Judge — March 15, 1902 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes European nobility visiting America. Two women discuss a count (a European aristocrat) whose behavior is deplorable. The joke turns on a tariff/customs pun: Ernest quips that the count "seems to think he was admitted to the United States free of duty"—playing on "duty" as both a moral obligation and a customs tax. The satire targets wealthy foreign aristocrats who believed they could enter America without adhering to American social standards or laws, as if they were exempt goods. It reflects early-1900s American anxiety about European elites thinking themselves above American rules, while also mocking the protective tariff debates of that era through wordplay. The artist is credited as Perriton Maxwell (or similar).