The Wasp — 1895 — page 472: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical cartoon illustrates a summer teacher-trip competition between rival California newspapers (likely the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, based on the text). The cartoon depicts various California locations—Twin Peaks, Cow Hollow, Baker's Beach, Ashery Heights, Melick's Wharf—as destinations in a chaotic contest. The joke: newspapers were aggressively competing for subscriptions by offering free summer excursions to schoolteachers. The cartoon mocks this fierce rivalry, showing exhausted participants and suggesting the contest created public spectacle and undignified competition. The caption "Heaven Be Praised" sarcastically celebrates the contest's end, implying readers were relieved the disruptive newspaper campaigns had finally concluded and normal life could resume.