Judge — December 5, 1925

# Judge Magazine Advertising Contest Page This is primarily an **advertising contest entry form** rather than editorial satire. The contest invites readers to guess which national advertisement inspired the magazine's artist to create the drawing below—the prize being 10 weeks of free Judge magazine subscriptions. The central image shows a stylized figure holding a Judge magazine cover featuring "How to Make 'Em Stop"—likely referencing an advertisement about controlling or stopping something, though the specific ad referenced is unclear from this reproduction. The form instructs contestants to submit their guess with a one-dollar entry fee. An example answer fills in "Packard Automobile" as the week's advertisement. This was a common early 20th-century magazine promotion mixing reader engagement with revenue generation.

# Judge Magazine Page Analysis This page contains several brief satirical items and one cartoon. The main cartoon depicts a fashionable woman departing, leaving children with a nurse, with the caption: "I'm leaving the children in your care, nurse; and if they're naughty, just send them to bed without their cocktails." The satire targets 1920s-era parenting and Prohibition culture. It mocks wealthy socialites who apparently serve cocktails to children as routine, suggesting moral decay among the elite. The joke's dark humor relies on the absurdity—sending children to bed without alcohol as punishment implies they customarily consume it, which was scandalous. The surrounding brief items mock various contemporary topics: Egyptian mummification practices, an educational film, coal quality, captured Russian bomb-throwers, radio technology, Tutankhamun's discovery, and vacuum flasks—typical satirical commentary on 1920s news and consumer culture.

# Analysis of Judge Magazine Page This page contains several unrelated humor items typical of Judge magazine's format: **"Come on now, Stop ya kiddin' on' hit the peg!"** - A cartoon showing two men with sledgehammers and targets, likely depicting physical comedy or carnival-style entertainment. The joke's specific reference is unclear without additional context. **"Looked Like It"** - A brief dialogue joke about a police dog hanging around the cook. **"Unreasonable"** - A joke about a broken engagement where the woman wanted marriage. **"Krazy Kracks"** and **"Funny Bones"** - Brief one-liners and advertising for beauty products. **"Suburbanite"** - A caption accompanying a sketch showing someone hiding a key under a door mat. The page exemplifies Judge's mix of visual gags, short jokes, and advertisements rather than sustained political or social commentary.

# Judge Magazine Page Analysis This page contains three humor pieces typical of early 20th-century satirical magazines: **"Vindication"** presents a poem mocking a sewing circle where women gather but say nothing—a jab at female social groups as pointless gatherings. **"Lizzie Labels"** and **"Alphabet Soup"** are reader-submitted jokes with monetary prizes for publication, a common Judge feature. **"The forgetful glass blower kisses his wife"** is a cartoon visual gag: a man blowing glass inadvertently creates a large bubble that obscures his face while kissing his wife—simple domestic humor. **"Radio Fosters Domestic Relations"** satirizes how radio programming creates family conflict: the father enjoys music, mother wants drama, sister likes jazz, Willie prefers Uncle Geebee, and the maid's Austrian-Magyar Quartet choice will ruin everyone's station choice. It mocks early radio's inability to satisfy diverse household tastes.

# "What a Couple of Cocktails Can Do" This appears to be a satirical cartoon from Judge magazine about alcohol's effects. The aerial view shows a winding road with vehicles and small figures, depicting chaos or reckless behavior caused by intoxication. The exaggerated, swirling landscape and the chaotic positioning of cars and people suggest dangerous driving or general mayhem resulting from drinking cocktails. Given the style and perspective, this likely comments on Prohibition-era concerns about illegal drinking and its social consequences—a common Judge theme. The title's sarcastic tone implies criticism of alcohol's destructive impact on behavior and safety. The artist (signed "McFullers" or similar) uses the bird's-eye view to emphasize the disorienting, chaotic effects of intoxication on judgment and coordination.

# Analysis of Judge Magazine Page This page contains two cartoons satirizing medical treatments for criminals. **Top cartoon ("Seein' things at night"):** A man with a long nose (possibly a doctor or authority figure) treats a patient by a fireplace, suggesting dubious medical practices. **Main article and bottom cartoon:** The text describes a criminal (Robert Brown) given soda bicarbonate and sent to bed with a hot water bag after committing robbery and arson. The accompanying illustration shows a patient in bed at 2:50 a.m., being asked if he's home. The satire mocks contemporary medical pseudoscience—the notion that simple treatments like sodium bicarbonate and rest could "cure" criminals of their inclinations. The humor lies in the absurdity of treating criminal behavior as a medical condition rather than a legal matter, reflecting early 20th-century debates about criminal justice reform versus medical intervention.

