Ehrhart, S. D. (Samuel D.), approximately 1862-1937

The endless game

A game of chess is being played on the “[Depar]tment of Police” board, between a hand labeled “Political Pull” showing a cufflink labeled “Brass Check” and a hand labeled “Reform.” Some of the squares are labeled “Race Track, Suburbs, White Lights, Gambling District, Goatville, Financial District, Tenderloin, Red Light District, Lonely Beat, [and] Hell’s Kitchen.” The chess pieces are police officers, some in plainclothes, labeled “Crooked Captain, Inspector, Sleuth, ‘Fixed’ Captain, Honest Captain, Grafting Captain, Honest Inspector, Plainclothes Man, [and] Sergeant.”

Comments and Context

A dozen years before this cartoon — when Theodore Roosevelt had assumed his position as president of the Board of Police Commissioners in New York City, and continuing through his tenure — corruption among the police ranks was rife. Startling revelations mostly were instigated by the municipal reformer Reverend C. H. Parkhurst, followed by a 10,000 page report by the Lexow Committee (chaired by state senator Clarence Lexow) exposing countless abuses by the Lexow Committee.

The seven ages of dope

A folding fan opens to display “the seven ages of dope,” beginning on the left with a nurse attending to an infant, passing through childhood and adulthood, to old age, and culminating with a coffin-shaped closure for the fan. In the foreground is a row of containers for various types of adulterated products, and in the background are drug producing factories.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist S. D. Ehrhart’s moralistic cartoon is a play upon the very popular “Seven Ages Of Man,” from William Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man (infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, “lean and splintered pantaloon,” and second childishness), issued at the time in framed prints, portfolios, and books.

In time of peace, prepare for vacation

At center, a young man sits with his mannequin spouse labeled “Farmer’s Daughter,” looking at pictures in the “Family Album.” Surrounding vignettes show the man in training for the annual city-dweller’s summer vacation to the country. Caption: The wise young man goes in training now.

Comments and Context

With the advent of spring, Puck takes an early vacation from cartoons about railroad rates, muckrakers, and insurance scandals (the momentous New York State investigations and report were winding up at this time) with a humor-only, no-politics genre cartoons about the vicissitudes of an urbanite’s Summer retreat to rural resorts.

Gambling by wireless

Vignettes show the activities of stock exchanges and gambling on sporting events on ocean liners once they are equipped for wireless transmission.

Comments and Context

“Coming events cast their shadows before…” or perhaps their sounds and static. There were many experiments with the electronic transmission of sound going back to Thomas Edison’s early inventions; and many versions of wireless telegraphy and communications by radio waves between hilltops and even over the Atlantic Ocean before Guglielmo Marconi perfected wireless communication. In between and subsequently there were many scientists and many experiments to perfect communication, and entertainment “over the air.”

How to keep a servant girl – and keep her satisfied – in the country

Vignettes lightheartedly depict Irish domestic servants being pampered and coddled by their employers in efforts to keep them happy and happily employed, chiefly, by taking their minds off their domestic duties by providing pleasant distractions.

Comments and Context

A Puck centerspread cartoon — the home, approximately once a month, of multiple genre gags on a social (not political) topic, occasionally merged two themes. In the example, artist S. D. Ehrhart falls back on two cliches frequently used by cartoonists — interestingly, social trends headed in opposite directions at the time.

An international high noon divorce

Illustration shows the circus-like atmosphere of the divorce proceedings of Anna Gould, holding a handful of “Incriminating Evidence” against her husband, and Boni de Castellane. Accompanying text describes the event in language that would be used to describe a wedding celebration.

Comments and Context

At the turn of the last century, the American press and even satirical magazines like Puck — perhaps especially magazines like Puck — followed the doings and undoings of the socially prominent. The most prominent cartoonist of this genre was Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girls. His heroines were independent and assertive, and influenced a generation of women in turn. Ironically, in many of his cartoons and in real life, a number of American women, especially heiresses, were willing to trade their independence, and their fortunes, for the seductions of foreigners, titles, estates, and castles, even when many of the imported fortune-hunting dukes and counts were virtually bankrupt.

The annual invasion

Actors and characters (some in cages), acrobats, and theater props are being unloaded from a ship into a dock-side warehouse. Drawn at the commencement of the opera season; a satirical treatment of German favorites, both singers and aspects of the predictable repertoire. Caption: Arrival of the all-star Argonauts in quest of the golden “fleece.”

