Judge, 1917-05-26 · page 9 of 32
Judge — May 26, 1917 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a dialogue between two Jewish businessmen—Max Markowitz (a skirt/clothing manufacturer) and Henry Shapiro (his bookkeeper and brother-in-law)—debating sales techniques. Markowitz boasts about landing a major $1,400 order through superior people skills, while Henry skeptically attributes it to luck with an "easy mark." The satire targets **Yiddish-inflected immigrant salesmanship culture** of early 20th-century America. Terms like "lemech" (fool) and "regelar" (regular) pepper their speech, emphasizing their ethnic identity. The humor relies on ethnic stereotypes: Markowitz's bombastic self-promotion, name-dropping (Bryan, Sunday, Warfield), and grandiose claims about understanding "human nature." The top illustration shows a figure standing on a cratered moon—likely referencing contemporary space exploration fantasies—captioned "St. Helena Would Be Too Near Home," suggesting their ambitions are absurdly cosmic. The page satirizes both aggressive immigrant entrepreneurship and the stereotyped Yiddish-American businessman archetype popular in period humor magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
— ST. MARKOWITZ AND HENRY Discuss a Talkative Buyer and a Tactful Salesman by LOU “ OCHLEMTEL, look!” triumphantly cried Max Marko- S witz, the skirt nufacturer. dashing from the show- room into the office and proudly throwing several closely written order-slips in front of Henry Shapiro, his bookkeeper and brother-in-law, “TL bet you, Henry, if a /emech like you would handle this buyer, maybe he'd give you a show and take fifty or sixty dollars woith on memoranda; but you'd have so much chance to land this fourteen hundred dollar order—all velvet, ninety per cent stickers—like Kaiser Wilhelm has got a chance to land on Oyster Bay.” “Stop shooting off your mouth with torpedoes and talking like a submarine captain before America jumped in the war!” retorted Henry, indignant at being called a /emech, “* Because you managed to catch an easy mark——" “An easy mark!” mimicked Markowitz, sarcastically emphasizing each syllable. “Such an easy mark may I be the rest from my life—till a hundred and twenty years—like this customer was an easy mark. He’s got a head on him like a general, and smart like a regelar senator. But I,—I know how to handle them and can sell a big bill of goods before you can tigger a little discount. Henry, if 1 wanted, I could sell Kill Bryan a cannen ball and Bill Sunday a highball! It’s be- cause | know human nature so good like David Wartield knows the Auctioneer. I know how to speak to a man just like his feelings. With a feller what's a graduate from a customer HELENA WOULD BE TOO NEAR HOME Attendant — “Taint! Hey! Stop annoying those ducks.” He's got my finger.”