Judge, 1881-12-24 · page 3 of 16
Judge — December 24, 1881 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Teamster Missionary" — Judge Magazine Satire This page satirizes the tension between religious idealism and practical reality in the Gilded Age. **The Story:** A New York teamster named Barker, inspired by church activism, receives a new cart and horse to conduct missionary work among fellow workers while earning money. He preaches morality and abstinence from profanity. **The Satire's Point:** His fellow teamsters deliberately sabotage his new equipment, swearing at him constantly. Barker's "goodness" makes him ineffectual and mocked. Only when he abandons his missionary approach—adopting the same profanity and rough behavior as his peers—does he gain respect and business success. **The Joke:** Judge mocks both naive religious reformers who think moral preaching will change working-class culture, and the cynical reality that respectability requires abandoning principle. The cartoon illustrates Barker's failed attempts at ladder-climbing evangelism. The satire suggests that in the brutal world of labor, virtue is commercially disadvantageous.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
order to get busit he had to join | missionaries to one teamster in order to pro: the throng and take his chances, for of all the duce anything like a good result, and they trades in which the weakest goes to the wall, would want to be muscular Christians at that that of a truckman is the most conspicuous, | ‘They caught the business away from hin ing a hackman, perhap while he was preachin| inst profanity, aud pare: but aby how: ct But they spotted that new rig at once; that | at the end of a month he found himself in and done, | brighty-painted cart, new horse anil shining | debt, and almost out of patience. Great was the wonder, and hun. | was all very well, but it did not pay: atle dreds the questions which were asked him res not to be too good. rarding it, all of which he answered meekly | So he began to act, little at a tin OWL Adam (tess his ancient nibs!) and truthfully, although, strange to say, they | fellows:and finally he got so that he could Hard better never slept Or asin een wile His: ciUe fl 1 to do in order to get it. call his fellows all the select society names that Ere Man that slumber wept 4 | tie nel ) Max sive And those wick anaged to | were ever heard of, until at length he began | knock a good deal of Barker's eart | to be respected, and to be recognized as a by running into it with their old ones. ‘They | thoroughbred te nd then, of cou | pretended, of course, that it was accidental, | business began to flow in upon hime abun J iut he knew better, and several times he | dantly. : For why That wro \ythmic rot? stan laughed and derided him for what he bad | on his track ina jam and itandecurse, and The Teamster Missionary. BY “ BRICKTOP." sceretly wished that he wasn't so good as he | And now he owns a dozen carts, and em- — was, that he might resent these affronts with: s many men, He is mem: Tira: Barker pe immortal long: | out going back on his pe ns. h yet, but never says a word ings. He felt them working within him con. | Alto-gethe * work rel He tinually like wind on the st did not pan avy, and when he ree fact that th He was only a teamster here in New York, | turned to his stable, add saw the many s¢ but having caught on to a church, where he | he had revived, he felt talked loudly about the need of mi rk | the consolations of reli recogniz : teanster in York is beyond the influence of ordinary mis h not even | sionary work. jon could obliterate | among thecarmen and drive and | them. what good he could do if he only had a truck | But he raced up and tried it and horse of his own, they presented him with | next day, Wh » he a good rolling and pulling establishment and | companions swear eith snt moment the world is peace. "hy this thing thus? Wher Dennis Kearney? told him to go ahead with his proposed mis. | somebody else and. ho reproved them | ‘THe JupcE intends to hump himself Christ. sionary work, and at the time make all during the day was only knocked | mas and New Years, the money he could with his horse and truck. and run over once, which was — Barker was no hypocrite. Me verily | very goo, consider hieets, dvst about now bad little boys are more believed that he wkd reform his fellow-cratts. And it did seem that they swore ori a like little chernbs than at any othe time dur- men and stop the floods of profanity wi and more frequent oaths than they did before ing the twelve months, the cute, expectant frequently astonishes a listening community, | his advent among them as a missio little and this shows at once that he was never ine | They cursed him up hill and down da tended for a teamster, however much he might’ balked him in every way possible, and bei “Coxe adjourns for the holida prove to bea only human, it is no wonder thathe weakened, | Well, that is what they meet for, isn't it? The first day he appeared out with his new | Iris no wonder that he soon came to the con. Why are we a great nation, and what is horse and truck was an eventfil one, In| clusion that it would require at least ten | C for anyhow? books.com