Judge — June 3, 1922 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Drawn by Gakoner O. REA. “I have just applied for a patent on a combination pipe-cleaner, nut-pick, monkey- wrench, lock-jimmy, shoe-buttoner, bodkin, hinge, safety-clasp, toothpick, tweezers, cigarette-holder and garter.” “Great, old man! “From my wife. is he? Seek him out and give him hell. That is the first step in effi- ciency. But you have probably got him stewing in the common juice with the lightning rod peddlers of the last century. You lack imagination. No wonder your place is losing prestige.” The Devil was puzzled. His whole method seemed old-fashioned. He was practically without a cost system, with no place in his bookkeeping for over- head, with no time clock, no smoke consumer on his furnace; just an old cracked firepot that keeps leaking in earthly volcanoes and squirting gas in geysers, and making a nui- sance of itself generally. The Expert was severe. “What you need, first of all, is to round up these inventors. They are what keeps hell full. Then get a policy. Either keep ’em sizzling all crisp and brown and basted on both sides, or reward them for their valuable assistance. Every time an inventor turns his hand to a trick, he starts men to quarreling over it, or swear- ing at it, or grinding the faces off the poor with it, or erecting vast injustices in society with it, and so hell is a-popping for a hundred years. By the way,” asked the Ex- pert, turning quickly to the Devil, “did you every try to find out what inventor of all the long line down the ages raised the most hell?” The Devil shook a dubious head, but ventured: “The man who in- vented the wheel. He is the father of commerce!” “Not so bad for a beginner,” ad- mitted the Expert. “But the trouble with commerce is that man in his perversity is making it honest. It doesn’t do you much good now. Commerce used to mean bargaining, and that meant swindling and lying and deceit. But mass production and the Federal Trade Commission are straightening up commerce. Where'd you get the idea?” You see, it’s a hairpin.” Doubtless the League of Nations will soon make it as pious as Rockefeller. You should have been roasting the in- ventor of the wheel all these thousands of years. But it’s too late now. Try another guess. Who was the world’s worst inventor? Think hard now.” The Devil wrinkled his brow, went over his grid list, and scratched the coal bin with a nervous and irritable tail. Then he answered, “Well, there’s that hairy old lad down on the Neo- The Bad Man. 4 lithic section—the one who invented speech. He always seemed to me to have done a fairly good turn for the Father of Lies, and I've had half a mind to turn off his heat and send a first aid down to him by way of grati- tude. But I just haven’t got to it.” “Nope, your Neolithic friend crowds the men who gave us the player piano; but even speech and the player piano have their good points. Give me the man who invented something that has no justification for its universal use. And remember we bar Columbus, for he was a discoverer and not an in- ventor. And again you have some- thing that is slowly getting out of your sphere of influence. In two hundred years America will be ready for the millennium. Guess again, old top! Who was it that has spread a chain of fraud and corruption and injustice and deceit and wickedness throughout the world, and kept hell roaring all these millions of years? He's your best friend, and I'll bet a horse you have him in an old-fashioned frying pan with Cain or Lilith, or the boys from Sodom!” The Devil pulled his ears and pawed the earth. Successively and futilely he named the man who in- vented hair restorer, chewing-gum, marriage, divorce, radio, the ham- mock, the nebular hypothesis, air- planes, jazz, the safety razor strop, the lever, the jury system, cheek to cheek dancing, and dried apples But the Expert smiled, and was not satisfied. “Now think hard. What invention was it that has curbed the strong man, enthroned the weak, made honest men liars, given silly credulity to the wise, made fools of the noble, and victims of the virtuous? It’s a simple device But it has sent more men here than any other invention since the hinges (Continued on page 27) comicbooks.com