The Judge, Vol. 6, No. 145

"Asking Too Much" (July 26, 1884)

A laborer carrying a massive basket labeled "12-Hour Bill Veto" approaches a well-dressed man at a signpost reading "White House." The figure bearing the burden wears a label reading "The Laboring Man," while his interlocutor—identifiable as President Chester Arthur—gestures dismissively. The cartoon critiques Arthur's veto of legislation limiting working hours to twelve per day, a major labor dispute of the 1884 campaign. The Judge, the Republican-leaning rival to Puck, used such imagery to attack Democratic and moderate Republican positions on labor regulation, tariffs, and currency. The cartoon's anthropomorphic treatment of abstract political concepts—the veto as physical weight—typifies the weekly's method of rendering legislative conflict as immediate, bodily struggle.