Judge — July 26, 1902 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

**Top panel: "He Knew He Would Wake Up"** depicts two working-class men in dialect-heavy conversation. One recounts dreaming of finding a thousand dollars but throwing it away, reasoning that spending it would cause him to wake. The joke targets the desperation of poor laborers whose dreams of wealth are so implausible they assume any fortune must be illusory. **Bottom panel: "Professional Jealousy"** shows rural/working-class characters (indicated by heavy dialect spelling) discussing a burglary. Mrs. Backporch suspects the thieves were actually starving summer boarders from a neighbor's property—implying they're so poor and hungry they'd steal food. The "professional jealousy" likely refers to competition between poor communities over limited resources and suspicion of outsiders. Both cartoons use exaggerated dialect and caricature to mock working-class poverty and rural communities, typical of Judge's satirical approach to social class.