The Evening Journal · Wilmington, Delaware · 1911

Reddy the Rooter; He Sure Is a "Noble Fourth"

Reddy the office boy wants to see the ball game. The other kid says lie to the boss. Reddy will not lie, no sirree, and honesty pays off: the boss grants the holiday, then turns up in the last panel yelling at the game himself.

The oldest problem in organized labor: there is a ball game this afternoon and you are expected elsewhere. The Evening Journal ran this seven-panel morality play in June 1911, and the moral holds up.

Reddy’s coworker offers the classic counsel: “Say, Reddy, dere’s a great ball-game ter day. Why don’t yer tell de boss dat yer sick.” Reddy declines to perjure himself: “I would’nt lie t’me boss if I never got a holiday.” He walks in and asks straight, and the boss delivers the verdict that gives the strip its title: “Here Reddy! You’re a good noble youth. Now you just take a holiday to-day and enjoy yourself.”

Honesty rewarded, curtain. Except the strip has one more panel, and in it the boss is at the ball park himself, coat off, hollering advice at the pitcher: “He bit on two live ones, now send over a cripple!” A cripple, in the dugout dialect of 1911, being a fat pitch a batter can do something with. The boss did not grant that holiday out of pure nobility. He granted it because he understood it completely.