Judge, 1905-12-16 · page 12 of 48
Judge — December 16, 1905 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces typical of early 20th-century American humor: **"The Girl-Craze"** mocks advertising's obsession with using young women to sell products. The poem complains that women—once celebrated in art and literature for their maturity and complexity—have been reduced to interchangeable "girls" hawking everything from soap to motor-ropes. The satire targets both advertisers' commercial exploitation and society's shallow consumption of femininity. **"Santa's Hard Luck"** jokes about Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy steel magnate known for his library-building philanthropy. The humor lies in Santa being mistaken for Carnegie and driven out of town—residents fear he'll demand they maintain another library, satirizing both Carnegie's famous generosity and the public burden of maintaining his gifts. **"Grand Larceny"** is a mild flirtation joke playing on legal terminology: stealing one kiss is "petty larceny," but stealing many kisses escalates to "grand larceny"—a reference to the legal distinction based on monetary value, here applied humorously to romance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE GIRL-CRAZE, HERE have the women gone? Or where Shall Ta woman find In verse, in prose, in picture fair As once they were enshrined ? Girls—only girls—are now the rage— On poster, ad. and Girls, by the score, on printed page— A girl fur every line. Girls, with strange offerings—of soap, Flour, hair-dye, phosphates, milk, ‘Typewriter, mattress, motor, rope, Cheese, door-screens, spools of silk. A girl with cap, a girl with hat, A girl with braid and curl, Belt, mantle, skirt—no matter what— As long as it’s a girl! Her smiling teeth, her dimples sweet, Her ankle’s fluff of lace, The daub of powder on her cheek, Her garter-strap in place ; Now, could these girls maturer grow Abd get some sort of sense, It might relieve our minds—for, ob ! The tension, now, is tense! And, singe we're nof all boys—since we. A few of us, are men— Would we could read of, meet, or see A woman once again! SANTA’S HARD LUCK. ePID you get along all right 2” asks Mrs. Claus when Santa drives into the barn-yard with his reindeers along about noon, Christ- mas. “Splendidly—all except in one town, They ran me out of there.” « Ran you out ?" “Yes. Some of the citizens saw me and thought I was Andrew Carnegie and that Iwas about to give them another library building to maintain.” THE SMART SET SANTA CLAUS. GRAND LARCENY. He—"' Suppose I steal a kiss?” Oh, that would be only petty larceny !"” He—" And suppose I steal a hundred?” ‘Sue—"" Oh, that would be grand, of course," comicbooks.com