Judge — November 12, 1921 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes a burglar's complaint about changing theft prevention methods. "Second-story Jiggers" is a burglar specializing in upper-floor break-ins (a "second-story job" was criminal slang for such robberies). The joke mocks his professional obsolescence: he spent a decade mastering his craft—breaking into second-story windows—only to find homeowners have adapted by moving valuables to basement storage, rendering his expertise useless. The satire targets both the burglar's misplaced sense of injured pride and, implicitly, society's ongoing arms race between criminals and self-protection measures. It's a darkly humorous commentary on how criminal "specialization" becomes worthless when targets evolve their defenses. The cartoon assumes readers understood burglar slang and contemporary urban crime concerns.