The Wasp — 1879 — page 403: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes San Francisco's corrupt local politics through an anecdote about Bishop Alemany and a barber named Rodriguez. The text describes how Rodriguez, compensated with just a shave for lending his land to the Lake Merced Water Commission, later dies after the barber uses his mustache dye as a murder weapon—a darkly comedic commentary on exploitation of working-class immigrants by the city's powerful elite. The cartoon's title and crude imagery suggest satire of how San Francisco's poor and marginalized populations were treated as disposable "human trash" by those in power. The anecdote illustrates systemic corruption where the vulnerable received pittances while city officials profited enormously from public resources.