Judge, 1915-11-20 · page 9 of 28
Judge — November 20, 1915 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humor piece satirizes a garrulous tourist woman touring the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. The joke is her breathless, meandering complaints about working conditions: she frets that workers are underpaid and tempted to steal money, worries the chemical smell is unhealthy, and sympathetically notes that President Wilson is "putting temptation in the way of poor girls" by having them handle millions while earning pittance. The satire targets both her naive moralizing and her obliviousness—she rambles endlessly about tangential gossip (the minister's wife's age) while badgering her patient guide. The caption "Every Inch a Man" (likely ironic) frames the guide's weary professionalism amid her relentless questioning. The final cartoon punchline—"Look Out, Mister, Here Comes a Squirrel!"—suggests her attention has wandered entirely, mocking her scattered, unfocused mind.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
E WAS - guiding a keen-eyed little woman through the g Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington and she had told him in the beginning that he was not to “skip” any- thing. “Tus the first time I have ever been to Washing- ton and like enough it'll be the last, and so I want to see all that there is to see,” she had sai “My husband’s cousin was here two years ago and she told me that no matter what else I missed I must see them make money Mebbe you guided her through here. She was with a party of four who had come on to a conven Our minister and his wife, the Rev. Mr. Sparks, a kind of a smallish man with gla though he isn’t more than thirt wearing gla: older than he is without his hat and his wife is two years older than he is but looks younger and she doesn’t like it known that she is older but I know a cousin of hers who has told me her age to a day and—what are they doing here?” “This is the first process in the making of money. You see these——" INCH A A Bewildered Guide By JOL WARBOUR “What a lot of people there are working on it! Is it true that they are all locked in here all day and that they are not allowed to go out at night until they have all been stripped and searched? I have heard that that was the rule and I said then and I say now that I simply wouldn’t work in a place ey thought 1 They get paid so little for their work, according to what I have heard, that you couldn't blame some of ’em if they did hide a bill or two in their stockings now and then. It must be awful aggervating to handle millions of dollars every day and not be able to take any of it. [ think that President Wilson is simply putting tempta- tion in the way of poor girls having them handle so much money and giving them so little of it. What makes it smell so funny in here?” MAN" “Tt is the chemicals they have to use “Couldn't they invent chemicals that would smell pleasanter? Pugh! I'd hate to work all-day in a place that smells like this. Might about as well be in a glue factory. And I don’t think that it is healthy. Some of those girls and women look as if it was telling on them. Where’s that woman who can count a billion of dollars a day without LOOK OUT, MISTER, HERE COMES A SQUIRREL!