Judge, 1911-08-19 · page 9 of 24
Judge — August 19, 1911 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece by Henry Albert Phillips mocks the practice of wealthy American families marrying off their daughters to impoverished European nobility. The cartoon shows an airplane (likely representing modern speed/progress) spraying water on crops—visually representing how foreign nobles "harvest" American wealth. The text details the scheme: foreign noblemen with titles but empty pockets seduce American debutantes whose mothers eagerly pursue such matches for social prestige. The satirist lists the targets: the daughter, her mother, and finally—reluctantly—the capitalist father who finances the whole affair. The satire's sting: these daughters discover too late they've married literal gold bricks—titles mask financial ruin, gambling debts, and mistresses. The joke is that American money temporarily props up European aristocratic pretense, benefiting no one but the nobility. The smaller cartoon about an ice-cream megaphone appears unrelated—likely filler or a separate item.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Silas—" USED TO BE WHEN A DRY SPELL LIKE THIS WOULD WORRY A FELLER, BUT NOW, BY HECK; THERE AIN'T NOTHING TO IT.” THE GOLDEN HARVEST. HOSE fetching foreign noble- men are with us again, gar- nering the golden harvest. They are so like a successful vaccination—they are forever “‘taking.’’ There is no need to ask what—for I have made up my mind to tell you. They first take the eye of some proud mamma with a marketable daughter-at-large and a hankering after an infusion of blood‘ guar- By HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS. two, because it must be separated from the inevitable ‘‘i’’—-which is the skep- tical male parent himself, who does not believe in dots, being usually a capital- ist, invariably spelling it thus—I. But they’re a persistent lot, this noble race—not to mention ambitious mamma and anxious ‘‘baby.’’ When they want a thing there’s not heaven to pay. When, too, Dook Bloo Blud, No A. anteed ‘‘fast’? blue by some royal dyer. Next they take the silly little debutante, soul and body, who has probably been reading the ‘Duchess”” since she went to board- ing school a few years back and needs no thoughtful parent's urg- ing to squeeze the hero- ine’s tight boots on one end of her dainty self if there’s a tinseled coronet on the other. Last and most backward of all to Count Spondulix, Lord Only Knows, and Prince of the Vagabonds have ancestral axes to grind and castles to mend or in pawn, gambling debts and pursuing tail- ors to pacify. So it all results in a link- ing of the dollar sign with the peerage, a smart wedding, with police on hand to restrain uninvited guests, smirks from mass and approving nods from class, columns of easy ‘‘copy’’ for the news- papers, and seemingly the affair is over. It is, for the public—but not usu- ally for the bride; forher it has just begun. For— not always — but often, very, very often—she finds that the gilded thing her mother bought her is agold brick! (Look over some old newspapers and then think it over.) E SELDOM think seriously about charity beginning at | home untii some one Emtec] hands us a subscrition take is the insignificant “dot”? of a million or “Hurry, FELLOWS! THIS ICE-CREAM MEGAPHONE WILL MAKE A HIT WITH THE ROOTERS.” paper. comicbooks.cop