Judge, 1923-07-21 · page 20 of 36
Judge — July 21, 1923 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous story-comic about a persistent financial scold named Jones who constantly badgers the narrator about his wasteful spending habits. The strip illustrates their interactions through sequential cartoon panels showing Jones lecturing the narrator about his various indulgences—fourteen daily drinks at five cents each, a new cigar costing half a dime, small luxuries that Jones argues should be saved instead. The satire targets the era's moralizing about personal finance and self-denial. Jones represents the type of relentless budgeting enthusiast who calculates compound savings, drawing diagrams to prove how accumulated pennies could build wealth. The narrator, while acknowledging Jones's mathematical logic, rebels against the joyless accumulation, arguing that spending on small comforts gives life meaning—especially when banks fail anyway ("the blamed old bank would bust"). The joke reflects early 20th-century tensions between Victorian thrift ideology and emerging consumer culture, gently mocking both the sanctimonious financial adviser and the spendthrift's rationalizations.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE IMPOSSIBLE JONES co E NAILS me when I'm sipping man of figures, Jones; “Great Caesar, why asting precious bones? for the not stop this w I've seen you throwing in the jui nearly tw s; oh, what’ profit, what e of drinking kick less beers? “You purchase fourteen drinks a day, at half a dime a throw; had you but put that coin away, you'd have a stack of dough. You'd have some nineteen hundred beans if you had saved like that, and you might own two limousines and eke a stovepipe hat. Here, let us sit down on the beach and figure up this sum; now, fourteen drinks at five cents each—how does the total come?” “Dad burn your totals and your sums,” I thunder, in my ire, “you make me gnash my toothless gums, More than a match. by Walt Mason and all my works you tire. You're always chasing at my heels, you poor, besotted knave, to tell me just how many wheels I'd have if I would save. All luxuries I should eschew, all joys I should outflank, that I might save a buck or two and put them in the bank. And when I'd saved a thousand bones, a healthy heap of dust, I tell you, James Augustus Jones, the blamed old bank would bust. The coin I spend for useless things gives comfort to my soul, but it would break my heart, by jings, to save, then lose my roll.” B" NOTHING daunts a man like Jones, on helpful errands bent; he calls me down in bitter tones whene’er I spend a cent. He has a pencil in his hand, he figures on the fence, and tries to make me understand that I am lack- ing sense. He also has a paper pad, 18 asm are affor “par basis knoy cam sugg pay quic pliec De we didn shoe men wrot too and diagrams he draws, to show that A every wasted scad is hard on virtue’s had cause. ver) “T see you’ve bought a new cigar,” stre he says, with nerve sublime, “a torch cam that smells like burning tar, yet cost T you half a dime. I am informed you | and daily buy a dozen of such weeds; i nere you had put the money by | hoo twelve hundred seeds. the bucks, I figure out, T venty years, for smokes that put your plies friends to rout, and move the town to wro! tears. With such a princel friend, what good I could achieve! A make the widow's sorrows end, the heathen cease to grieve. And you have inte naught to show, I ween, for all that emp money blown, except a lot of nicotine in ing. every thew and bone; except a case of quer cabbage heart, and organs out of whack, don’ (Continued on page 27) She comicbooks.com