Judge — November 14, 1931 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Testing Monkey Wrenches for Throwing Into Machinery" This cartoon satirizes labor sabotage and industrial unrest. The "little known occupation" is a monkey wrench tester—a darkly humorous reference to "throwing a monkey wrench into the works," a phrase meaning to deliberately disrupt operations. The image shows factory workers in the foreground observing a chaotic scene above: machinery exploding with parts flying everywhere, while figures operate the destruction. This mocks the period's labor disputes and sabotage tactics employed during industrial conflicts. The satire targets both labor unrest and management's paranoia about worker sabotage—presenting saboteurs as having an actual job title and testing procedures, absurdly formalizing what was genuinely feared as workplace violence. Judge magazine, conservative and pro-business, used this to ridicule labor activism as destructive and organized.