Judge, 1933-03 · page 9 of 40
Judge — March 1933 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Judge Magazine Page Analysis This page satirizes **Technocracy**, a 1930s movement advocating rule by technical experts and engineers. **"Prayer of a Tiny Technocrat"** mocks technocrats' quasi-religious devotion to industrial systems, personifying infrastructure (dynamos, kilowatts, engineers) as objects of worship. It references **Howard Scott**, who founded the Technocracy movement, calling him "Saint Howard Scott"—ridiculing the movement's cult-like following. **The cartoon below** shows a man at some kind of medical/mechanical device with observers—the caption jokes about accidentally cutting off someone's mustache, likely satirizing how technocratic solutions cause unintended consequences. **"Ode to Insurance Companies"** employs sarcastic praise to critique how insurance companies profit from farmers' desperation during economic hardship. The page's broader point: Judge mocks Technocracy as an impractical ideology that would replace human judgment with mechanical systems, while politicians would sabotage it anyway. The satire warns that technocratic "solutions" ignore human realities and create more problems than they solve.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Judge Prayer of A Tiny Technoerat N° I lay me down to sleep. IN" pray Great Dynamo may keep Me well until the whistle blows And I resume my working clothes, To make this world so vast and nice, lise. in rest, l ask the following be blest: The Engineer in Charge of Char! All Keepers of Rep! The Chief in Charge of plots The course of blessed kilowatts, The men who mine the coal in bergs All volts and ohms and homeless ergs, All enyineers on science bent, Each meter, gauge and instrument, And last of all a special plea For Him who made Technocracy, The first of all the gifted lot: His Holiness: Saint Howard Scott! ARTHUR L. LIPPMANN “Dm going to stick back his mustache. Tcut it off by mistake.” “Happy Birthday, Carl!” Ode to Insurance Companies were got a big mortgage down on the farm, And if we don't pay it they'll do us no harm; So God bless Prudential and New York Life, too For helping the farmers to see the thing through. -R.C.O. If Diogenes lived today he'd be dispossessed from his rel on the grounds that it was ur htly and there were too many shacks. Technocracy will have to overcome a lot of obstacles before it will ever click in this count Imagine how a college football team would feel after a hard game, being paid off in energy units! And our chief objection to a Tech- ic civilization is that there are too many politicians ‘ound who like to toss monkey wrenches into ma- chinery. One of the best arguments for in- flation we've heard, is that the bank- ers are against it. icbhooks.com