Judge, 1911-07-15 · page 16 of 24
Judge — July 15, 1911 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes two emerging issues of the early aviation age: **"Aerial Property Rights"** (main article): Waltham, Massachusetts florists petitioned courts to prevent airplanes from flying over their hothouses, fearing damage. The author (William J. Lampton) humorously argues that if landowners own airspace above their property (per old Roman law), wealthy aviation interests will simply buy political influence to develop the sky—creating aerial sidewalks, electric lights, parks, and suburbs. This will ironically kill the airplane business itself, yet redirect capital into "progress." The satire mocks both small-business anxiety about new technology and the predictable corruption of urban development. **"Wanted It Homelike"**: A separate joke about an American college student in Switzerland asking a waitress for beer. She asks "blonde or brunette?" (the beer types). He requests blonde beer "with a touch of peroxide to make it seem natural"—mocking American vanity and the era's obsession with artificially bleached hair, presented as crude American tourist behavior. The top illustration shows elaborately decorated women's heads on flower stems—visual pun on "American beauties" (flowers and women).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
SUPPORTS FOR AMERICAN BEAUTIES. AERIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. ERTAIN florists at Wal- tham, Mass., have peti- tioned the courts or some other power for an in- junction or something to prevent aerial navigat- ors from sailing their airboats over their hothouses, lest they fall into them, thus causing irreparable damage to glass and flowers, or words to that effect. As such a case has never been in the courts, the authorities are at a loss how to de- cide it, their only precedent being the old Roman law which gave to the owner of the surface of the land an ownership as far down as the center of the earth and as far up as space extended. If that be accepted as judgment in this case and the Waltham florists can estab- lish their right to the air as well as the earth under it, then other land owners may do the same, and the aeroplane proposition be- gins to look as though it were backed off the aerial platform, or words to that effect. But they can come back at their opponents and get even in another way. Of course the aeroplane peo- ple have all the money they want, and, with this as a base of supplies, what they can’t do isn't worth invoic- ing. What they will do will be to incorporate all the land under municipal By WILLIAM J. LAMPTON government, and then compel the land owners to improve their property not only on the ground, but up in the air as well, They can do it if they get into city politics right, and men with money always do. The result will be that within a few years we will be having, all over this broad land, aerial sidewalks, aerial electric lights, aerial street im- provements, aerial parks, aerial subdivi- sions with flaming real-estate advertise- ments, aerial water works, aerial sub- way, elevated, and surface lines; aerial boulevards, aerial gas lamps, aerial tele- phones, aerial suburbs, and all the whole darn shooting-match of things which hitherto did not prevail in the vast, un- improved aerial territory. Of course it will knock the aeroplane business silly, A SINGLE THOUGHT. Both coupler—" My! what fanny things people tie to."” but what of that? With all those im- provements in the air there won’t be any need of aeroplanes, anyhow, and the capital, energy, brains, enterprise, and the rest of it now absorbed by flying machines will be diverted into other channels of progress, and the aeroplan- ists will really be happier than they now are and won't have half so far to fall. The air has never been improved dur- ing all the long years of its existence and remains exactly to-day as it was when it was first opened up for human use, and the wonder is that it has been neglected so long. There is so much of it, too, and it issohandy. At first blush we thought those Waltham florists were a bunch of mossbacks, but, come to think of it, they are really the Colum. buses of a great discovery and no man knoweth whith- er their first step in a new direction will lead the whole world. Wanted It Homelike. AN AMERICAN college youth stopped for re- freshment at the little inn on top of Sonnenberg, in Switzerland, and asked the petite waitress for beer. “Blonde or brunette?"* she asked, after the custom of the country. “A little blonde for mine,’’ he replied, ‘‘with just a touch of peroxide to make it seem natural.’" comicbooks.com