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

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 street cleaner with “White Wings” on his sign is a reference to the contemporary nickname for New York City’s street-cleaning squad. In 1895 the new reform mayor William Strong was determined to clean the city streets of garbage, clutter, and horse manure. As a mark of how serious he assayed the challenge, he hired “Colonel” George Waring as Sanitation Commissioner, a position he originally intended to offer to Theodore Roosevelt.

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 fact there had been intercity trains in New York, but they were all surface or elevated trains. Predictably in a city usually ruled by the corrupt Democratic machine Tammany Hall, the elevated train system was open to corruption, monopoly control, and disputes over fares. In fact both municipal parties, and the city’s judiciary, participated in corrupt acts related to the trains. Some of the young Roosevelt’s crusades in the New York State Legislature were involved with monopoly control (often orchestrated by Jay Gould) and judges receiving bribes for their decisions.

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.

It is a sign of the times that Ehrhart’s typical family in the cartoon seems decidedly upper-middle class if not upper-class in the attire of all the generations. His observation is not about class, but it is an indication of the relative prosperity of Americans during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.

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.

From the perspective of more than a subsequent century, however, the value of this cartoon lies in the emphasized word “girl.”

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.

As cartoonist Samuel Ehrhart often did in Puck center-spreads for holidays and social events, he here lampooned the frivolous aspects (with the cartoonist’s permissible liberties and exaggerations) of the annual horse show. Why the reporters taking notes, lower left, are all caricatural Jews is lost to history, except for Jewish prominence in the millinery, clothing, and haberdashery lines.

At center, Uncle Sam looks into a mirror while descending a stairway in a hall. “Swallow” and “Watson” are standing in the hall, holding candles. In the vignette at lower left, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Roosevelt, Fairbanks, Parker, and Davis, arrive in costume. On the lower right they are unmasked and engaged in a game with Columbia. On the middle left is “Bryan” as “An Old Timer,” and on the middle right “Taggart” and “Belmont” play a prank on an elderly woman with a “Bogie Man” labeled “Militarism.” At top left, bobbing for “Campaign Funds” are “Taggart, Bliss, Cortelyou, [and] Belmont,” and at top right “Odell, Shaw, [and] Hill” are “Jumping the Issues.”

Comments and Context

Puck, a major Democratic publication, seems extremely unconcerned with the outcome of the imminent presidential election: little more than a week before balloting, its center-spread cartoon — traditionally a forum for powerful, persuasive political cartoons — instead published genre cartoons on a Halloween theme. Yes, with politicians as the characters, but more humorous than partisan. It possibly saw the writing on the wall, a massive Democratic defeat.

President Theodore Roosevelt stands on a reviewing stand, holding hat in raised right hand as a large group of capitalists, industrialists, and financiers wearing the tattered clothing of tramps, march past the stand. Some carry placards with such statements as: “Irrigate the Trusts,” “No place to go but the Waldorf,” “We want the earth,” “Free quick lunches,” “Pity the poor banker,” “Dividends or we perish.” At the front of the group, J. P. Morgan carries a wooden bucket labeled “The full water pail.” Caption: “Aggregated wealth largely represented among Parker’s Supporters”–New York Tribune.

Comments and Context

It might be said now, as it was in 1904, that the Republican Party is the home of the wealthy class, industrialists, and plutocrats. And then as now, cartoonists have fed that stereotype. Also then as now, major figures of Wall Street have supported the Democratic Party in great numbers, whether from agreement on social and political issues or frank self-interest.

Some of the moguls in hobo garb in S. D. Ehrhart’s irony-filled drawing were known to be prominent Democrat donors and supporters, for instance Edward H. Harriman, Jacob Schiff, Nathan Strauss, Jacob Schiff, and Charles Schwab. J. P. Morgan, too, contributed to both parties.

