Judge — November 22, 1890 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This Judge magazine page satirizes Democratic criticism of the McKinley Tariff Bill through multiple vignettes showing various complaints attributed to it. The cartoons depict characters blaming McKinley's protective tariff legislation for rising prices across everyday goods and services: a fisherman blames high tides on the bill, a farmer claims his thermometer readings increased due to it, and references to rising costs for chickens and other commodities appear throughout. The satire mocks Democratic newspapers' tendency to attribute virtually *every* price increase to McKinley's tariff—suggesting their criticism is absurdly overblown and disconnected from natural causes (like actual tides or weather). By showing ridiculous correlations between the bill and unrelated phenomena, Judge's Republican perspective ridicules Democratic economic arguments as exaggerated partisan complaints rather than legitimate policy analysis.