Judge, 1926-03-13 · page 13 of 36
Judge — March 13, 1926 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the early-20th-century budgeting craze by presenting three prize-winning letters about how budget advice transformed readers' lives—with darkly comic results. The **First Prize** story shows a couple who discovered budgeting via a *Judge* magazine article, then realized they needed twice their income. Solution: the husband wrote daily budget columns for a newspaper syndicate, solving their problems through ironic circular logic. The **Second Prize** entry describes a man who, after calculating he couldn't afford marriage via budget math, broke off his engagement—treating financial spreadsheets as relationship guidance. The **Third Prize** letter presents the only "success" story: a wife cut her husband's allowance in half through budgeting discipline, letting her spend more on clothes herself. The cartoon above (showing an impossibly crowded elevator) appears unrelated, likely satirizing department store chaos. The satire's point: budgeting advice, while well-intentioned, produces absurd, sometimes socially destructive outcomes when taken literally.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
How the Budget System Helped Us (First Prize) Fe the first two years of our mar- ried life my husband and I kept no record of our expenditures. Then came the sudden realization that we had nothing laid aside for a rainy day, Indesperation; we tried to find a solution of the problem. We were at our wit’s end when my husband chanced to find a discarded copy of your valuable magazine on a street car. The article advocating the operation of a household on the budget plan interested us, and we determined to put it into effect im- mediately. However, no matter whichever way we figured, we could find no way out. Our budget showed that we needed just twice as much money as we had been accustomed to spending. Something had to be done. So my husband, being acquainted with the manager of a newspaper syndicate, contracted to supply him with a daily article on “Budget Making” and now our financial troubles have “Bet Houdini would never be able to get off a department store elevator vanished.—Mrs. S. G., Illinois. at the floor he desired!” (Second Prize) in the Y.M.C.A.,Icame across your with paper and pencil, figuring. My wedding day was buta month —_ article on budget making. It set Never shall I forget that dawn when off when, one evening, while reading me to thinking. I sat up all night I arose from my paper-littered desk. By careful calculations I had dis- covered that I did not earn enough to support a wife and I lost no time in breaking off the engagement. I shall never cease to be grateful to the Yankee Magazine for its helpfulness. —P. G. M., New York. (Third Prize) A neighbor called my attention to ies of budget articles in the Magazine and after reading them I became an ardent convert of budget-making. As a result of my efforts in that direction my husband now requires only half of his former allowance, I am now able to spend more for clothes and, most important of all, we are able to deposit $ monthly in the bank.—Mrs. H.O. K., Missouri. Robert Hage IKRATIY SWRNCKS THE UMBRELLA DRESS “Vigil it be— The very latest from Paris. Scotch or ryeP” comicbooks.com