Judge, 1913-10-04 · page 8 of 24
Judge — October 4, 1913 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine page contains satirical commentary on early 20th-century American life. **Top Comic Strip ("The Whole Thing"):** Four panels show a motorcycle journey with labeled crew members (Engineer, Stoker, Navigator, Crew), likely mocking the novelty and complexity of early motorcycles—treating them as requiring multiple operators like a ship. **Main Column ("His Caustic Comment" by Tom P. Morgan):** "Uncle Fogy" (an old curmudgeon character) sarcastically praises Sunday newspapers for entertaining him with absurd human-interest stories. He lists ridiculous incidents—a woman attacking her husband with a soda siphon, crime statistics, failed marriages—and uses them to comfort himself that he's not worse off. The satire targets both sensationalist newspaper journalism and smug complacency. **Bottom Section:** Two brief jokes: one about a literary woman spanking her baby "with a book," and another labeled "Tangoing" mocking people with disabilities dancing (the tango was a contemporary dance craze). The latter reflects period attitudes—presenting disabled people as objects of amusement rather than dignity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ENGINEER «e6'THE Sunday newspapers,” grimly vouchsafed old Uncle Fogy, ‘‘are great and beneficent institutions. They furnish me with in- formation that other- wise I'd prob'ly never _ get and provide me with the consoling knowledge that there AY are plenty of people a great deal worse off than I am. When I EASES read, as I recently did, about a feverish lady who, during a tiff with the hus- band of her bosom, hurled a soda-water siphon at him, which missed him when he dodged, and went through a window, dropped into a motor car and exploded like a bomb, chopping up the occupants of the car more or less, I re- joice, for the reason that as I don’t own a motor I very nat- urally hate everybody who does, When I discover, in the de- partment of useful information for the masses, that there are in the world twice as many blind men as blind women, I say to myself that fully that many more men than women have seen everything, any- how. I am comforted when I read of a damsel who eloped with a village constable and after two weeks of wedded blister dented the officer's head with his own club, because he couldn’t support her in the style to which she was unac- customed, and then landed in jail, where she now occupies her time by writing poetry— because it shows me that my nephew who married a lady elocutionist might have done worse; she does nothing but NAVIGATOR THE WHOLE THING His Caustic Comment By TOM P, MORGAN elocute. And when I see where a preach- er has taken off his coat and done sleight- of-hand tricks in the pulpit, in order to get closer to the sin-sick masses, I feel that, after all, mebby I have some little excuse, despite the contrary opinion of my niece, for occasionally sneaking off fishing on the Sabbath. Thus I go on through my favorite Sunday newspaper, gleaning entertainment and solace from what I read—the strange facts invented by the special writers, the ponderous proclamations of college presidents who need the advertising, the latest unimpor- tant discoveries by world-famed scien- tists whom nobody ever heard of before, the newest foolishness of fashion, and so forth—and am stimulated by the conclu- sion that is forced upon me that the world is not growing wiser so rapidly but what I can still hope, if not to keep up with the van of the procession, to at least retain my humble perch on the last load."” “Awfully Literary” Maizie—I hear that your brother's wife is real literary. Saidie—Oh, she is! She’s awfully lit- erary! When she spanks her baby, she does it with a book! A new hat on your head is worth two smashed straws, TANGOING Rufus—Crazy, ain't it, mother? Martha—Ob, no, Rufe. It’s nice to see the poor cripples enjoying themselves. comicbooks.com