Judge, 1916-11-04 · page 11 of 32
Judge — November 4, 1916 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This article mocks the contradiction between fashionable "humanitarian" club membership and practical reality. The title sarcastically contrasts well-intentioned kindness with actual safety. The author recounts three anecdotes ridiculing people who belong to various do-good societies ("Little-Deeds-of-Kindness Club," "Prevention of Anything and Everything Under the Sun," etc.). Each story shows these humanitarian advocates suffering comical consequences from their own benevolence: a man is kicked by a mule after removing a hornet; another worries himself sick reconciling conflicting animal-welfare rules; a third gets bitten and beaten while trying to simultaneously lecture a boy pestering a dog—all while respecting various organizational bylaws. The satire targets early 20th-century America's proliferation of reform organizations and the self-righteous, impractical adherents who join them. The point: genuine kindness requires common sense, not rigid adherence to club rules and social virtue-signaling. The bottom cartoon ("Not from Judge") offers an unrelated joke about Brown's joke-telling ability.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
{.Andersoe { Ox $. O. $. HUMANITY VERSUS SAFETY FIRST By FP. GREGORY TIS A fine thing to be hu- I mane. To belong to the Little-Deeds-of - Kindness Club and scatter joy to he hearts of the dumb animals along one’s pata is a noble thing—an excellent thing. But it has its limitations, The dumb animals—awfully dumb, some of them are—don’t always take the L. D. of K. as it is meant. I recall the case of a dear friend of mine who tried to be humane to avenerable mule. He noticed a hornet on the mule’s portside stern battery, and brushed it off. Then he was brushed off himself, by the mule, and later brushed up by his friends. He was somewhat scattered, but looked quite peaceful. Another friend of mine had a perfect passion for humanity. He belonged to all the Societies for the Prevention of Anything and Everything Under the Sun. He worried himself into a decline over the question of how he could be humane to a dog, under the regulations of the Society for the Betterment of the Status of Canines, without breaking the rules of the Society for the Preservation of Our National Insects, And I know another man who saw a dog with a can tied to its tail being pestered by a small boy. The man saw his HARTSWICK chance to kill two birds with one stone—figuratively, of course —and got hold of that dog’s collar, and held it while he admin- istered a corrective lecture to that boy. The boy howled, and his father, who was a bricklayer with very little sense of the humane, arrived on the run, During the subsequent mixup the dog bit my friend on the ex post facto, and the boy’s father NOT FROM JUDGE Chubbs—Have you heard Brown's latest joke ? Dubbs—Yes ; it’s rather worse than the other one he had.