Judge, 1911-11-25 · page 12 of 24
Judge — November 25, 1911 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1911 *Judge* page satirizes two distinct topics: **"Compulsory Thanksgiving"** (main article): Ellis O. Jones ridicules the idea of making Thanksgiving mandatory by law. He uses absurdist logic—if a President refuses to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation, Wall Street turkeys would crash. He then mocks the impulse toward compulsory gratitude, suggesting that legally mandating everyone be equally thankful at a set hour would be bureaucratic overreach. The satire targets both government overreach and shallow materialism (cold-storage turkeys vs. genuine gratitude). **"Holding Him Down"** (cartoon above): Two men stand by a car; one warns the other about his wife's jealousy, jokingly comparing himself to baseball player Ty Cobb on third base—implying marital surveillance. **"Frequently the Case"** (bottom snippet): A doctor fails to cure a patient because the patient exhausted his money paying the doctor's examination fee—satirizing medical costs and the contradiction of unaffordable healthcare.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JSones—' Smith HY SHOULD such an important matter as Thanksgiving be left to the mere whim of what might happen to be a mere President? Suppose things might not go well with one of our Presi- dents some time, and he should accord- ingly refuse to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and thus omit the Novem- ber course from the national feast-day menu. Then where would we be? Wall Street would be in anuproar. The quo- tations on turkeys would fall and the bottom would drop out of mince pies common. Such a catastrophe might even happen under a Republican administration; but, worse yet, we might some day have a Democratic or a Socialistic President, and it would be very humiliating for us Does yo * Closely ? HOLDING HIM DOWN jar wife watch you closely ?"* Compulsory Thanksgiving. By ELLIS O. JONES. more respectable people to gather about the dyspeptic board at the casual, arbi- trary and capricious behest of such a one. Furthermore, there is a growing tend- ency among the populace to subordinate the substance of Thanksgiving to the form, to put the body before the spirit. That is due to the fact that, while Thanksgiving is legal, it has’ not been formally legalized. If, therefore, Thanksgiving were incorporated into the statutes, we should all be compelled to find something for which we should be and must be thankful at a particular hour of a particular day each and every year, this act to take effect on and after its passage. This would make us a!l equal before the law. The bulls and the bears and the lambs would all give Why, you “d think I was Ty Cobb on third, and she was pitching."” The man thanks in the same degree. who paid forty cents a pound for cold- storage turkey would have to be just as thankful as the man who received it, and the man who ate it as the man who served it. Giving thanks is a boonful privilege, but it should be rigidly regulated. Frequently the Case. «PID _Dr. Cutting do you any good?” “Not a bit”’ “But they say he never fails to cure such cases as yours."’ “He failed to cure mine. You see, I had no money left to pay him for a pre- scription after settling with him for the examination."" Arter Turkey, Grease. comicbooks.com