Judge — October 27, 1906 — page 2: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE’S SILVER ANNIVERSARY. TWENTY-FIVE years ago, lacking two days, JUDGE made his bow to the world and saluted mankind in these words: ‘I have started this paper for fun. ! have not come to crowd anybody out, but only to be one more to assist the world to see the joyous side of life.” Five years later, having advanced to a secure place in public esteem, and feeling the vigor of a new management, he was moved to a fresh procla- mation of purpose as follows: “ JUDGE aims to be American in its purpose and policy.” He further declared his intention to keep the pages of this paper “so clean that it will be wel- come in every household.” In the light of his completed quarter-century, he feels that he can chal- lenge the world to show aught wherein he has failed to keep these pledges made at the beginning. From the start JUDGE allied himself with the Republican party, but in no narrow, partisan spirit. He has believed that the party of Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, McKinley and Roosevelt repre- sented the best type of militant American- ism. In the service of the party of this faith JUDGE has supplied some effective champions. Thomas Nast, the Beards, Bernhard and Victor Gillam, Grant Hamil- ton, Eugene Zimmerman, and Emil Flohri found a field in these pages, and their work is fairly entitled to high place among the forces that have shaped political opinion during many years. As for comic art and humor in prose and verse, JUDGE is not only representative of the best, but fairly includes all the comedians of the pen and pencil who have ap- peared during the twenty-five years since he began. Bill Nye wrote some of his funniest things in these pages; Julian Ralph was for long a regular contributor. To name ‘them all would be out of the question. Outcault, Sullivant, Fithian, Woolf, Dirks, the inimitable Zim,” and that prolific genius, James Mont- gomery Flagg, either began here or found incre: ing fame with JUDGE’S readers. Amer! cans, the chief disciples of humor, have an unpleasant habit of affecting to despise the humorist and his art. Uniformly the public on this side of the water has refused to award any lasting honors to those whose work, no matter how skillfully done, began and ended in a smile. The old world still dotes on tears and rewards the weaver of trag- edies. And yet it flies for solace to the man who makes us laugh, but holds his art to be inferior. Comic journalism has shared in the odium that attaches to all comic art, and yet it has survived and prospered for the reason that, while the ¥ J y z ¥ PSE 188{)—WHAT A LITTLE JOURNEY, AND YET HOW LONG!—1906. Jupce's first cartoon (reduced), world withholds its conventional honors from the laugh-mak- er, it loves him all the more. How long a quarter-century seems in the immediate retro- spect, and yet how short a stretch of time it is! And the old world ’s slow in mending, my masters. In this year of grace our political wars are raging around the subject of “Bosses."’ And lo! JUDGE'S first cartoon had for its sub- ject the fight against the bosses. In 1881 the railroads were killing folks and ducking damage-suits, and calmly and un- righteously acquiring legislatures, sending treasonable persons to congress, and otherwise cutting high jinks at the expense of the people. Alas! how little the world has changed! Buffalo Bill’s hair was al- ready a topic twenty-five years ago, vorce was in the air, and JUDGE was lend- ing himself to the hue and cry against old and decrepit jokes. We think our prob- lems are very new and that all our griev- ances are young, and yet twenty-five years ago JUDGE descanted fiercely upon ab- sconding cashiers and aged and respectable embezzlers who “scooped in the whole pot’? and ran a conundrum which read, “Do bank-examiners examine?” Milk ‘was watered in 1881, and foods were adul- terated, and the cry of reform was every- where heard. Tweed was a recent mem- ory, a political nightmare. The Star-route scandal was still fresh, and monopoly and the Octopus were abroad in the land. The press of the metropolis was monop- oly-owned, it was charged, and JUDGE himself was ex- coriating the “sensational slush’? in the newspapers. Rich women were eloping with their coachmen, and the headline artist was doing his daily “stunts.” And they were hound- ing millionaires in those days! Oh, the world is 2 slow in mending, my masters. Gould was the 74 Rockefeller of the day—the Octopus personified. And JUDGE takes pleasure in the fact that then, as now, he was ridiculing the unreasonable and hysterical abuse of the men of fortune. The ags of Wall Street were in the ring in ’81, and the rich American girl was marrying the detested and titled but impecunious foreigner. No; there is nothing old and there is nothing new under the sun. In ‘an editorial of December toth, 1881, JUDGE advocated “' the square deal.” And yet President Roosevelt—— But what's the use? JUDGE salutes his readers and friends who have journeyed with him thus far, and returns thanks and best wishes. And now for our Golden Anniversary! DOO A A 6-4 BM oh . comicbooks.com