Dalrymple, Louis, 1866-1905

Puck, the eponymous mascot of the magazine, looks at both sides of an issue. On the left, “The result of abolishing the canteen” shows soldiers drunk on whiskey, in a stupor, and engaged in a barroom brawl. On the right, “The canteen as it is” shows soldiers sitting around a table, eating and drinking beer. There was a public debate about the morality and practicality of government-managed drinking establishments on military bases.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-06-20

The rulers of Germany, France, Austria, Japan, and John Bull, representing England, watch as the ruler of Russia lights the fuse of a large firecracker labeled “China.”

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Comments and Context

At the time of this cartoon’s publication, the daily news carried stories from China about the worst period of the Boxer Rebellion, when European powers, American, and Japanese citizens, businesses, and missionaries were being killed and besieged by aggrieved nationalists.

President William McKinley walks onto the White House grounds with a woman labeled “Prosperity,” passing a group of barking dogs labeled “Anti-prosperity,” “Silverites,” “Anti-trust,” “Anti-expansion,” and “Socialist.” The woman, dressed in a red, white, and blue outfit, may represent Columbia or possibly Mrs. McKinley. She is wearing a winged hat like that of the Roman god Mercury, though may also represent Minerva, the Roman goddess and patroness of commerce and trade.

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Comments and Context

In a cartoon as close to a Presidential endorsement that the traditionally Democratic magazine Puck could make, “Prosperity” is literally wedded to President McKinley. These icons, including the harmless growling dogs, were in second place compared to that of its Republican rival, Judge Magazine. Judge‘s cartoons depicting the “Full Dinner Pail” — suggesting prosperity for American middle-class workers — became campaign slogans and an image that adorned millions of buttons, banners, posters, and cartoons.

Richard Croker, dressed in formal wear and wearing a sash labeled “Tammany,” proclaims that he/Tammany supports William Jennings Bryan for president while, behind his back, he slips a vote for William McKinley into the pot labeled “Nov. Election.”

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Comments and Context

This cartoon attacks Tammany Hall Boss Richard Croker for alleged hypocrisy. He endorsed Democrat William Jennings Bryan for President in 1900 but secretly favored Republican William McKinley’s reelection. Croker, if he had any economic views, was for “sound money” and the McKinley prosperity. Tammany candidates outpaced Bryan’s vote tally in New York City in 1896 and increased its margins in 1900, carrying the city despite the Republicans carrying the state. Yet Croker, through the 1900 campaign, softened his routine praise of Bryan, and suspended making predictions at all. Despite the profiles of Tammany Hall members, and his own scruffy appearance (his gray-striped beard invited cartoonists’ depictions as the Tammany Tiger itself), Croker was a prosperous figure who bred racehorses. He was perhaps comfortable with President McKinley, yet always towing the Democrat line.

An elderly German American man, with one hand pointing to his head and the other pointing to a coin bank labeled “Savings Bank” on a table, winks to reinforce that he thinks his investments in the “U.S. Bonds” protruding from his vest and his savings are wise decisions. On the left is a poster showing a bust portrait of President William McKinley labeled “Expansion” and captioned “Gold Standard and Sound Money,” and on the right is a poster showing a bust portrait of William Jennings Bryan labeled “Anti-Expansion” and captioned “Repudiation and 16 to 1.”

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Comments and Context

The readership of Puck was reliably and generally regarded as German-American, above any other affiliation. It began as a German-language weekly and still published a German edition when this cartoon was published. Usually Democratic in its political views, except in years that William Jennings Bryan was not a candidate, this cartoon posed a question but strongly implied the answer: wise, thrifty, and sober German-Americans would support President William McKinley (as Puck did, editorially, that year.)

William Jennings Bryan carries a banner that states “16 to 1 will help you,” and Adlai E. Stevenson carries a banner that states “I ran with Cleveland, vote for me.” They stand in front of a gigantic farmer who has swelled to enormous proportions on profits from wheat, cotton, and other farm produce.

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In 1896, with a devastating depression in recent memory, the Presidential campaign arguments of Democrats and Populists were largely economic. However, they lost in large numbers to the Republican Party. Again the nominee, William Jennings Bryan found his old message irrelevant in the face of the McKinley prosperity. Cleveland’s second Vice President, Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, was put on Bryan’s 1900 ticket, in hopes of appealing to more conservative Democrats.

Members of the Democratic Party labeled “Sound Money Democrats” cast votes for President William McKinley and show their support for the “Sound Money” platform of the Republican Party. On the left is a little man representing a faction of the Populist Party, flying a banner with a portrait of William Jennings Bryan; and in the background is the deserted Democratic Party Platform, flying a banner labeled “Democrat No Nomination.”