A series of nine vignettes shows men putting themselves at risk in one way or another. One man gets up in the middle of the night to attend to a screaming infant, another tests breakfast cereals, a third dares to enter the kitchen to reprimand the cook, others survive the street railroads, one suffers the attack of mosquitoes, while others endure rude opera attendees, rural life, and a tour guide. At center, each “hero” receives a pension from Andrew Carnegie who is wearing a traditional Scottish kilt.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Ehrhart drew these center-spread vignettes as news commentary on the announcement 1904 by Andrew Carnegie of the creation of the Carnegie Hero Fund with an initial endowment of $5-million.

Andrew Carnegie was inspired by the story of two men who lost their lives attempting rescues in a mine accident in Harwick, Pennsylvania. More than 180 people died in the disaster. Carnegie’s Fund, which is still active, has recognized more than 10,000 people who have performed good deeds and selfless acts, awarding more than $40-million in grants, scholarships, death benefits, and other assistance.

A man dreams about enforcing the blue laws by punishing young men for playing baseball, a young woman for playing golf, even a young girl for picking flowers. He imagines them imploring him to allow them their particular Sunday pursuits.

Comments and Context

Since its inception in 1876, Puck Magazine was consistently skeptical on matters of faith and the practices of organized religion. Cartoons that addressed the general subjects included questions of science and evolution; putative hypocrisy of clerics; corruption among the clergy; financial, sex and other scandals of prominent divines; and churches’ support of “blue laws,” Prohibition, and Sunday closings.

These themes and criticisms by Puck‘s artists and editorial writers continued unabated through 1904, as in Ehrhart’s cartoon, which is not targeted at any particular clergyman. The sleeping cleric is not a caricature of any particular cleric, but the ink is mixed with standard venom attacking all.

At center a group of six men, including John D. Rockefeller and E. B. Thomas, warm themselves by a stove labeled “Standard Oil.” At bottom left Andrew Carnegie burns “U.S. Steel Bonds” and Charles Schwab attempts to burn “Steel Common” stocks. On the right Chauncey Depew burns speeches. On the middle left a tramp rests against a haystack in the warm sun. On the right William Jennings Bryan generates hot air while speaking to a group of farmers. On the top left a family burns the furniture in a fireplace. On the right E. B. Thomas sits in front of a fireplace where a lump of “Radium” is warming the room.

Comments and Context

Eben B. Thomas had risen from telegraph operator to the presidency of the Erie Railroad (and eventually the Lehigh Valley Railroad). He was very successful at consolidating rail lines and their efficiency, and maintaining labor harmony in an era of conflict. In his position he became a useful ally of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie, especially in his geographic “domain” of central Pennsylvania, land of oil, coal, and steel mills.

In 1904 Thomas wrote about a future United States less dependent on coal, and happily reliant on oil — Standard Oil, by implication. That such a vision matched the hopes and plans of the assembled moguls in Ehrhart’s center-cartoon is easily deduced from the montage’s vignettes.

Two cameo scenes are separated by a telegraph pole labeled “Western Union.” On the left is a civic meeting claiming that “We must uphold our Public Morals and Civic Decency” where seated on a stage are businessmen labeled “Flagler, Schiff, Jessup [sic], Depew, Rockefeller, Hyde, Morgan [and] Sage.” On the right are the same men sitting in a room where they are straining to hear the report of the “Annual Statement” regarding “Sundry other profits from our Subterranean wires increase this total applicable to dividends by $5,000,000” over the din of coins spilling from a cornucopia connected to a telegraph pole and overflowing a barrel labeled “Western Union Pool Room Receipts.” Visible through a window are many buildings labeled “Pool Room.”

Comments and Context

This cartoon requires explanation beyond the depiction of prominent and greedy business tycoons of the day. In May of 1904, shortly before Ehrhart’s cartoon was drawn, the Western Union Telegraph system, which was an essential element of commerce and communication, curtailed the transmission of race track information, including facilitating gambling transactions.

