Judge, 1915-02-20 · page 5 of 24
Judge — February 20, 1915 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes an early conservation movement to preserve whales from extinction. The illustration shows an "Antiques Restore" shop, punning on the whale preservation effort's apparent futility—treating a dying industry like salvaging broken antiques. The text references a specific controversy: a stranded whale carcass became a symbolic focal point. Rather than genuine humanitarian concern, the article mocks the "Save a Whale" campaign as performative activism—a fashionable cause celebre that allows people to virtue-signal without substance. The satire targets how the movement prioritizes the whale's symbolic value over practical action, noting the irony that the whaling industry (the *Whalemen's Shipping List*) is itself dying anyway. The joke: activists romanticize preservation while the real industry collapses on its own.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Wil “eg 'HE SHATTERED hulk of a whale, wrecked beyond repair by a bombard- ment of three-inch shells, was cast up by the sea the other day upon the Dutch coast. “Obviously,’” comments a dispatch, ‘‘it had been mistaken for a submarine."* So far as anybody knows, it was a neutral whale, carrying nothing in its hold but oil and little fishes and a small consignment of ambergris. Its only armor was a sheathing of fat, and in the way of defensive equip- ment it wasn’t even supplied with so much as a charge of tooth powder. Nothing was found in the pilot house but a quantity of bone. Every true lover of the square deal will class this bombardment as a proven atroc- ity. Never in its history has the whale done anything but tend to its own business and keep the peace. Only once ina long and honorable service on the high seas has the Cetus fleet been accused of partisanship. “SURELY THIS IS THE PLACE!” A V E A W H AL In the celebrated case of Noah—no, not Noah; Jonah—a whale rushed to the rescue of a violated citizen. But from purely hu- manitarian, unselfish motives! The whale volunteered its services as a transport, but took no part in the controversy. As you know, the whale always has been persecuted and marked for destruction. The present war, unless it is soon terminated, will send him on his way to join the dodo and the dinosaur. On the pretext that blackish craft spouting water through blow holes may be in reality torpedo boats or transports—Trojan horses of the sea—the warring nations may lawfully shatter every fat fish in the North Atlantic. How critical the situation has become is seen by the fact that 1915 already has wit- nessed the suspension of the Whalemen’s Shipping List, which had endured as a trade paper for seventy-two years, but now has been forced to discontinue: ‘‘It is no longer E!’’ feasible to maintain a periodical devoted to the interests of whaling.’’ Along with this comes the announcement that New Bedford, Mass., once a great cen- ter of the thriving industry of whaling, is about to symbolize changed times by open- ing a whaling museum. An agitation in the press saved the buffalo from extinction. The time is ripe to do as much for the persecuted whale. No other fish can lay a better claim to our affection, for no other has so big a heart. Let some reputable publication, which hasn’t much else to occupy its attention, become the offi- cial organ of the ‘‘Save a Whale’’ move- ment. Get some little fish that can talk like a whale to write the advertisements, and we'll raise a whale of a big subscrip- tion list. Let America cinch the credit of being the first to establish a whale preserve. Hark to the slogan and ‘*Save a Whale!"’ Charles Phelps Cushing. comicbooks.com