Judge — April 27, 1918 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This political cartoon by H.C. Greening satirizes the U.S. Postal Zone Law, which divided the country into mail delivery zones. The satire extends this "sectionalization" concept absurdly across American life: **Key images show:** - The Washington Monument broken into sections - A man's face divided into compartmentalized parts - Churches, schools, and cemeteries each "sectioned" - Snow storms, transportation, and burials all fragmented by zones - A U.S. map divided into regions **The point:** The cartoon mocks the impracticality of dividing everything by postal zones, suggesting the law's logic taken to its extreme reduces national unity and creates bureaucratic chaos. The final caption—"Why stop at sectionalizing our periodicals?"—sarcastically questions whether limiting mail delivery to zones ultimately fragments the entire nation into disconnected pieces. The cartoon warns that postal zone regulations, while perhaps well-intentioned, represent excessive government compartmentalization threatening national cohesion.