Judge, 1917-06-23 · page 7 of 28
Judge — June 23, 1917 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine page satirizes early 20th-century "back-to-the-land" and urban gardening movements, likely related to WWI-era food conservation efforts. The cartoon shows city dwellers attempting vegetable gardening on a tenement fire escape—an absurdly impractical urban setting for farming. The accompanying "Notion Counter" column by Douglas Malloch contains satirical aphorisms mocking wartime economics and social changes. Key jabs include: criticism of inflated college costs versus low wages, mockery of women prioritizing wedding clothes over marriage choice, and cynical quips about profiteering from war and rising postage rates. The "shanghai-re" maids reference alludes to labor shortages as men enlisted. Overall, the page ridicules both the impracticality of urban farming initiatives and broader wartime economic anxieties among the middle class.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
(UM THE “‘TILL THE SOIL’? MOVEMENT IN THE METROPOLIS HERE ought io be a scale for public speakers. A man ought to get S100 for a ten-minute specch, $75 for fifteen, $50 for twenty, $25 for twenty-five, S10 for thirty, and for anything over thirty he ought to be fined A man never gees wrong without realizing that there are reasons why he shouldn't, but the de ays sees to it that he can’t think of the reasons at the time. I never could understand how a man could go to a $2,000 college professor and get an education that would pay him $10,000 a year. If a woman would only give the same thought and attention to picking out a husband that she does to picking out wallpaper! A woman seems to be more concerned about what she is going to wear at her wedding than what she is going to marry. Just when we thought we had gotten rid of the coalman for a few months he comes around and asks us if we want ice. We are afraid that there are a lot of people going to get rich out of this war, and that it isn’t going to be us. You can pretty nearly figure where the old man thinks the boy got the qualities his dad is so proud of. People who spend all they earn seldom earn all they spend. THE NOTION COUNTER | books bought from an agent: He By DOUGLAS 2A ee Eee, Kor To a man marriage is like | ways wonders if he was sold. It’s rather mean of Uncle Sam to send a girl's fellow to the front and then raise the postage. The trouble is that we are not diss poor but because we are not rich. Many aman who won't take anything from anybody doesn’t mind his wife taking in washing. My idea of tainted money is the dime that the “No Chil- dren Admitted” sign attracts. It’s a good idea to be warmly in favor of anything you don’t dare be agai Poets agree that the most shameful example of waste is the editorial basket. Now that vegetables are coming up, seems to us that they ought to come down. College is no more than out when the government raises other taxation. Now is the time for all good women to enlist in the preserve MALLOCH tisfied because we are corps. We used to hire a maid, but now we have to shanghai-re them.