The Wasp — 1877 — page 205: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This two-panel satirical cartoon mocks the "San Francisco Ball & Chain Society." The top panel shows well-dressed men in suits resting after "their plush," depicted as idle gentlemen gathered in a courtyard. The bottom panel contrasts this by showing workers engaged in actual labor—digging, hauling wheelbarrows, and operating construction equipment on a hillside. The satire appears to critique wealthy San Francisco society men who claim genteel respectability while actual working-class laborers do the real work sustaining the city. The "Ball & Chain" reference suggests these affluent figures are bound to leisure rather than productive labor, mocking both their pretensions and their disconnect from the working people who build the city's infrastructure.