Judge — September 13, 1924 — page 37: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a "Pro'bishun" (Prohibition) issue of Judge magazine from September 1924, during America's alcohol ban (1920-1933). The cover features a caricatured woman with bobbed hair and a cigarette—stereotypical imagery of the "modern woman" or "flapper" of the 1920s, presented as morally questionable. The cartoon below satirizes moral hypocrisy. A minister lectures a boy about swearing, but the boy's crude response—"Hell, yes! Don't you?"—exposes the adult's own profanity and hypocrisy. The joke targets the gap between preached morality and actual behavior, a common theme during Prohibition when many authorities who advocated for moral reform themselves violated the law or lacked moral authority. The title page thus ironically presents both the flapper and this moral contradiction as Prohibition-era social concerns.