Western Union received substantial income from this business, but it yielded to pressure from moralists and pressure groups. The telegraph trust had another reason to pull back from its association with gambling houses and betting parlors. In many cities where gambling was legal there nevertheless arose an unholy alliance between betting parlors (particularly of the parimutuel variety), saloons, and telegraph agencies. Western Union increasingly was uncomfortable with its de facto partners.

The captain of an ocean liner offers a toast to his passengers sitting around a large dining table on a ship that is rocking a bit too much for most passengers. Caption: The Captain — Ladies and gentlemen, I drink to your very good health!

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Ehrhart here makes a humorous, not political, comment on a contemporary trend, the increasing popularity of ocean cruises. Rising prosperity in the United States enabled this trend that joined rail travel and resort vacations among the upper classes. Steamship lines hurried their production of luxury liners — in England by the White Star and Cunard lines; in Germany by the North German-Lloyd line. In the United States, J. P. Morgan devoted resources to enter, and, of course, dominate, the transatlantic passenger and shipping fleets. After purchasing shipbuilding companies in Cleveland and Philadelphia but failing to secure federal subsidies, he bought into Great Britain’s White Star line, even hiring its executive Bruce Ismay. (In 1912, it was the White Star’s The Titanic that famously sank, and its chief, Ismay, who shamefully climbed aboard a lifeboat as many perished.)

Americans were similarly infected by the popularity of maritime opulence in the form of yacht races. At this time the traditional America’s Cup races attracted greater attention, and yachting was in fashion.

Two Mormon elders discuss another Mormon who has been found guilty of bigamy. Caption: Elder Heaperholmes–He has been tried by the church and found guilty of bigamy. / Elder Holikuss–Guilty of bigamy? / Elder Heaperholmes–That’s the judgment. He’s been married only twice.

Comments and Context

Among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at the time of this cartoon, bigamy was more common than it is today. Mormons were heavily criticized outside of Utah and other areas where the sect dominated, and there were many laws proposed to restrict polygamy. Ehrhart’s cartoon — with the Temple and a horde of children surrounding one father in the background — jokingly suggested that Mormons disfavored those with merely two spouses.

At this time the Mormon practice of polygamy was a favorite target of cartoonists. When Puck was a new magazine, one its first claims to national attention was a cartoon by Joseph Keppler Senior on the death of Mormon leader Brigham Young in 1877 — depicting an enormous bed with numerous widows weeping.

At center, a young woman asks Cupid about his flower garden where all the blossoms have male and female faces. Six vignettes show scenes from country and country club life that generally relate to relations between the sexes. A poem called “Cupidculture” is included.

Comments and Context

A double-page spread by Puck‘s counterpart of Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson Girl stylish cartoons in Life Magazine) at the time. These are seasonal gags in an issue dated in the middle of April. The poem in the central cartoon was written by Arthur H. Folwell, the editor of the magazine for more than a dozen years, later on the staff of the New York Tribune and writer for The New Yorker, and script writer for the Mr. and Mrs. comic strip.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

A devil takes the lid off a box labeled “Society” allowing fumes to escape which show the liberation of women, such as being granted divorces, horseback riding, driving automobiles, gambling, and smoking in social situations.

Comments and Context

Ehrhart’s Puck cartoon appeared a week before Easter in 1904. While its constituent details seem overtly scolding and of a moralizing nature, this double-page cartoon was really the contemporary cartoonists’ stereotypical theme at every year’s end of the Lenten season. Earthly pleasures and frivolous pastimes, putatively suppressed during Lent, were released after Easter, at least in the minds of editorial cartoonists of the day.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

John Mitchell and Samuel Gompers, representing the United Mine Workers and the American Federation of Labor, are witches stirring a “dangerous brew” of labor violence in a cauldron labeled “Unionism” over flames labeled “Anti-Injunction Bill.” Steam rising from the pot is filled with threatening human figures and the words “Boycott, Mob Violence, Intimidation, Dynamite-Persuasion, Riot, Lawlessness, Anarchy, Parkism, Graft, [and] Incendiary Press.”

