Judge — May 20, 1922 — page 1: what you’re looking at

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# "And They Call It a Finishing School" This May 1922 *Judge* cartoon satirizes basketball as a violent sport disguised as refined physical education. The image shows three figures engaged in aggressive play—jumping, colliding, and scrambling for the ball—with one player falling beneath the others. The caption's irony is the key: calling basketball a "finishing school" mocks the sport's brutality while also playing on the era's "finishing schools" (exclusive institutions for young women's education and social refinement). The cartoon suggests basketball, promoted as civilized athletic training, actually involves roughhousing and physical chaos. This reflects 1920s debates about whether basketball was an appropriate, genteel activity or a dangerously rough sport unsuitable for participants (likely women, given the era's gender anxieties about sports).