Poor Little Income

Maurice Ketten's single-panel gag strip follows a domestic dispute over household finances. A mother scolds her husband for overspending while children look on; he responds by threatening to hide money from her, leading to escalating absurdity—kidnapping the child as collateral, then blaming a mysterious "profiteer" for the chaos. The strip employs the visual vocabulary now standard to comics: sequential panels, expressive body language, and dialogue balloons. Published during the postwar economic anxiety of 1919, it reflects contemporary concerns about inflation and family budgeting while relying on slapstick physical comedy and the recurring characters typical of newspaper dailies that preceded the modern comic book.