Judge, 1916-04-29 · page 11 of 28
Judge — April 29, 1916 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the early 20th-century American "servant girl problem"—the widespread difficulty wealthy households faced hiring and retaining domestic servants. The dialogue between Markowitz and Henry depicts Jewish immigrant perspectives on this issue. Markowitz complains that prospective servant girls ("goils") reject employment due to various household conditions: too much ash on rugs, visitors playing pinochle, or the presence of certain family members. He notes that firing cooks or replacing servants remains practically impossible. Henry counters with sarcasm, arguing that servants themselves cause problems—preventing household simplicity, necessitating automobiles and telephones to manage them. He romanticizes homes without servants as having mothers, children, and fathers who actually know each other. The elevator boy Jim's final sarcastic interjection—asking if Henry has his own home—undercuts both men's complaints, suggesting their argument is academic. The cartoon mocks immigrant attitudes toward labor, domestic hierarchy, and the era's class anxieties about servant availability and household management.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT glass, and the color of the wall paper in her room so she toined up her nose and wouldn’t talk to me. The next goil asked me if we got a lot of visitors. So I was happy, and said mazel tov to myself. Here, I get one! I told her about Louis Marcus and Harry Grossman, and the Kibetzer chorus, how they come around steady to play pinocle, drink tea and smoke, but that settled it! She said she wouldn’t go, if she got a thousand dollars a month to a place where they played pinocle. There was too much ashes on the rug. [ tell you, Henry I would much better talk to a million cut-throat buyers, then to one of them fresh goils from the Intelligence Office.” “And what become of the fourth goil?” inquired Henry. She wanted to know if Minnic had red hair,and who was our * replied Markowitz. “She was an English goil, and looked tisticd when I told her what a brunette Minnie was; when L told her Matilda’s name, she said she would go on the condition that we fire the cook. Dos alles!’ So I’m ashamed to go home to Minnie now without a goil.” “Why not call up Edison on his tele- phone,and ask him to make you an electric soivant goil?” i cook. Markowitz. improvements! On the hands, a tele phone; on the feet, an otomobile; on chickens, an incomebaiter. So that now a chicken don’t have to sit so much, a lady don’t have to walk so much and a French- man don’t have to talk so much. But by soivant goils it is just the same like thou- sands of years ago. The only difference isthat Abraham and Sarah gave Hagar, the foist soivant goil in the woild, the sack, and she went away in the wilderness erying like anything. Now, the missus cries! I would like to see any missus send her goil away! If they would and the goil would goerying with a bundle on Lenox Avenue, there would bea hundred ladies running after her, offering her wages like to a big baseball player, with boithday presents every month. 1 don’t blame them; you got to have a goil in the house; you can’t get along without them.” “Got to have goils!” exclaimed Henry. “Believe me, Max, many a house would be a hundred times better off without soivant goils! What do you think would happen without so many soivants? The noivous doctors would have to sell their otomobiles, poor littl doggies would run around without kisses, and the smell of pork and beans and gefulte fish would be hoid all over Riverside Drive. Swell apartments would become homes; homes would have mothers; mothers would have children; children would have fathers and fa thers would know what they were cating without an intoiprete: Many soivant goils would have homes of their own and ’—— Say, Henry Shapiro, ain't you got a home of your own?” sarca: tically cried Jim, the elevator boy, who had been waiting to tak Markowitz and Henry downstairs. “This is the last trip!” And the servant girl problem still remains a domestic puzzle. Supday golfer (to husband) —Don't you think it would be much nicer, John, to at least park ° the car over in front of the church? comicbooks.com