The Wasp — 1878 — page 338: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page presents two satirical images about industrial schools in what appears to be late 19th-century America. The **top illustration** titled "DINNER CALL IN THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL" shows a boy sounding a trumpet, depicting the regimented, military-style discipline imposed on students at industrial/reformatory schools. The **main illustration** labeled "THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION" depicts an institutional building surrounded by a fence, with workers and a horse-drawn cart in the foreground. The satire critiques these facilities—ostensibly designed to reform poor or delinquent youth through industrial training—as actually functioning as prisons or sites of harsh punishment rather than education. The Wasp's commentary suggests skepticism about whether these institutions genuinely educated students or merely confined and exploited them under the guise of moral improvement.