Comments and Context

Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFofL), and John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers of America (the union was a constituent member of the AFofL), are portrayed in this famous cartoon by Samuel Ehrhart in Puck as fomenting union strikes and labor violence.

The immediate context was the labor movement’s concerted effort to oppose methods used by employers and compliant courts to end strikes by issuing injunctions. In 1904 the AFofL planned a campaign to persuade the public and lobby the federal government; in 1906 there would be important meetings with President Roosevelt, cabinet members, senators, and representatives on the issue.

Three statues labeled “Cook, Walking Delegate, [and] Head Waiter” stand on the left and three statues labeled “Coachman, Car Porter, [and] Janitor” stand on the right. People are bowing down, kneeling, and performing other acts of veneration before them. In the center, Puck has unfurled a banner showing citizens pulling down the equestrian statue of King George III. Caption: Puck — Where is the spirit of ’76? This is what your forefathers did to King George.

Comments and Context

Sometimes a cartoon tells more about its times than its intended point. Cartoonist Ehrhart addresses the vagaries of modern life — the imperious attitudes, approaching arrogance and greed — as routine laborers and employees asserted themselves in modern life. Of course the cartoonist employed hyperbole, characterizing people in these positions as latter-day tyrants.

But in truth, no matter how much expecting tips was seen as larceny; or coachmen and porters might be imperious; or labor-union “walking delegates” might be corrupt, such “problems” largely disappeared as America grew more prosperous and democratized.

In a courtroom, a prisoner and a police officer stand before a judge. The prisoner is explaining to the judge why he assaulted another person. Caption: Judge — You admit you sand-bagged the man. Have you any excuse? / Prisoner — Yes, yer Honor. De sand-bag wuz me own property and J.P. Morgan says a man has de right ter do wot he pleases wit’ his own property.

Comments and Context

In this cover cartoon, ostensibly a simple gag about a tramp, arrested for assault, grasping for a mitigating excuse by quoting J. P. Morgan, Puck cannot resist making a point about the negative aspects of the prominent mogul’s philosophy. “Logical extensions” should be questioned, Ehrhart stated via this cartoon.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

A well-dressed couple discuss the amount of money a jockey earned the previous racing season. The woman suggests that he should be able to earn more than the diminutive jockey. Caption: He — That jockey made $50,000 last season! / She — What! That little fellow! Why can’t you do something like that, John?

Comments and Context

Puck surrendered its political prerogative on this issue’s front page in favor of what it thought was a good joke, perhaps an early and brunette version of today’s “dumb blonde” memes. Of interest might be the specific reason the couple is impressed by the jockey’s earning of $50,000 the previous year. In today’s value that is approximately one million dollars.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

On the left, a theater manager is bribing an inspector during an inspection of fire prevention equipment, while the specter of the Grim Reaper hovers above. On the right, a female figure labeled “Public opinion” holds three diminutive men labeled “Politician, Manager, [and] Inspector” and points toward the remains of a theater following a fire.

Comments and Context

The context of this cartoon, with artist Ehrhart being as forceful as he could be, is not named… but was clear to every reader: the recent Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. Still regarded as one America’s most devastating disasters, the fire on December 30, 1903, less than a month previous, claimed more than 600 lives. It was a fire that spread quickly — a broken arc light igniting the muslin curtain — and the nation learned of burned bodies, closed exits, and bodies of panicked patrons crushed sometimes 10-deep in aisles and doorways.

Puck, Life, and other publications had been attacking Broadway’s Theater Trust, for issues like ticket scalping and questionable morals on stage — and shoddy constructions of sets and theaters in general. Fire hazards as illustrated by the Iroquois Fire changed the discussion, however. Ehrhart’s cartoon was the opening salvo in Puck‘s subsequent crusade on the issue of fire safety. One of many reforms — or at least a prominent move to reassure the public — was to manufacture theater curtains of asbestos, and for years afterward, would assert the fact with the emblazoned word ASBESTOS on stage curtains.