Judge, 1897-04-03 · page 8 of 16
Judge — April 3, 1897 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the era's utopian technological optimism by imagining absurd future applications of bicycles and tricycles. Each panel presents an exaggerated "improvement": 1. **Peanut-roasting motor-wagon**: A vendor's bicycle equipped with roasting apparatus—mocking impractical mechanization. 2. **Tricycle warfare**: Replaces horse-drawn cannons with pedal-powered gun carriages, suggesting ridiculous militarization of bicycles. 3. **Farming innovation**: A tricycle "scythe" for haymaking, promising farmers effortless labor. 4. **Pleasure transportation**: A group ride replacing horse-drawn carriages. The satire targets 1890s boosterism about cycling and mechanical progress. The cartoonist mocks inventors and promoters who envisioned bicycles as universal solutions to all problems—farming, warfare, commerce, transportation—without acknowledging practical limitations. It's gentle ridicule of technological utopianism and the bicycle craze's exaggerated promises.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘What a great advantage settlers of the fr abst will fashioned predecessors with the “‘nineteentteedury hot ment, if the land fails to pav. The “* pneumatic-tired motor-wagon” with ‘* peanut-roasting attachment” will be a great boon to vendors. - * ~* With the modern improvements of the tricycle, warfare on the field will be conducted entirely on this style. The heavy gun-carriage of the present, drawn by Aorset, will be a thing of the past. To the farmer the worries of haying-time will be unknown with this improvement on the old-fashioned scythe; life on the farm will be one long reign of pleasure. COmrmGNT 1897 BY THE JUCGE PUBLSAING COMPARY OF NEW YORK A pleasure-trip of the future. T™ enjoyable one; a change of Je made without the delay caused by changing horses, THE WHEEL comicbooks.com