Judge — December 25, 1926 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page contains two automobile accident cartoons satirizing early 1900s driving hazards and gender relations. The **top cartoon** shows a man (Flapper's male companion) crashed into a butcher shop ("O. Schultz Fine Meats"), with the woman pleading he didn't cause it intentionally—suggesting reckless driving was normalized. The **bottom cartoon** is the core joke: A wife explains her husband fainted at the wheel because a female driver *actually followed* her turn signal. The satire targets incompetent driving, particularly mocking women drivers who were still relatively new to automobiles. The humor relies on the assumption that drivers—especially women—ignored safety signals, so when one actually signaled *and* turned correctly, it shocked the man into fainting. The joke reinforces 1920s-era stereotypes about women as dangerous, unreliable drivers.