The Wasp — 1896 — page 67: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes middle-class attitudes toward poverty and hunger. The sketch shows a well-dressed family rejecting a starving beggar at their door, with accompanying text explaining their rationale: they won't help because "starvation stared us in the face" during a church scandal, and they've been "pinching about another item on Congress." The satire targets the hypocrisy of comfortable households who claim financial hardship while refusing charity to the genuinely destitute. The title suggests their "self-preservation" is merely selfishness disguised as necessity. The joke exposes how the prosperous rationalize ignoring suffering, blaming abstract political and institutional failures rather than acknowledging their own capacity to help.