Judge — September 9, 1922

This page is a **promotional piece for Judge magazine itself**, not a political cartoon. It lists the diverse readership who will encounter this particular issue—from dentists' waiting rooms to Pullman cars to libraries—emphasizing Judge's broad circulation across American society and beyond. The humor lies in the **specific character vignettes**: a woman avoiding jokes at the dentist, a high schoolboy pretending to study Cicero, a small-town editor stealing jokes for his newspaper, and notably, a Japanese valet puzzled by American content. The final section boasts Judge's **international reach** to 5,000+ libraries and clubs across North America and beyond, claiming 50+ readers per copy. The overall message: Judge is ubiquitous, culturally significant, and read by everyone from millionaires to schoolchildren—a self-congratulatory statement of the magazine's importance and influence.

# Analysis This page from *Judge* magazine contains two distinct pieces: **Left column:** A humorous short story titled "Litany of the Festive Bored" satirizing tedious social conversation—complaints about weather, boring dinner guests, and repetitive small talk at parties. It's social satire about the monotony of upper-class social obligations. **Central illustration & right column:** "Villanelle of the Young Man's Lament"—a poem accompanying an illustration of a young man lounging in a hammock surrounded by leisure items (phonograph, beer, watch). The poem expresses ambivalence about romance and commitment, repeatedly stating "I must be good in every way." It's satirizing young men torn between desires for freedom/pleasure and social expectations of responsibility and morality. Both pieces mock early 20th-century social conventions and romantic expectations through humor and verse.

# "Be It Ever so Humble You Always Can Move" This satirical piece by John Held Jr. contrasts two couples with opposing lifestyle preferences. Joan and Peter, "fed up with city life," purchase a country home. Meanwhile, Pearl and John, "bored with the country," rent a city apartment. The joke hinges on the grass-is-always-greener theme: both couples simultaneously long for what the other has abandoned. The cartoon mocks the restlessness and dissatisfaction of 1920s urban professionals, suggesting that neither rural nor urban life fully satisfies them—they perpetually chase an idealized alternative. Held Jr.'s minimalist, fashionable illustration style captures the era's modern sensibility while satirizing the era's consumer culture and lifestyle aspirations.

# Analysis of Judge Magazine Page This page contains two distinct pieces: **Top Cartoon:** "No Pleasure Without Pain" depicts a prize fighter bent over in apparent agony before a crowd. The caption suggests the fighter is injured during a match, with his opponent telling him to "lean up a bit, Ted; you're hurting my left arm." This satirizes boxing culture and the physical toll on athletes. **Lower Section:** "An Osteopath's Petting Party" is a comedic dialogue between Paul, a young man, and Catherine, a woman Paul is courting. The humor relies on double entendres about her physical ailments and treatments. The osteopath character diagnoses her with various complaints, leading to awkward romantic banter about her body and posture—typical early 20th-century humor playing on pseudo-medical pseudoscience and courtship customs.

# "Jim and Etty's" - A Home Plan Satire This page features an architectural floor plan titled "Plans by Jim" alongside an article called "Your Dollar" by Gardner Rea. The cartoon satirizes impractical home-building advice. A sketched figure (likely representing the fictional "Jim") poses confidently beside an elaborate floor plan including a bowling alley, billiard room, card room, and numerous luxurious features—clearly absurd for average homeowners. The accompanying article mocks the disconnect between architectural ideals and financial reality, arguing that elaborate house plans ignore practical costs. The satire suggests that home-design experts and magazines promote unrealistic visions of domesticity that ordinary people cannot afford, making their dollar-building advice fundamentally flawed and out of touch with actual working families' circumstances.

# Analysis of Judge Magazine Page This page contains two distinct pieces: **"New House by Orson Lowell"** (left): A satirical architectural floor plan with accompanying cost breakdown. The humor targets the absurdity of home construction expenses—a detailed itemization shows numerous line items for wasteful or redundant work: windows broken by masons then rejected, paint applied multiple times just "to see how it looked," and labor spent on pranks like "time taken out to kid passers-by." The punchline is that despite meticulous accounting, costs still exceed the budget by nearly a dollar ($0.9962 overrun), illustrating the frustration of construction cost overruns and contractor inefficiency—a relatable complaint for early 20th-century homeowners. **"Brogue Will Show by Talbot Timeous"** (right): A brief domestic sketch about class and manners. A wife's inability to maintain refined speech—particularly raising her voice—betrays her lower-class origins despite otherwise conforming to social standards. Her husband despises this "vulgarity." The satire mocks both rigid class consciousness and the performative nature of social respectability in the era.

