Judge, 1910-06-04 · page 6 of 16
Judge — June 4, 1910 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon mocks a boarding house landlady's penny-pinching: she's served chicken daily for four weeks to save money for a fashionable "Chanticleer hat" (referencing the rooster, playing on the chicken theme). The joke satirizes working-class aspirations to high fashion at the expense of boarders' quality of life. The lower section, "The American Diagnosis," is satirical pseudo-medical commentary on national foibles. "Klahomitis" mocks Oklahoma politics and constitutional overreach; "Xanthalmia" appears to reference anti-Asian sentiment on the Pacific Coast; "Heromania" satirizes Americans' tendency to obsessively idolize public figures (citing 1898 and North Pole discovery), followed by swift disillusionment; "Autocovetis" ridicules the 1911 automobile craze's hold over Americans regardless of financial capacity. The bottom illustrations joke about artificial food production ("cold-storage" chicken), reflecting early 20th-century anxieties about industrial food manufacturing and its separation from natural processes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
SOLILOQUY OF A BOARDER. It's been chicken now for four weeks every day. ever since the landlady has been saving up for a Chantecler hat."* “ There! THE AMERICAN DIAGNOSIS. A CATALOGUE OF NATIONAL DISEASES. KLAHOMITIS— A mild, compara- tively harmless com- plaint, directly traceable to a long-eared, long- whiskered germ which browses in Western State capitols. The disease de- velops directly from the abuse and overloading of the constitution, and is characterized by the most frantic efforts on the part of the victim to regulate anything and everything, from the length of a hotel tablecloth to the number of horns on the hippopotami advertised by the Forty World’s Marvelous and Colossal. HOBTHALMANIA—A disease of the optic nerve and the imagination, peculiar to California and the Pacific coast. To the victim the entire horizon takes on an intense and ominous yellow; the sight of a cue or an almond eye is sufficient to pro- duce violent convulsions. War fever is a frequent symptom. HEROMANIA—A hysterical ailment, which sweeps the entire nation at irregular intervals, and is marked by an alarm- ing tendency oa the part of the sufferer to idolize, nominate cigars, motor boats, and ymen. This dise: for President, and name his doy twins for some one of his feliow-count! which is from one to six months’ duration, is invariably fol- lowed by a reactionary state called Herophobia or Iconocls during which the victim develops an extreme hate and contempt for his late idol. Heromania was epidemic throughout the United States in 1898 and immediately following the discovery of the North Pole. AUTOCOVETIS—A mental frenzy now generally epidemic in this country, the principal manifestation of which is an o’er- weening, unresisted passion for the possession of a six-cylinder, four-speed, sixty-horse-power 1911 model, regardless of income or outcome. The victim dreams, thinks, talks gasoline, trophies, magnetos, tires, and clutches, and has to be watched carefully to prevent him from mortgaging the old homestead. A SHORTFELLOW. HE jokes of Eden tol We may joke and j On the printed pages le A snack of puns and fanlty rhymes. remind us DOWN TO DATE. Johnny Leghorner—** Golly, chick, wher? did you get that coat from ?” billy Wyand * Twas incubated in a cold-storage plant."