March 12 1910 -- I know what you've been thinking. Sure, it's all well and good for Herriman to be doing all these sports cartoons, but when will he get around to an editorial cartoon about prunes?
Well, my friends, that long-awaited day has finally come. It seems that food prices have been going through the roof, led by meat, dairy and grains. Luckily for Californians the state is practically awash in dried fruits, including that king of dessicated fruit, the prune. Herriman extolls their virtues for replacing all that other expensive stuff in the Angeleno diet.
One of the issues in those days, before wide-spread home refrigeration and industrial food freezing, was that certain foods, especially fruits and vegetables, would become scarce until the new crops came in. I recall a Ding Darling editorial cartoon on the subject, showing people adrift on a raft, relying on their home-canned vegetables from the previous summer. Dried fruit, like these prunes, would have been shelf-stable and relatively cheap.
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