Comments and Context

Puck dusted off one its former annual wheezes with this cartoon by S. Ehrhart. For at least the first decade and a half of its existence, the magazine noted the opening of the opera season in New York City, a subject that evidently lost some its edge, because Ehrhart’s cartoon was a throwback. Of course, in the 21st century, such a topic would scarcely be noticed by a national magazine.

Not

A large elderly man labeled “Life Insurance” holds a cornucopia filled with documents labeled “For the Beneficiaries.” Next to him sits a large dog with collar labeled “Supt. Insurance,” and in front is a group of diminutive figures, a woman in mourning, an elderly man holding the hand of a young child, and a nurse holding an infant. In the background are a group of businessmen labeled “Corruption.”

Comments and Context

The indiscretions and reports of corruption common to most large American businesses in 1905, in the midst of the Muckraking Era, reached the insurance industry as well. Public concern was accelerated by the well-publicized orgiastic ball thrown by the heir to the Equitable Life Insurance fortune, the putative next director, James Hazen Hyde. In addition to the public’s reaction to conspicuous consumption and loose moral atmosphere at the ball were rumors that its extravagant expense was charged to the Equitable.

Puck’s inventions

John D. Rockefeller stands on a ladder, dumping coins into a “Patent Disinfector,” as a member of the clergy opens a slot and coins pour into a bucket labeled “Purified Cash for Missions.” An open trunk labeled “Contributions,” full of money bags, is at the base of the ladder. Caption: The cash purification plant.

Comments and Context

S. D. Ehrhart’s modest cover cartoon appears to comment on the growing trend of American moguls donating portions of their fortunes to charities. The most prominent of the day might have been Andrew Carnegie’s stated intention to give away his fortune to causes like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Free Libraries, and what became Carnegie-Mellon University. For every Carnegie there have been multitudes of Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers.

The rivals

A beautiful young woman emerges from a church on Easter. A cluster of well-dressed men, all eager for her hand, are waiting. Two of the men turn away a devil figure dressed in red. Caption: Who hath not owned, with rapture smitten frame, / The power of grace.–Campbell.

Comments and Context

Once again at Eastertide, Puck turns its attention not to the Passion or Resurrection of Christ but — as most magazines and newspapers did for thematic material between Lent and after Easter — to social freedom before Lent, restrained socializing during Lent and Holy Week, and a return to courtship and the social whirl after Easter. It was the common thematic preoccupations of cartoons, poems, short fiction, and even editorials in the time.

In the merry month of May

A tall, thin old man wearing a top hat labeled “Father” serves as the maypole around which several characters typically featured in Puck cartoons are dancing.

Comments and Context

The Maypole in cartoonist Ehrhart’s drawing is the seasonal theme of every Spring commemoration number of Puck: not May 1’s May Day, the international workers holiday, but the things of spring.

Will the white slave have a Lincoln?

A man labeled “‘Independent’ Labor,” tied to a post labeled “Organized Tyranny,” is being whipped by a man labeled “Professional Entertainer.” In the background, a factory is burning.

Comments and Context

This is a strange cartoon, a bit out of character for Puck and this cartoonist, S. D. Ehrhart. It is more radical other Puck cartoons of the era; Ehrhart seldom drew political cartoons, and virtually none of those as harsh as this.

Why not settle it socially at Oyster Bay?

Vignette cartoon with a central image showing President Roosevelt sitting with Russian, Japanese, and possibly Chinese figures at his summer retreat at Oyster Bay; his personal secretary, William Loeb, is serving drinks. The vignette scenes suggest that the Russo-Japanese war, and the control of Manchuria and Vladivostok, be decided by competitions between the Russian leaders and those of Japan and China, such as a swimming race, a wood-chopping contest, a tennis match, and a contest of telling the tallest fish story.

Comments and Context

Puck cartoonists L. M. Glackens and S. D. Ehrhart joined forces to draw the magazine’s semi-regular centerspread genre cartoon commenting on current events, this page on the upcoming negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War. There was one month to go before commencement of talks. Approximately two months after this cartoon’s publication, a Treaty of Peace was signed.

At the horse show

At center, fashionably dressed women admire a statue of a horse. Surrounding vignettes show women’s fashions, contrasting an automobile to a horse, the latest in horse fashions, and a horse-owner’s nightmare about failing to win a ribbon. Caption: Fashion’s shrine – horse show week.

