Judge — July 21, 1923 — page 19: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This sketch depicts children at a beach or resort ("watering place"). The visible figures appear to represent different ethnic stereotypes through their surnames: "Dugan" (Irish), "Tessie Smythe" (Anglo), "Abraham Levinsky" (Jewish), "Otto Himmelbacher" (German), and "Anastasia Burke-Fadden" (mixed Irish-English). The satire likely mocks the mixing of different immigrant and ethnic groups at fashionable vacation destinations—a social anxiety of the era. By listing children with distinctly different ethnic surnames playing together, the cartoon probably comments on either the democratization of leisure spaces or anxieties about cultural assimilation in early 20th-century America. The humor trades on ethnic caricature, common in period Judge magazine illustrations.