Your TR Source
By the light of a full moon, many couples appear in romantic embraces around the globe; instances, perhaps, of summer love. Caption: The August moon — O, but they make me sick!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-08-09
A young woman holding a golf club leans against a young man who is carrying a golf bag with clubs. He is holding her hand.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-05-03
A large businessman labeled “Centralized Wealth” uses candle snuffs labeled “Control of Credit, Control of Bank Deposits, Control of Transportation, Control of Public Utilities, Control of Food Supply, Control of Natural Resources, Control of Business, [and] Control of Wall Street” to extinguish candles labeled “Initiative, Untainted Success, Ambition, Independence, [and] Individualism.” An insert shows Puck talking to a socialist speaker. Caption: Puck (to Socialist orator) — Sit down! You don’t have to talk. This large person is making socialists faster than you can make them!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-01-18
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.”
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.
These scandals fueled the voters’ revolt that led to the election of the reform mayor William Lafeyette Strong; and his reformist administration in turn was fueled by prosecution of abuses. These reforms, and many others, were the assignment of the new commissioner, Roosevelt. He and his recalcitrant fellow board members (two of the four commissioners continually resisted his measures) addressed police bribery and protection schemes, merit promotions, and such.
Vignettes show the activities of stock exchanges and gambling on sporting events on ocean liners once they are equipped for wireless transmission.
“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.”
Many of the advances, and public displays took place in 1906, especially at the hands of Reginald Fessenden. As these seemingly magical occupied the feature sections of newspapers and breathless stories in magazines, Puck magazine, as usual, was on track to do its cartoon commentary. S. D. Ehrhart drew predictable jokes about the humorous logical extensions of wireless communications at sea.
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.
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.
Cartoonists had so much fun with mosquitos and hard mattresses and noisy morning birds and ancient horsehair sofas, it seems a wonder that any vacationers ventured to distant farmlands and lake regions. But they did; and cartoonists evident did too, even if for research.
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.
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.
The cartoonist casts a wide net, and the arrangement looks further like the popular moralistic plays, prints, and books “Ten Nights In a Bar Room,” depicting the stages of alcoholic dissipation in famous Currier and Ives prints.
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.
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.
Adding further to the irony was that Gibson was of American aristocracy, with famous relatives hanging from his family tree. He also married one of the famous Langhorne sisters of Virginia, and thereby became related to the famous Astors of England.
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.
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.
Many middle-class families considered having at least one domestic servant an irreducible sign of respectability. Until different social norms, and labor-saving appliances for housewives, were asserted, cooks were common in households. Also common: they were difficult to keep (at least in cartoonists’ eyes) and keep happy, and often were Irish immigrants happy to work for modest wages. Other stereotypes — they were often romanced by policemen on the local beats (frequently Irish immigrants too) or ice deliverers. Hence Ehrhart’s hyperbolic suggestions to keep the cook satisfied on summer holidays.
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.”
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.
But dissatisfaction with insurance companies’ practices were emerging anyway. The practice of the tontine was under suspicion. Despite reforms over the subsequent century, it is still employed by some companies — basically a system of paying moneys and receiving annuities, but the company’s profits, and unpaid deposit accounts, re-invested into the company’s fund. Many people considered a variety of what became known as a Ponzi scheme.
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.”
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.
This cartoon features singers, props, and accoutrements of the German repertoire. Cartoonists often had commented upon the rivalry between German opera and Italian opera — vying for attention; importing famous guests; etc. The Viennese founder of Puck, Joseph Keppler, was a proponent of German opera, and reportedly was a member of New York’s musical Liederkranz Society.
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.
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.
The cartoonists had innocent fun, suggesting feats of strength and skill to settle the conflict, dismissing the bloody and exhaustive carnage in the Far East, and ignoring what was at stake with the United States — President Roosevelt’s personal prestige, and America’s potential role as a world power.
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.
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.
The concept evidently grew from labor troubles over salaries, working conditions, and hours, between theater owners of the Great White Way, and behind-the-scenes workers and performers on Broadway shows. There had been, and were, threats of strikes, work stoppages, and appeals to the public. Actors Equity, the first real and powerful union of actors and stagehands, was formed in 1913.
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.
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.
As nature opens up, so too do new pursuits, new household budgets, new fashions to buy and new bills for paterfamilias to pay. The professions of friends and family, tying Father up, give a glimpse of the workaday jobs of average American in 1905.
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.
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.
Here, Ehrhart’s “girl” — Puck‘s answer to the Gibson Girl who dominated the cartoons in its rival weekly Life — no sooner leaves church than she is besieged by suitors young and old, foreign and domestic. She even has admirers among cadets and fops. What devotion to purity could not effect during Lent — that is, rejection of the devil — is employed in the pursuit of the Spring Girl: banishment of evil intentions.
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.
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.
Whether the beneficence of moguls was heartfelt or the result of guilty consciences, the situation depicted by Ehrhart says as much about the public’s perceptions as the munificence of the wealthy — the situation falling somewhere between irony and hypocrisy. The cartoonists’ usual depictions of Old Man Rockefeller as a wizened ogre changed when the far-flung family started endowing foundations with the same oil profits. Even today, corporate executives in industries such as oil are excoriated by citizens and cartoonists, but seldom are the richest men in America, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, no matter the prices of their products, if their views harmonize with the public’s.
A frenzy of activity is underway as many politicians and capitalists join the labor forces to construct the Panama Canal. Theodore P. Shonts, chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission, is standing on the right, holding a whip, and directing the laborers. In the background, large groups of men labeled “Order of Walking Delegates, The Idle Rich, Amalgamated Aldermen, [and] Insurance Presidents Union No. 6” are waiting, with tools, to be called into action. Caption: Let our superfluous citizens do the work.
S. D. Ehrhart’s expansive cartoon in Puck seized upon the news of labor challenges in the Culebra Cut portion of the Panama Canal construction, and built an elaborate cartoon-fantasy about people in politics, the social world, and finance being put to work at manual labor.
There are no political statements in the cartoon beyond the humorous juxtapositions: people doing work exactly opposite to their usual pursuits, condemned to perform duties contrary to their professions, join their enemies in everyday life back in the United States.
At center, President Roosevelt shows Uncle Sam and Columbia a large plant with flowers showing the members of his cabinet. The surrounding vignettes show a springtime dance of putti, Alton B. Parker shoveling snow at his home in Esopus, an art gallery, Irishmen marching in the rain on Saint Patrick’s Day, a woman cleaning house by sweeping a dust cloud of policemen out the door, and Roosevelt grafting a branch labeled “Indian School Mission,” with blossom of an unidentified bishop of the Catholic Bureau of Indian Missions, onto the “Interior Dept. Tree.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1905-03-15
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.
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.
His last substantial role in party politics was as campaign manager for presidential candidate Alton Brooks Parker, a New York State Appellate Judge, in 1904. At the conclusion of that campaign — an unprecedented loss for the Democrats, against Theodore Roosevelt — Hill announced his retirement from public life. As this cartoon imagines, Hill would return to his farm in Wolfert’s Roost, near Albany. That he never really practiced farming is portrayed by the cartoon’s vignettes; and lingering presidential aspirations are depicted as continuing to inhabit his dreams.
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.”
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.
A dozen years later, the tables were turned when the United States and its banks of Morgan and other houses virtually financed the carnage of the Great War — all sides of the conflict, all parties. It was widely charged that such war profiteering, including windfalls of manufacturing, arms, and shipping, were reasons that American refrained from joining World War I as long as it did.