# Explanation for Modern Readers This page contains two separate satirical cartoons from *Judge* magazine. The **top cartoon** ("Bear Hunter") depicts a hunter and dogs encountering a bear, with the caption sarcastically suggesting a squirrel skin rug as an alternative—mocking impractical or absurd solutions to problems. The **bottom cartoon** ("How to Get a Seat in the Subway") is a humorous commentary on crowded public transit. It shows a chaotic subway car where someone using shaving cream causes such a commotion that passengers flee, creating an empty seat. The joke satirizes the desperation commuters face for seating in crowded subways—suggesting that creating a disturbance (mimicking lathered madness) is the only way to secure a seat. This reflects early-20th-century frustrations with overcrowded urban mass transit.

# "The Unwedding Ceremony" This satirical article proposes a formal, ceremonial approach to divorce—mirroring wedding ceremonies but in reverse. The author argues that since divorce carries serious financial obligations (alimony), it deserves equal ceremonial weight to marriage. The piece humorously describes an elaborate "unwedding": the couple walking backwards down the aisle, children sprinkling cockleburs instead of flowers, the judge asking if they "leave" each other as spouses, and symbolic gestures like giving the woman spinach to represent her impending widowhood. The closing joke is the judge uniting them "in the six per cent. bonds of alimony." The accompanying cartoons illustrate the gravity of divorce's financial burden and misbehaving children—suggesting both the emotional and practical chaos of broken marriages. The satire targets the arbitrary, ceremonially hollow nature of 1920s divorce proceedings while highlighting alimony's real consequences, particularly for women.

This political cartoon satirizes labor unions and "flappers"—young women of the 1920s known for their modern, unconventional behavior and fashion. The caption imagines a scenario where the window washers' union hires female flappers for the traditionally male job of high-rise window cleaning. The humor lies in the absurdity: the cartoon depicts women dangerously scaling the exterior of tall buildings with ropes, shown in precarious positions clinging to the facade. The crowded street below suggests spectators gathering to watch this chaos. The satire likely mocks both union protectionism (suggesting they'd resist female workers) and contemporary anxieties about changing gender roles. It plays on stereotypes of flappers as frivolous and unsuited for dangerous labor, while also commenting on workplace segregation and labor disputes of the era.

# "Uncle Si's Incompetent Hired Hand" This rural humor story satirizes the clash between farm life and modern technology. Uncle Si, a farmer, must fire his hired hand despite the young man's musical talent (saxophone playing) because he's incompetent with machinery: he drives the tractor too slowly, grinds the gears carelessly, operates the electric ice plant poorly, and damaged the radio antenna. The satire's punchline reveals the real problem: the hired hand, having visited New York City, now has "high falutin' city idees" and wants Uncle Si to buy horses and ducks—essentially rejecting modern farm equipment for old-fashioned methods. The joke mocks both the hired hand's pretentious adoption of rural nostalgia and, implicitly, rural resistance to progress. It's a snapshot of 1920s-era tension between agricultural and urban American values.

# Explanation for Modern Readers This Judge magazine page contains two satirical pieces: **"Think Twice About Florida"** (Don Herold): A commentary on the Florida real estate boom of the 1920s. Herold warns against rushing to invest a hypothetical half-million dollars in Florida property. He observes that wealthy people who relocate there typically spend lavishly on mansions, yachts, and luxury goods, then find their remaining $200,000 inadequate to maintain these expenses—creating financial trouble despite initial wealth. The satire targets get-rich-quick mentality and poor financial planning among the newly wealthy. **"The New Baby (A Presidential Possibility)"** (R.C. O'Brien): A humorous piece about an uncommunicative newborn whose parents optimistically believe he'll become President someday, despite having no evidence of his abilities. The satire likely mocks American optimism about presidential potential and parental bias. The cartoon at top depicts someone being sent to Florida with a "shoe horn"—suggesting difficulty fitting oneself into the Florida lifestyle or entering its competitive real estate market.