Judge, 1926-08-21 · page 16 of 36
Judge — August 21, 1926 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the generational divide of the 1920s through the story "Two Generations Meet." A conservatively dressed young woman from an earlier era (the "angelic 80's") accidentally wanders into a modern jazz-age party—a "bacchanalian orgy" of Charlestoning, drinking, and loose morality. The satire contrasts her modest appearance (long skirts, high collar, billowy sleeves) with the fashionable "golden-derby" crowd's revealing "shingle" hairstyles and modern dancing. When she speaks in a genteel manner, a crude partygoer responds aggressively in slang, then she retaliates with Southern dialect threats about "Jake," implying connections to unsavory characters. The top cartoon mocks the impracticality of the "Liberty" bell as a flower pot—a visual pun on liberty itself becoming decorative rather than meaningful. The bottom cartoon jokes about surgical "cures" for drinking through absurdist logic. The page captures Judge's critique of 1920s youth culture as crude, immoral, and in conflict with Victorian propriety.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
seemed to notice her at once. There was a dead silence. The music stopped. For a fraction of a second not a word was uttered. Then from one corner of the room some one sum- moned enough courage to speak: “What the blankety-blank _ hell. . Ain’t you never been in a studio before? Waddye mean by comin’ wanderin’ onto this here s if you was little Eva loc for Unkie Tom in the Never-never Land?” The stranger turned slowly as if she didn’t realize that she was being spoken to, then, as if aware for the first. time of all the company in » general and the owner of the voice in particular she began in a soothing Southern drawl: ‘‘Aw shut ya trap! Figh sha tell Jake at ya tawked ta me like that he’d give ya tha bum’s (Continued on page 29) and fill it with geraniums. Two Generations Meet Se was rather pretty, in a demure way, and looked painfully out of place at such a bacchanalian orgy. | The moan of the sax, the thump of the tom-tom and the laughter of the golden-derby muted trombone i seemed, strangely enough, to com- bine in creating a wail for the lost reticence of the angelic 80's. The Charlestoning members of the mad set and their glossy haired sheiks paid not the slightest atten- tion to the shy intruder. If they had they should probably have found | her unattractive, according to their standards, as she looked out of place, her raven curls in direct contrast to the blonde shingle that gentlemen prefer, her undulating figure contra- dicting the topographical smoothness of the girls on the floor, the secretive nature of her long skirts, her high throat, wrist length sleeves and * billowy flounces swaddling her safe from the danger of death by exposure which threatened the other members | of the party. | She stood quietly in the doorway, hesitating as if in wonder as to what sort of a place she had wan- dered into. She walked slowly out onto the dance floor, seeming to grope her way as through a dark maze, trying ever so often to address a question to one of the gyrating figures. Suddenly, the way those “Yessir, they cured him of drink by an operation—they removed a brass F things happen, everyone in the party rail that was pressing against his foot for years.” ll = i . , tush, pronto, see! I gotta cawl ta | There being no further sense in a “Liberty” bell—turn it upside down : > L comicbooks.com