Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, June 1921 · page 37 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #21 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s-era satirical magazine) contains no political cartoons, but rather humorous editorial and verse content. The opening essay sardonically compares "clean" American short stories to "naughty stories," arguing that while respectable fiction claims moral purity, it actually derives its narrative efficiency from risqué storytelling traditions. The satire mocks American prudishness and hypocrisy about sexual content. The two brief pieces below are crude, working-class humor typical of the magazine's style: - **"A Song Without Music"** depicts a miner whose girlfriend is literally a pack mule he drives in the mines—absurdist humor playing on rural/mining stereotypes. - **"Our Monthly Motto"** presents a bachelor's twisted logic: since wine, women, and song ruin men, he's eliminated only singing—keeping the other two vices. It's self-aware, irreverent humor about male indulgence. The overall tone targets middle-class morality while celebrating bawdy, anti-establishment humor for working-class readers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
36 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang their origin in the backyard heaps—wonderful passion blossoms bloom gorgeously in surroundings that are the worst. The connection has never been established, but the coincidence is indisputable, that the vaunted American short story, so clean morally and so harmless that the most modest virgin may read it without fear of being corrupted, is modeled upon the naughty story, conspicuously American in its construction, which would paralyze with horror any virgin who should happen to lend to its recital an attentive ear. If one could but divest himself of his moral pul- chritude, what paens of praise would be poured forth in honor of that sinful and abhorrent thing, the naughty story! It is so brilliant, so forceful, so perfectly filed down and sharpened and polished until its edge is like the edge of a Damascus blade and its point is finer than a needle's! Instinctively the teller of such a tale flings aside every detail which is not absolutely essential to the narrative. There is not a word too much. There is not a trace of description which could be dispensed with. All—all is sacrificed to the exigency of brevity and to the final effect. * * * A Song Without Music My sweetheart's a mule in the mine; I drive her without any line; on the bumper I sit, and tobacco I spit, all over my sweet Jenny's spine. * * * Our Monthly Motto Wine, women and song are the ruination of man, so I've cut out singing.