Judge, 1919-12-13 · page 7 of 36
Judge — December 13, 1919 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis for Modern Readers This page contains two pieces of satirical content about "jobbers"—wholesale distributors or middlemen in the advertising and retail supply chain. **Top cartoon:** Shows children discussing Christmas presents. One child complains he received "thousands" of blame-worthy items, satirizing how jobbers become convenient scapegoats for business problems. **Main article:** S.V. Benet's essay treats jobbers as mythical, incomprehensible figures (comparing them to creatures from Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear). The author describes them as mysterious "round rolling personages" inhabiting an advertising underworld. The accompanying illustration shows a conversation between business associates about jobbers' inadequacy—one admits jobbers aren't "good enough" but represent "the best I could get." **The satire:** Jobbers were essential but unglamorous middlemen whom retailers and advertisers blamed for supply problems, delays, or quality issues. Judge ridicules this scapegoating by portraying jobbers as either mythical nonsense-creatures or as necessary evils deserving sympathy—the actual targets of business frustration remain largely invisible.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Pp De ComstyteR 5-82, = Drawn by J. Coxacirn “What's th’ matter, Jimmie? Didden yuh get no Christmas “Sure 1 got Christmas presents!—I got thousan's o° them!—I got th’ t Jobbers By S. V. Benet blame things on me.” JRE my sojourn in the Looking-Glass Land round rolling hills, almost entirely covered with little called Advertising—that marvellous realm of round rolling personages, bounding about like rubber conferences and dominant space and aroused _ balls ona pavement and uttering everywhere the strange, consumer-consciousness—I__ had heart-piercing cries of their race. always thought of a jobber with Thus, in my scholastic igno- the same vague, mythological rance, I thought of jobbers. reverence devoted to such crea- Now tures as the snark or the pobble. “WV And indeed the rotund and plen- to these jobbers!” was the first of the word “job- command of my new employer. ably nonsensical and I wrote it. It was followed by “Taxicab” may many others. I have pleaded . with jobbers, bullied jobbers, dis- dained the devices of jobbers. With hypothetical tears in my mental eyes, I have passionately me a four-page letter meaningless. well be, as Lord Dunsany be- lieves, the secret password of a most evil order—but “jobber” suggests itself as an Open Ses- Drawn by M ame to the universe created by an —I'm not good enough for you, besought the jobbers of heating- one Edward Lear. “Jobher”—a ating it know it, but you're the best aPPliances to pluck the golden great, smooth succession of little I could get. ° apples from the wing of Success 1 12-13-19