Judge, 1915-07-10 · page 15 of 28
Judge — July 10, 1915 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks the era's obsession with radium as a miraculous cure-all. The author humorously proposes a radium golf ball—glowing so brightly it cannot be lost—as a solution to golfers' chronic frustration with disappearing balls. The joke relies on radium's 1920s-era status as a fashionable, expensive "wonder substance" touted for implausible benefits (appearing in consumer products from cosmetics to health tonics). The author exaggerates the premise absurdly: listing $97,000-per-ounce radium costs, imagining caddies stealing glowing balls, and promoting "twenty-four-hour golf" as if nighttime golf were desirable. The cartoon also includes an unrelated satirical note about wealthy women stopping cars in front shops to avoid paying inflated prices, plus a light romantic poem ("Caddie Cupid") about romance on the golf links.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
on at If as le If pi., Filling a Long-Felt Want T HAS always been my ambition to go down in \ history as a benefactor. Thanks to a happy fal rN inspiration, my dream is to be realized. Unless 3.4: \—\— there is an error somewhere in my calculations, x = Iam going to hand posterity the greatest inven- tion since T. R. invented truth. Behold .a me the inventor of the radium golf ball. If there ever was a Long-Felt Want filled, the radium golf ball fills it. Can you imagine a radium golf ball, for instance, hiding be- neath a tuft of grass, while the caddies, your partner, your an- tagonists and seven impatient persons playing behind you scrutin- ize the earth over a ten-acre radius, trying to find it? Can you picture a radium golf ball nestling along the bottom of te a mT pitg tA wi 4 “DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP!" a pebble-lined gully and quietly passing itself off as a rock, while you slowly undermine your mentality wondering if you could have missed the stroke entirely, after all? Can you fancy your caddie surreptitiously crunching a radium golf ball into the soil with his foot, while ostensibly trying to fathom the mystery of its disappearance, only to breed suspicion “* Harold, how often must I ask you not to stop directly in front of these shops? They double their prices immediately they see one drive up in a car.” and ill feeling in the club by selling it to the first friend who comes along playing through? Indeed, no! A radium ball, scintillating like a 17,000-candle- power shirt stud, will be so aggressively visible that even a New York detective couldn't overlook it. Moreover, the radium ball will remove one tremendous handicap to the game that has long weighted the hearts of golfomaniacs with sorrow; it will make all-night golf possible! Expensive? Only relatively. The saving on lost balls will pay for a pair of radium balls in one season, with radium at its pres- ent price of $97,000 per ounce. And the mental relief and moral uplift of a non-losable ball are beyond all sordid calculation. Hail to the radium golf ball! Saver of money, mind and mor- als, and inaugurator of twenty-four-hour golf!—w. Kee Maxwell. ] Caddie Cupid ‘OW THAT dawns are fair, Now that noons are sunny, Bird song in the air, Bees a-hoarding honey, What has Cupid done, Roguish little laddie? Just (he says) for fun, Cupid has turned caddie! Trippingly he fares; Putter, cleek and brassie O’er the links he bears For a bonnie lassie. Cunning in his eye, Pert in cap and plaidie, Mischievous and sly, Cupid has turred caddie! Yet I'm filled with glee; Days no more are grewsome. Life henceforth will be An eternal ‘‘twosome."’ For you will divine, Through this cannie laddie, Madge—Why did you decide on the shore instead of the mountains? Maud—Because, my dear, I had absolutely nothing to wear. Lass and game are mine— Cupid has turned. caddie! —Clinton Scollard.