Comments and Context

In the manner of many nominal sporting events before (like America’s Cup competitions) and since, New York’s annual horse show by 1904 had became a place to see and be seen. High-society luminaries — the “400” — communed, competed for attention, and attracted the press and the curious.

The king of them all

A jolly Santa Claus sits in a large chair at center with toys at his feet. A family with two little girls, possibly twins, and several children and servants approach him, smiling, on the right. Many nursery rhyme characters approach on the left, looking sad and distressed.

Comments and Context

In Samuel Ehrhart’s center-spread cartoon in Puck‘s 1904 Christmas issue, the familiar characters of generations children’s stories seem upset that modern children are more taken with shiny toys and dolls. Santa Claus seem complicit, and doting parents encourage the new over the old.

The girl of the hour

A fashionably-dressed young woman ice skates on a pond in a park. She is being admired by several men and boys standing on the left, while on the right four women, a golfer, an automobile driver, a party-goer, and a hunter, trudge through the snow to await the arrival of summer. Old Man Winter blows a frigid blast over the scene from the top.

Comments and Context

The girl of the hour in Ehrhart’s cover cartoon would seem to have the emphasis on the word “hour” — that winter sports, and ice skating assisted by Old Man Winter, is enjoying its portion of the social and sporting calendar.

Puck Christmas 1904

At center, Father Knickerbocker, a symbolic figure for New York City, welcomes Santa Claus to the underground of New York City. The surrounding vignettes show Santa distributing Christmas presents and planning for next year. The “Angel of Peace” is hoping for an end to the hostilities between Japan and Russia.

Comments and Context

At the center of Samuel Ehrhart’s collage of Christmas-themed gags is Uncle Sam and Father Knickerbocker (the New York City counterpart of Uncle Sam), rather overshadowed by a subway station resembling a palace. All of New York, and indeed the nation, was fascinated by the new subway system. It had opened its rail lines and station on the October 27, 1904, just before the presidential election. When the campaign was over, and the gaudy St. Louis World’s Fair closed in early December, the nation turned its eyes to a virtual Eighth Wonder of the World: miles of underground tracks in America’s biggest city.

In ad land

In this vignette cartoon, President Roosevelt and members of his cabinet appear at the center in a meeting. Each has a signboard advertising a patent medicine or other product on their back. Roosevelt’s says, “Strenoline The Famous Vigor Producer A De-Lightful Stimulant, Nervy Mfg. Co, Royster Bay.” Surrounding the central image are scenes showing men, animals, and statues, all with signboards, including an elephant labeled “G.O.P. The Great Tariff Comedian – Continuous Performances.”

Comments and Context

One of cartoonist Samuel Ehrhart’s now-standard vignette cartoons in Puck, a topic of the day with variations on a theme, in this double-spread was quite standard. The single concept of advertisements encroaching on daily life is played, and stretched, most of the humor derived from puns or association with names of celebrities and professions. Since the 1880s, Puck had lampooned advertising signs on elevated trains and commercial billboards, so this cartoon focusing on sandwich boards was a variation. Present-day eyes might require details about long-forgotten issues and personalities, however.

The modern war god

A Jewish man dressed as Mars, the Roman god of war, and decorated with symbols of money, stands in the doorway of a munitions store labeled “Marsheim Bellonaberg & Co.” and “Ordnance Dept.” A notice posted on the side states “War Loans a Speciality” and a sign reads “By Appointment to H.I.M. the Czar & Mikado – Cash Vobiscum.”

Comments and Context

Ehrhart’s cartoon smacks of anti-Semitism to contemporary eyes, but it uses the age-old stereotype of Jewish money-lenders as a stick with which to beat England and English banks. As Russia and Japan bled each other dry in their war, the English, as money-lenders to “the Czar and the Mikado” respectively, profited off both. The British made loans at high interest, and sold munitions similarly.

The retirement of David

David B. Hill appears as a farm wife feeding chickens, geese, and pigs. Vignette scenes show Hill working the farm, shopping, and pontificating to a group of hayseed farmers. The final scene shows Hill in bed receiving the “Presidential Nomination” from Columbia.

Comments and Context

David B. Hill had served in many offices as a New York Democrat — state assemblyman, lieutenant governor, governor, United States Senator, as a supporter and opponent of New York’s Grover Cleveland, and as a supporter of his party’s presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. He also was, for roughly two decades between 1884 and 1904, an aspiring presidential candidate.