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The man under the Populist banner is Senator William A. Peffer of Kansas, one of six Populists to serve in the United States Senate. He served one term, 1891-1897, but maintained political ambitions, and Populist ideals. Among the “Gold Democrats’ who stayed loyal to President Cleveland in 1896 and declined to support William Jennings Bryan, some continued to support Republican President McKinley in 1900. This cartoon seems more appropriate for 1896, but shows how shunned Bryan was among some Democrats with long memories and “Sound Money” principles. They are not labeled, but some of Democrats shown voting for McKinley are (foreground) John M. Palmer, the so-called National Democratic Party candidate for President in 1896; and (background, with shaded spectacles) William C. Whitney, who had been President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy. Whitney was a hunting partner of Theodore Roosevelt, and whose son Harry married Gertrude Vanderbilt, founder of the Whitney Museum of Art; and whose other son William married Helen Hay, poet and daughter of Roosevelt’s Secretary of State John Hay. The daughter of Harry and Gertrude was Flora Payne Whitney, who engaged to be married to Theodore’s son Quentin when the latter was killed in aerial combat in World War I.

Illustration showing John Bull standing at the gate to South African markets as figures representing Germany, Italy, Austria, France, and Russia protest. Caption: John Bull. — When I open a door I leave it open freely to all of you. I have given you about all the foreign trade you have! What are you mad about?

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Dalrymple’s cartoon betrays a subtext that unapologetically accepts the aggressive colonial policies of the British Empire, that British hegemony was beneficially neutral in world trade, and not detrimental to the freedom of economics and commerce of other nations. 

Illustration showing John Bull as a sailor, floating in a life-preserver labeled “British Navy 800 War Ships,” surrounded by huge waves labeled “Germany,” “France,” and “Russia.” There are cannon barrels pointing in all directions from the life-preserver.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-02-28

Two tramps dressed in cast-off and ill-fitting clothes discuss how to kill the “Trusts” through “Social Ostracism.” On the left is a well-dressed matronly woman wearing a robe labeled “The 400” and sitting on a throne. On the right is a man labeled “Trusts,” holding strings attached to businesses, as well as ships and railroads, in which the “Trusts” hold controlling interests. Caption: The Trusts have got to be ostracised, but who [is goin]g to do it? Society won[‘t and] Capital won’t, so there’s nobody to do it but us!

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Comments and Context

President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale University delivered a speech in Denver, in January 1900, in which he proposed that the solution to abuses by monopolies and trusts in the United States was not legislation but “ostracism.” The remedy widely was criticized. Hadley was paired with Populist / Democrat William Jennings Bryan, often in mocking terms, for the futility of their advocacies. Further, John D. Rockefeller, an iconic monopolist, recently had gifted Yale with four million-dollar bequests. Dalrymple contrasts — or compares — the social pariah of high-society types (“the 400”) whose social morals are imputed to be as low as the economic ethics of monopolists. Depicted in their dignity, they are impervious to the designs of tramps to “ostracize” them and Hadley’s prescription is held to ridicule.

Illustration showing two gladiators, one labeled “Gold Standard” and the other labeled “Silver Standard,” in a coliseum, the “Gold Standard” gladiator stands victorious over the “Silver Standard” gladiator, his sword, labeled “16 to 1” lies broken at his side.

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Comments and Context

“Survival of the fittest” is a term coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864 as his summary of Darwinian theory applied to his own economic ideas. It thereafter was adopted by Darwin himself. Since the Panic of 1873, the United States government, operating on a bimetallic basis — gold and silver convertible to specie and coin on fixed values — had a relatively unstable economy. Economic growth was influenced by an inelastic currency as well as the results of gold rushes and silver mining. The Populist revolt, 1892-1896, exacerbated by a severe depression, led to William Jennings Bryan to advocate for inflation and a value-ratio of 16 to 1, silver ounces to gold ounces. Such near-anarchy in the economy ended in 1900 with the passage of the Gold Standard Law, forever taking the United States from any reliance on silver, hence the broken “16-to-1” sword in the cartoon. In 1933 the country likewise abandoned the Gold Standard.

Illustration showing a large hand labeled “LAW” holding up by the collar newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, with view of New York City in the background. Caption: Why not make a clean job of it while we’re at it?

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This cartoon’s title probably also refers to the aggressive urban clean-up campaigns inaugurated in 1894 under George E. Waring, reform mayor William L. Strong’s Sanitation Commissioner — a post he first offered to Theodore Roosevelt. Waring’s squads of street-cleaners were dubbed “White Wings.” Cartoon subjects Pulitzer and Hearst were publishers of, respectively, the World, and the Journal and the American in New York City. Dalrymple played on the papers’ names by titling them the Whirl and the Infernal. They were the largest-circulation papers in New York as well as in the nation, and their rivalry gave birth to the Sunday comic supplements, whose character the Yellow Kid, variously the star of each paper, gave rise to the term “Yellow Journalism.” The publishers each helped to foment the Spanish-American war, adding Cuban atrocity stories to their routine urban sensationalism. Ironically, in 1917, when Puck was failing, William Randolph Hearst purchased the magazine from Udo J. Keppler, son of its founder. 

