Judge — February 6, 1909 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical comic from *Judge* magazine depicts a man named Mr. Boggs exploiting accident insurance policies through deliberate self-injury. Panel 1 shows him reasoning that a broken leg is worth $2,000 cash. Subsequent panels show him orchestrating increasingly dangerous "accidents"—explosions, falls from buildings—to collect insurance payouts. The final panels reveal the scam: other criminals discover his scheme and threaten violence to steal his insurance money ("I'll take it out of your pesky hide"). The satire critiques both insurance fraud and the moral hazard such policies create—the perverse incentive for people to cause themselves harm for profit. The cartoon suggests that easy insurance payouts attract dishonest schemes and criminal opportunism, making the system vulnerable to exploitation.