Judge, 1917-01-13 · page 10 of 28
Judge — January 13, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is humorous social commentary on the bewildering experience of shopping in modern department stores, not political satire. The cartoon shows two male shoppers discussing the vastness of merchandise ("These department stores is enough"). The accompanying article narrates one man's frustrating quest to purchase hooks and eyes—a trivial sewing notions item. Herold satirizes the scale and confusion of 1920s-30s department stores: endless aisles, conflicting directions, overwhelming crowds of women with hatpins, and constantly contradictory information about where items are located. The humor targets urban consumer culture itself—the absurdity that finding a simple, inexpensive item requires navigating a massive building like a labyrinth. The narrator's comparisons (hospital wards, dragon-slaying, Charlie Chaplin) exaggerate his mild predicament for comic effect. This reflects contemporary anxiety about modern commercialism overwhelming everyday life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
there are racks, THESE Deparr- YES, ITs MENT STORES A WONDER 1S ENOUGH oe: A DIME’S WORTH OF HOOKS AND EYES By DON HEROLD WOULD rather run errands in the contagious ward of a I hospital or be a chiropodist in an animal zoo, than go after a dime’s worth of something in a department store. I would rather my wife would send me out to kill a dragon, and bring his teeth back to sow in our back yard. I am not right, in a department store. I don’t know whether sawdust on the floor would help, or not. I don’t know what would help. Two or three blocks away, I begin to feel the depression. And when I open the department store door I almost fall over in a swoon. There is something wrong with my lungs—they were not made for talcum powder and toilet water. Every time I enter a department store I wish I had an oxygen helmet. I stagger in, like a fireman in a moving picture. I put my hands up over my face to keep out the draught of talcum powder. The next thing I wish for is a road map. Where do you go, in a department store? Three hundred acres of floor space! Where do you go for a dime’s worth of hooks and eyes? I decide to go down an aisle. I do. I see stacks and stacks of mysterious things, things I did not know were in the world. Then I come up another aisle. Women are fingering through bins of filmy things, and and stacks of mysterious things I did not know ein the world. But I do not get even a clue of a hook and eye. I decide to try another floor. I go up, and get off promis- cuously and find myself among rows and rows of sewing machines. Here, at last, is a hook and eye clue! Here are the machines with which a woman sews on hooks and eye I say to a young lady: “Can I get hooks and eyes here?” She says: “No, this is the café.”” I try the elevator again. I am one man, and there are fifteen women and five hundred menacing hatpins. And a I wish for my oxygen helmet—but I know that I would to take it off in the elevator. I know elevator etiquette about oxygen -helmets. I decide to go down half as far as I came up. That will put me on the third floor. The ladies in the front row in the elevator won't Jet me out, though, and when at last I do find an opening, I am in the basement. “Oh, well,” I sigh to myself, shrugging my shoul- ders and lifting my arms resignedly, like Charlie Chaplin, “the basement is all right.” I learn it is the hardware department, and feel that at last T have found my hooks and eyes. Hooks and eyes—hardware, of course. For the first time, I find a man. I say, “Pard- ner, I’m looking for hooks and eyes.” “Hooks and eyes, ninth floor.” I look around for a place to sit down, and I would just as soon sit down and die while I am at it. One thing, anywa I have concluded to give the whole day to hooks and ey. 1 mop my brow and curse my destiny, curse matrimony, curse the metropolis, curse civilization, and wish I were back in the country where I could sit on a sugar barrel while the keeper of the general store hunts around for hooks and eyes. I tackle the elevator again and get off at the ninth floor. This time a sweet, victrola-voiced creature waits on me. This is my first compensation. . I take off my hat, though I don’t know whether that is done or not, and ask for hooks and eyes. “Hooks and eyes are in the second basement—fourteenth aisle to your right after you get off the elevator.” “T thought hardware——” “Hardware is the first basement.” “They told me down there—” “We have always had hooks and eyes up here, but just yesterday they were moved to the second basement.” By this time I am getting pretty meck. I am too tired to get any frothier. I talked out Joud to myself on the elevator, rather incoher- ently, as the elevator went down, and the women all looked at me suspiciously and pitifully. “You'd think my wife,” I muttered, “You'd think my wife was home in bed with nothing in the world to wear—all cold and shivering—waiting for hooks and eyes—never go out again till she gets ’em—penned in the house, raving for hooks and eyes, dying for the want of hooks and eyes. I'll take the second basement, boy. They say the hooks and eyes are in the basement today. Let me off at the second basement, boy. They say the hooks and eyes are in the scc, -c| basement today—always on the ninth floor before, but in the second basement today.” “Complete breakdown,” I hear one woman whisper to another. Big Town Sayings Figuring out just how much better he could do in the place of the boss is the chief mental exercise of ma: man. Probably the most difficult of all arts is giving an interesting recital of vacation experiences. —<Arthur Chapman. Wife rom to her husband in church) —Wake uj Husband—It's only the cat trying to get in, Jane. yere’s no- body in the house but us. comicbooks.com era