The Wasp — 1891 — page 156: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

The top cartoon depicts Sullivan, a bartender or saloon keeper, forced to close his business under prohibition laws. The caption reads: "Sullivan will have a job on tonight—'standing room only.'" This is satirical: prohibition supposedly eliminates drinking, but the joke suggests it merely drives the trade underground into overcrowded illegal establishments. The bottom cartoon labeled "II. The Effect of Prohibition" shows Prof. Butters advertising temperance lectures at one dollar admission. The satire here is darker: prohibition advocates profit financially from the very vice they claim to oppose, creating a financial incentive to maintain abstinence rhetoric while businesses exploit it commercially. Both cartoons mock prohibition's ineffectiveness and the profiteering it enables.