The Judge, Vol. 6, No. 155

This Judge cover from October 1884 depicts a scene titled "Simple Simon went a-fishing / For to catch a whale. / And all the fishes that he found / Were in his mother's pail." A woman labeled "Women's Temperance Union" and "St. John" (the Prohibition Party candidate) manipulates a fishing rod to direct a man in a wide-brimmed hat—representing the Democratic nominee—toward a barrel marked "Prohibition." Behind him looms an "Insurance Hall," while a bucket labeled "Colt. Water" sits nearby. The cartoon ridicules the Prohibition Party's spoiler role in the 1884 presidential race, sardonically suggesting that temperance advocates are fishing voters into prohibition's net. Judge's Republican editors used such election-season satire to mock third-party challengers and their supporters, deploying caricature and gendered humor typical of 1880s campaign journalism.