Judge — December 15, 1900 — page 20: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

**Top cartoon ("They Got It"):** Two Irish workers (identified by dialect) celebrate winning a wage increase, but the joke is bitter—their boss replaced them with cheaper "dago" (derogatory term for Italian) laborers willing to work for less. The satire mocks both labor's pyrrhic victory and employers' exploitation of immigrant workers as strikebreakers. **Bottom cartoon ("His Specialty"):** A hobo ("Rairin' Brone") offers help to a woman needing ice-cutting work, but when she accepts, he pivots to offering charity (clothes, food, money) instead. The joke satirizes performative philanthropy—the hobo's real "specialty" is charity-seeking, not labor. Both cartoons reflect Gilded Age tensions: immigrant labor undercutting wages, class mobility anxieties, and the gap between charitable pretense and actual economic desperation.