Judge — July 20, 1889 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon by Hamilton satirizes the summer tourist season. The scene depicts well-dressed vacationers arriving at what appears to be a seaside resort or boarding house, their luggage and belongings piled around them. The exaggerated clothing, hairstyles, and affected poses mock the pretensions of upper-class leisure travelers. The visible text fragment ("search for him and his possessions") suggests the cartoon critiques tourists as burdensome—their excessive baggage and demanding nature creating chaos wherever they go. The crowded, chaotic composition emphasizes how tourists descend upon vacation destinations en masse, disrupting local communities. This reflects late 19th/early 20th-century anxieties about mass tourism as an emerging phenomenon, mocking both tourist pretension and their disruptive social impact.