The Wasp — 1894 — page 387: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes the contrast between manual labor and police work. The illustration shows two figures in what appears to be a rainy street scene: a working-class person (likely a laborer or domestic worker) actively engaged in physical toil, and a police officer standing idle nearby. The caption indicates the satire targets law enforcement's perceived laziness or ineffectiveness. The joke suggests that while ordinary workers exhaust themselves through genuine labor, police officers do minimal actual work—they merely "sit down all day doin' nuthin'" as the OCR'd dialogue indicates, yet still collect wages. This reflects broader Progressive-era criticism of municipal corruption and police inefficiency that The Wasp frequently lampooned.