Judge, 1932-12 · page 13 of 38
Judge — December 1932 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Explanation for Modern Readers This Judge magazine page from November 1932 contains two satirical pieces about the recent presidential election (Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover). **Top cartoon:** An Alabama hitchhiker sits dejectedly by a tree—a visual commentary on Depression-era unemployment and mobility. The joke is that even heading to New Orleans, nobody's traveling. **"Mistress Pepys' Journal":** A humorous diary column mocking wealthy, self-absorbed socialites indifferent to politics. The narrator voted but admits it was pointless; she cares only about tariffs affecting luxury goods (underwear, perfumes, silk blouses), not actual policy. She dismisses communism as interesting only for confiscated luxury items she might acquire. The piece satirizes the privileged class's obliviousness during economic crisis—they worry about fashion disasters while the country suffers. Both pieces mock different aspects of 1932 America: rural poverty and upper-class disconnection from real economic suffering.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ALABAMA HITCH-HIKER—Dawgone, there don’t seem t’be nobody going t’ New Orleans! Mastress Pepys’ Journal By Baird Leonard OVEMBER 9.—Lay late, having L travelled a great distance yes- terday to cast my ballot as a dutiful citizen, but Lord! for all the good it did, I might as well have stayed in the country and attempted to retrieve my losses at backgammon, now at a fgure which could easily inspire me to larceny had it not been divulged during the campaign that the in- mates of New York prisons do re- ceive but two meals a day. Fatigued also from last night’s revelry, termed by our host “a Hoover wake,” but at least I did get out of it a fine meal of lobster, asparagus aw gratin, alli- gater pear salad, créme brulante, several beakers of champagne and two snorts of Napoleon brandy, to say nought of a skillet-tympanum, four dollars’ bridge winnings, a pa- pew hat, and a prophetic script from my supper favor which read, ‘ However Fortune turn for foe or friend, wour hand will clasp Good For- tune’s to the end, so that now I am not so cast down from my sempstress’ having made my cinnamon frock on the wrong side of the material, and mayhap something will occur to prevent Aunt Caroline from paying-us her threat- ened visit. All the talk today is of what the Democrats will do to the country, the hardened Republicans attributing Mr. Roosevelt’s election to the overwhelming majority of those who have nought to lose by it, and I, for one, am secretly hopeful that he will straightway proceed to confirm his opponents’ misgivings on currency inflation, forasmuch as I care nought about an unseen reserve of bullion in the Treasury, so long as a plenitude of greenbacks in my purse is negotiable, and as for a lowering of the tariff, Lord! what bliss it would be to buy underwear and perfumes at a reasonable price! But I do fear that I am too much like Henry James’s Mrs. Touchett, who exclaimed with mighty satisfac- tion in “The Portrait of a Lady,” “My point of view, thank God, is per- sonal!” I do also fear that I should continue to possess about fifteen dol- lars in cash, and to lay out more than I could afford for the trappings of this world, regardless of the party in power. Moreover, the much dis- cussed wave of communism means little to me beyond a dim hope that some day, with the proper creden- tials, I may be able to go to Madison Square Garden or the Grand Central Palace and select from the confisca- tions both a sable coat and the Georgian tea tray of my dreams. NOVEMBER 10.—News come this morning that the boat is in from France without the silk for the blouse of my new tailleur aboard, and I in such a rage that the cou- touriers should have cut into such costly cloth, without a suitable match for it on their shelves, so great that I am obliged to read from The Ser- mon on the Mount in order to save myself from going to the gallows for manslaughter, for now I must go to the race meetings in Virginia with nought between my skin and a possible frost but my brown spongy woolen, a prospect which does strangely depress me, forasmuch as I have never been able to pitch my- self to the philosophy of the old man in “A Room with a View’ above (Page 28, please) comicbooks.com av.