Judge, 1917-07-07 · page 9 of 27
Judge — July 7, 1917 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical cartoon about workplace conduct and Victorian-era social norms. A father confronts an office worker about kissing his daughter during a visit. The worker's defense—that he'd have kissed the man's wife or mother too—is meant to be humorous through its absurdity and the casual sexism it reveals. The joke relies on early 20th-century assumptions: that men routinely kissed women they encountered socially, that this was expected behavior among "respectable" people, and that the worker's indiscriminate friendliness somehow excuses the inappropriate advance on the daughter. The satire mocks both the worker's obliviousness and the broader social double-standards regarding women's treatment in professional spaces. The cartoon criticizes workplace impropriety while highlighting how normalized such behavior was.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘My daughter tells me that when she came here to your office yesterday you kissed her.”” “But, my dear sir, no disrespect intended. Why, if it had been my own wife or mother I should probably have done the same thing.”