Judge, 1914-08-01 · page 9 of 24
Judge — August 1, 1914 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This piece satirizes wealthy employers' self-delusional hypocrisy about servant labor. The family advertises for a maid offering minimal work ("no washing, no ironing...no nothing") and maximum free time—an obvious impossibility they claim to offer from "generosity." When a plainly-dressed girl arrives, the employers patronize her, assuming she's been exploited her whole life because her clothes lack luxury (no "automobile gantlets," no "Nile green" veil). They obsess over her deprivation while simultaneously trying to hire her cheaply, eventually settling her upstairs and congratulating themselves on their benevolence. The satire targets class pretense: employers congratulating themselves for "generosity" while perpetuating low wages and harsh conditions. The joke is that their elaborate concern for the servant's welfare masks pure economic self-interest. The ironic title—"Our New Hired Girl"—emphasizes she belongs to them.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Our New Hired Girl E CHARM has worked again. We advertised for a servant girl, one who would appreciate & home of refinement, where she could have her afternoons and evenings off, with no washing, no ironing, no scrubbing, no baking, no mopping, no nothing. She came. She came in radiance, with a new hat fluttering jauntily over her left ear and descending in a broad but graceful sweep over her right brow. A mere touch at the doorbell and her presence was announced. We knew the moment we saw her that she was the We ushered her into the darkened parlor and gave her aseat on the long sofa, right near the sheet of Tangle- In fact, she was welcome to two seats, but she politely yet firmly declined. We thought she would, but, then, we wanted to show her right from the first that we were of a generous disposition. No, she would not remove her hat or her gloves or She preferred to remain incog., so that in case of adisturbance she wouldn't have to prove an JUDGE'S MOTION PICTURES PROFITABLE SPATIENT | EFFECTS A qui RECOVERY The Lure of the Diamond: or, Interfering Profedsionally HE KNEW HER Insurance agent—Take out a policy for twenty thousand. Then if you die your wife won't go hungry! Jones—Yes she would; and put the income into clothes. alibi or reveal her identity. It wasa@ very difficult matter to approach the subject of wages. One glance at her was enough to tell that she had been neglected in the past. Her gloves were not automobile gantlets, nor was her veil one of the Nile green variety that blooms on the back seat of a red flyer. Her skirt was not a riding habit. Her bootees were not built for long cross-country tramps. Her gold-headed umbrella was not a golf stick. We could hardly bear to look at her and think that all her life she had been deprived of all the opportunities that any domestic should enjoy. No doubt she had spent her evenings in the kitch- en, eating bakery cookies and reading the fashion hints or toasting her shins by the aid of the electric toaster. Naturally we dropped our eyes to the hardwood floor, where they lit with a thump. This startled her, and she dropped the suggestion that some folks have been known to exist on eleven dollars a week. Before she could boost her figures, we had her telephone for her trunks, and now she is safely lo- cated in the front suite upstairs, with free access to the sleeping porch, so that she can recover a bit of her lost nerve. Geo. F. Paul. A Marine Character ‘He should be quite at home by the seashore.’ “Yes; he has sandy hair, watery eyes and plenty of ‘rocks,’ and, more- over, thinks himself the only pebble on the beach,"” comicbooks.com