Why The Tear Stood in Her Eye
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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Comics
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The Greatest Strike in History
March 30, 2025
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March 28, 2025
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They’re Acting Queer in Cleveland
March 27, 2025
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A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk, and a Stick of Butter
March 26, 2025
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on A Working Man Reviewed
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Is there anything in the book explaining what’s going on here? Is it text by McCutcheon, art by Briggs? Why did only McCutcheon sign it?Report
That’s a really good question. I had assumed since it was included in the book that it was a co-write but Briggs’s name isn’t there.
McClutcheon was a colleague at the Chicago Herald. He had a “Goodbye Clare” comic that I had teed up after I ran my last Briggs cartoon (which is now unlikely to happen as I have a new source for them that numbers in the thousands). It’s possible his was simply included by mistake, or because he was filling in for Briggs so it counted as Briggs banner.Report
I don’t think we’re giving sufficient weight to the alter ego hypothesis. I personally have never seen the two in the same room.Report
To me, it seems like Briggs drew this, but McCutheon did the words (tho actual lettering may still be Briggs or whomever would do his lettering if Briggs didn’t). Similar to how in the Days of Real Sport the included poems were someone else.
And apparently, this was a real live issue. There’s an article on the front page of the New York Times from January 1912 about the price of butter, and an archive Bureau of Labor Stats report via the St, Louis Fed shows (page 7) how retail butter prices had doubled over the past couple of years.
https://www.nytimes.com/1912/01/23/archives/price-of-butter-breaks-threecent-cut-announced-by-the-elgin-board.html
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_0164_1915.pdfReport
It’s weird that newspapers in those days were just single sentence fragments printed in huge type.Report
The interesting thing is how much 50 cents seems like for 1912. I looked up on an inflation calculator (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) that goes back to 1913 and it claims something costing 50 cents in 1913 would cost $14.33 today.
I bought butter on Tuesday, I paid less than $4 a pound, so obviously something has changed (I presume: it’s become more automated, and therefore cheaper to make.)
Today the comic would be about new waves of COVID, and war in Ukraine, and human-rights abuses around the world, the real horror being “gas is $5 a gallon”Report
Enormously more automated, the cows are much better milk producers now than then, and of course the market is enormously more globalized and thus more efficient. Butter can come in from anywhere it’s cheap to produce now. In 1913 it’d have been coming mostly from any given cities hinterland.Report
I suspect that the increased demand for byproducts like low- and non-fat milk and whey protein plays a role as well.Report
For sure, the interlocking chains of products and value are dizzying, and glorious.Report
Retail butter prices are well up due to pandemic issues. They hit a several-year low at $3.32/pound in Jan 2020.
Don’t forget the Great Cream Cheese shortage of 2021, now extending into 2022. A friend said recently he’s been unable to get cream cheese where he lives for some weeks.Report
The cream cheese shortage is real down here as well.
If you want plain, you can probably get enough to keep your bagels cheesed (but you might think twice about making that cheesecake).
If you want jalapeno, forget about it. Dice up a jalapeno and make your own.Report
Huh, I haven’t noticed any recent issues. I keep the 1/3 less fat kind on hand (a couple sandwiches I eat regularly are better with it as an addition) and even our tiny regional-chain grocery regularly has it now. (But yeah – in 2021, couldn’t be found. I tried other brands than Philly and just could not with them. Even “Challenge,” which makes decent butter)Report
The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told
The Alderney:
“Don’t forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread.”
The Alderney
Said sleepily:
“You’d better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead.”Report
Dude, that is awesome! What is it from?!Report
It’s a bit of The King’s Breakfast by A. A. Milne, from his collection When We Were Very Young. It’s not a Pooh book, but it’s very often packaged with the two Pooh books and another collection called Now We Are Six.Report
I seem to remember they also did a version of this on The Muppet Show back in the 70s. At least it seems familiar from somewhere other than the books and I seem to remember a Henson-style cow and dairymaidReport
No, actually, Twiggy was the dairymaid. It was the queen I was remembering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y98ySc2ZXLsReport
This reminded me of Petula Clark’s delightful recording of “Christopher Robin at Buckingham Palace.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7_nGUsZrGsReport