# Heywood Broun's "Own Your Gym" - Satirical Sports Commentary This is a humorous essay by sports columnist Heywood Broun, illustrated with comic sketches by Weed showing absurd "home exercises": high hurdles (with someone crashing), mixed doubles (two men tangled together), fly tennis (women swinging wildly), collar-button golf, and an obstacle race involving furniture. Broun argues for exercise at home rather than expensive country clubs—but the joke is that his "solution" creates as many problems as it solves. His handball court on the roof springs leaks, forcing him to work harder to pay for repairs, creating a circular trap. He even divides himself into "Yale and Harvard" competitors to play against himself, yet can't track who's winning. The satire mocks both the era's fitness craze and self-deluding rationalization: Broun presents himself as logical while describing increasingly absurd scenarios (finding "previous civilizations" of bricks in his garden). The sketches visualize the ridiculous outcomes of amateur home athletics. The piece reflects 1920s anxiety about leisure, class, and self-improvement through sports.

# Explanation of Judge Magazine Page This page satirizes American suburban life and leisure pursuits circa the 1910s-1920s. **Top cartoon**: "Cross-Country Lawn-Mower Race" mocks the absurdity of treating mundane household chores as competitive sports. The illustrations show people frantically performing ordinary tasks—mowing lawns, throwing hammers, playing handball, dashing to the station—as if they were Olympic events. The satire targets the era's growing obsession with fitness and "scientific" exercise: Americans are so desperate for physical activity and competition that they've invented contests around housework. **Text below**: A humorous essay reinforces this theme, arguing that household duties fail as exercise because they lack the competitive element and skill-building that make sports engaging. Wheeling a baby carriage or sweeping offer no "technique" to master or measurable improvement. **Poem "Loneliness"**: Shifts tone to urban isolation—a neighbor yearning for connection with people they can hear but never meet, separated by modern city apartment life. **Brief jokes**: Unrelated vignettes mocking Prohibition-era "home brew" and dishonesty. The page overall critiques how modern American life leaves people simultaneously overscheduled and deeply isolated.

# Analysis This is a social satire cartoon drawn by S. Werner. It depicts an elegantly dressed woman speaking to a seated man in what appears to be an upscale interior, with a prominent punch bowl in the foreground. The joke plays on a pun: "thirst families" (suggesting wealthy, prominent families) sounds like "thirst" as in excessive drinking. The humor mocks both upper-class pretension and alcoholism among the wealthy elite. By identifying the drunk boy as "Freddy Vanderwater"—a deliberately pompous, WASP-ish surname—the cartoon suggests that even the most socially prominent families cannot escape the shame of having members with drinking problems. It's satirizing the contradiction between genteel respectability and actual behavior among the leisure class.

# "The Voice with the Simile" and Other Pieces This Judge page contains three separate humorous pieces satirizing everyday social awkwardness and changing mores circa the 1920s. **"The Voice with the Simile"** by Cory Ford mocks a character named Tape who compulsively relies on hackneyed similes and analogies in conversation, rendering his points incomprehensible rather than clever. The narrator grows increasingly exasperated as Tape strings together absurd comparisons (teaching a parrot vs. making a sentence; counting beans; eating ink) to avoid simple discussion. It's satire on affected, pseudo-intellectual speech patterns. **"The Maid in Knickers"** by Thomas J. Murray gently comments on women's changing fashion—specifically the then-shocking sight of young women wearing shorter skirts and knickers (bloomers). While some disapprove of this modern liberalization, the poem playfully endorses it as harmless. **"Own Your Own Home"** is a brief domestic joke about a husband misunderstanding his wife's suggestion about serving his mother for lunch. These pieces collectively reflect 1920s anxieties about changing social conventions, modern speech affectations, and women's evolving public roles.

# "Told at the 19th Hole": Golf Club Humor from Judge Magazine This page collects humorous golf anecdotes, a popular format in early 20th-century magazines. The "19th hole" (the clubhouse bar) is the traditional setting for golf stories. The main cartoons satirize golfers' rule-bending and excuses: 1. **"Woof!"** mocks blind handicaps through a story where a player exploits vague terms, deliberately disrupting his opponent's swing as his agreed "woof" (handicap allowance), ruining the game. 2. **The Shawnee story** ridicules a police judge who literalizes rules: when told he could "tee it up," he carries his ball 100 yards up the fairway rather than dropping it—absurd rule-lawyering presented as humor. 3. **Other anecdotes** joke about golfers fabricating excuses ("no spectators were present" to witness good play) and physical comedy (a player buried in a sand trap asking to borrow a niblick). The humor targets golfers' pretentious rule-knowledge and their tendency to rationalize poor play through technicalities rather than accepting honest defeat.