Judge, 1924-01-12 · page 12 of 36
Judge — January 12, 1924 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Concerning Motor-driven Vehicles" – Judge Magazine Satire This piece satirizes automobiles' impact on American society, presented as a mock-serious list of "accomplishments." The humor inverts praise into criticism. The top cartoon shows a rural figure with a horse-drawn vehicle amid modern transportation (cars, airplanes, dirigibles), captioning his bewilderment at progress: "I've broke ye to railroads, autos and airplanes, an' now I guess I kin break ye to Zeppelins too!" The main text catalogs automobiles' actual social consequences: they've accelerated funerals, enabled bootleggers to evade Prohibition ("Volstead Act"), created "petting parties" (sexual activity), endangered pedestrians, and produced new traffic hazards (speed cops, reckless drivers). The bottom cartoon shows twins with the caption "one advantage about being twins—you can get along without a looking-glass," a non-sequitur joke unrelated to vehicles. Written by Chad Shafer, this pre-1930s satire captures early automobile-age anxieties: moral decay, Prohibition evasion, youth behavior changes, and road safety—concerns that remain surprisingly contemporary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Concerning Motor- driven Vehicles Tarte are © poor mis- guided individuals in this world who still believe the auto- mobile has done nothing for the good of the race. To those unfortunates we sub- mit a brief account of what the gas buggy done to dat Automobiles have _ ble: the world with the bird suspicions, if he is making less than eighty-five miles an hour, that some friends have played a joke on him by coupling a steam- roller to his rear axle. They have reduced the run- ning time for funerals from three hours and better to fifteen minutes, flat, in summer and sixteen minutes in winter. They have made the sweet by and by quite contiguous. They have given us garage deale who issue _ illustrated advertising folders proving that Ali Babi didn’t get through the first primer. They have contributed a fill- tion for every corner not i “Dern ye! I’ve broke ye to railroads, autos and occupied by a bank. airyplanes, an’ now I guess I kin break ye to Zep- ‘They have made it possible plins, too!” for bootleggers to successfully counteract the effect of the Volstead Act. (Stop that cheering, you rowdies. They have instituted time payments and their formula: “Read em and Weep.” They have proved that the wooden dapple gray mare on a roller platform in front of the harness shop ain’t what she used to be. 4 They have established “petting parties” \ ay 4 which are much frowned on by those who Maa R\\Y\ remember the olden days when a man bought his sweetheart a copper-bottomed wash boiler and then kissed her. They have rendered bedtime and the life of a pedestrian extremely uncertain. They have eliminated the necessity for dragging the lawn swing out of the cellar in the spring. have commonized the empurpling epithet so that it is no longer used exclu- 1 by drunken sailors. They have made it a simple task for edi- tors to fill the front page of Monday’s papers. They have stirred up enough dust so the cookoo who lives in a house by the side of the road don’t want to be a friend of man. And they have given us the speed cop, the road hog, the geezer who won’t dim is lights, and the wistful taxi driver who is so hard-boiled that he shaves with a “There’s one advantage about being twins—you plumber’s blow torch. can get along without a looking-glass!” —Chet Shafer ATT OOS AL, \ a eS A comicbooks.com