The Wasp — 1890 — page 208: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

**"Prescription for a Siesta"** (top left illustration) depicts a figure in a narcotic state, labeled as "A narcotic in the form of a daily or weekly sheet"—referring to *The Wasp* itself as satirical medicine. The page's main text criticizes **Rev. J. Sanders Reed's sermon** distinguishing rich from poor men. The satire attacks Reed's assertion that wealthy men possess superior "wits" while poor men are "weak, sickly, vicious and depraved." The author ridicules this moralistic justification of economic inequality, listing wealthy figures (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.) as counterexamples of virtue. The **"Photographia"** section discusses Oakland's "Woodworth mania"—a man riding a bicycle through streets, which satirizes this public nuisance as symptomatic of religious mania spreading through the community.