Special Easter edition centerfold shows President William McKinley as a rooster standing next to a broken egg labeled “Vice-Presidential Aspirations” from which several chicks have emerged, identified as: Lodge, Black, Bliss, Teddy, Root, Beveridge, and Timmy Woodruff.

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Comments and Context

Less than five months before this cartoon was published, Vice President Garret A. Hobart died in office. Especially given President McKinley’s popularity, the speculation about his running mate, later that year, was rife. Of the “chicks” depicted by cartoonist Louis Dalrymple and viewed approvingly by McKinley is, most prominently, Theodore Roosevelt.  He was then Governor of New York and a popular war hero and famed as a cowboy, drawn with a Western hat. Interestingly, other Vice Presidential possibilities seen here were also New Yorkers: former Governor Frank S. Black, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Lieutenant Governor Timothy L. Woodruff; and former Secretary of Interior Cornelius N. Bliss. Roosevelt’s friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge is pictured, as is Indiana Senator Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, later a strong ally of Roosevelt in the Progressive party campaign.

President William McKinley drives a carriage labeled “Free Trade,” with passengers Uncle Sam and a woman labeled “Hawaii.” Standing on the right is a woman labeled “Porto Rico,” holding a basket of fruit and looking forlornly at the carriage as it passes. Lying in the dust are papers that state, “McKinley’s message to Congress. ‘Our Plain Duty’.”

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The question posed by this cartoon is why the new territories and possessions of the United States, particularly those acquired in the recent war with Spain, were treated differently in matters of governance and trade. Hawaii received free trade status with the United States because their economy and exports were somewhat developed. Cuba had a legal and economic infrastructure that, although calcified under Spanish rule, also existed. Both territories, and others, had status that was heavily influenced by American corporations and trusts. In the case of Puerto Rico, the island was largely undeveloped. President McKinley, in a 1900 message to Congress that prompted this cartoon, and in the 1902 Foraker Act, proposed a set of legal, governmental, and economic reforms that included plans for infrastructure and a school system. Included was a provision for modified free trade with the United States, and tariffs lower than prevailing rates for foreign goods — with the generated revenues earmarked for internal improvements on the island. Puck depicted the bare-bone fact of disparity without nuanced policy bases.

Illustration showing Admiral George Dewey as a circus clown, with William Jennings Bryan on a donkey labeled “Dem Party” and William McKinley on an elephant labeled “GOP” under the big top of a circus. Puck, as the ringmaster, stands in the background.

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Admiral George Dewey was the Hero of Manila Bay. After following the orders of Acting Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt and moving America’s Pacific Fleet to the Philippines in contingency of war with Spain, when war came, the fleet completely destroyed Spain’s fleet with virtually no damage to the American Naval force. Dewey returned to America a popular man whose political prowess was less astute. He accepted the gift of a public-subscribed house and then signed it away to his new wife, a divorced Catholic woman, offending many groups of that day. He allowed himself to be drawn into politics — at least to dabble — by a brother-in-law who wound up abandoning Dewey’s ambitions. In the space of a year the hero widely was seen as an inept clown indeed. It took a lot for Puck to depict William Jennings Bryan, the ultimate Democrat nominee, as reasonably dignified, but the contrast was marked.

The financial situation for laborers and capitalists in 1875 and in 1900 is depicted. The high interest earned by the dollar was good for the capitalist in 1875. As interest on the dollar dropped, the financier saw his investments earning less in 1900, but the situation improved for the laborer because the dollar went further. Caption: The laborer’s dollar grows, and the capitalist’s dollar shrinks.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-01-10

Cartoon depicts President Roosevelt holding hands with a lookalike bear in Mississippi.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-11-21

Cartoon depicts President Roosevelt pouring in oil of mediation to the turbulent waters of the coal strikers and operators. Item is regarding the presidential conference on the coal strike. Label: Strike Passion.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-10-06

President Roosevelt is seen leaving a stage carrying a wreath of flowers given to him from the American People for settling the coal strike. A bouquet of flowers from the coal miners is waiting for him backstage. A shadowy figure, David B. Hill, lurks behind the curtain holding a hat labeled Socialistic Coal Mine Plank. Caption: Tragedian Hill – “Hang it; he’s winning all the applause and getting all the bouquets.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-10-20

President Theodore Roosevelt, hunting at night, sees Br’er Coon up a tree catching a bird. On a lower limb of the tree hangs “Uncle Remus’ Game Bag.” On the tree is carved, “Yazoo Co., Miss.” Several bears scurry away from Roosevelt, including one hiding behind the tree which is saying, “Look up and not down.” The stock of Roosevelt’s gun reads “T. R. Washington.” Caption: The strange things we see when we’ve got a gun.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902