Judge, 1919-12-13 · page 9 of 36
Judge — December 13, 1919 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis for Modern Readers This 1920s satirical piece mocks post-WWI labor radicalism and strikes. The illustration shows a disheveled man outside "Pomeworks Office" accosting passersby—likely depicting a labor agitator. The poem's narrator abandoned productive work to encourage striking, embracing idleness while his family starves ("hollow kids...trailing to the souphouse"). He admits he's "dippy, batty, nutty"—literally crazy—and celebrates this madness, claiming sanity would make him lonely in an era gone mad. The satire targets striking workers as delusional fanatics who harm their own families through ideological zealotry. The repeated "strike, strike" refrain and the narrator's gleeful acceptance of poverty and his wife's suffering mock labor activism as irrational extremism. The cartoon suggests strikers prioritize abstract principles ("make the people free") over basic family welfare—a common conservative argument against the era's labor movements.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“I Am Divey, Batty, Nutty, axo My Reasox’s Been Mistarp.” Crazy By Watt Masc Illustration by Raeut oO" the future’s pretty hazy, with the shadows grow- ing dense, for we all are going crazy; no one has a lick of sense. When the war was done and ended, and the Peace Dove was in view, we should then have straightway wended to the tasks we used to do; shaking off the katzenjammer that the long drawn conflict made, it was ours to seize the hammer and the shovel and the spade; it was ours to blithe- ly mizzle to the anvil and the loom, and to do things with the chisel, and to make the country bloom. But our souls were sick and yellow, and we said, “We'll rant around, and we'll Iet the other fellow bale the hay and till ‘the ground. Labor isn’t to our liking, earnest effort is a frost; so we'll go on striking, striking, shunning toil and blame the cost.” So the neighbors saw me falter ip the work I'd done so long, and I junked my lyre and psaffer, and harangued the passing throng; oh, I ragged the people hiking up the road where workers roam, urging them to keep on striking till the bob-tailed cows came home. I am sounding frantic screeches, pawing up and down the street, and I've soaked my hat and breech and I haven't much to eat; and my wife is always wailing that 3ARTON she'd rather far be dead, and the hollow kids are trailing to the souphouse to be fed. And I find the sledding rougher than it ever used to be, but I'll like a martyr suffer if "twill make the people free. I am dippy, batty, nutty, and my reason’s been misl: and my dome is full of putty, and the putty is decayed. But I’d be extremely lonely if I manifested sense; for I fear I'd be the only balanced gent in evidence. All the ‘orld is daft and silly, moderation looks like cheese; and a fellow would feel chilly to be sane in times like these. All the boys are busy striking, sending labor galley west, and I'd be a piker piking, if I didn’t join the rest. So I rant and paw and clamor and denounce things all the day, and I yip and yap and yammer in my merry bughouse way ; and my wife is needing clothing and her comments are not nice, but I turn from her with loathing when she asks me for the price. And my boys are needing bitters and my girls need cigarettes, but he is the worst of critters who for wages toils and sweats, so I have no coin to hand them, and their tears are sad to see, till I urge them and command them to get out and strike like m If this pome is queer and ratty, full of breaks of divers sorts, just remember I am batty, and my dome is full of quartz. id,