imagery would have been akin to saying something like: "The American Austin: The best bootleg gin around!" They couldn't do it for booze...why could they do it for a bloodsport?