Judge — January 19, 1924 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This cartoon satirizes early automobile culture and working-class opportunism. A workman demands $20 damages after a motorist's car bumps his wife. When the motorist notes the wife appears unharmed, the workman makes a crude joke: he'll give the motorist "another go" at hitting her if she isn't actually injured—implying he's fabricating the claim to extort money. The satire targets both the novelty of automobiles (which were causing genuine legal disputes over liability) and the workman's shameless fraud scheme. It reflects anxieties about cars as dangerous urban intrusions and plays on class tensions between motorists (typically wealthier) and working-class pedestrians. The joke's callousness toward the wife suggests period attitudes about women as property in financial disputes.