Your TR Source
A well dressed old man wearing a top hat and spats lies on his back, bouncing the earth on his feet. In the foreground is a doctor’s bag with various instruments (he may have given himself an injection), and on the left is a weeping cherub. His bowstring is broken and his arrows have fallen on the ground.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-06-18
Uncle Sam and a Chinese man are connected by a large firecracker. Caption: Sam and John, “the Siamese twins” of the Fourth of July.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-07-02
President Roosevelt looks at a bar of sawdust partially open on the ground. He is surrounded by a crowd of businessmen with top hats. One of the businessmen is holding a gold brick. The caption states that the businessmen want Roosevelt to give a speech to increase public confidence in their securities.
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site
1907-04-10
A large spider labeled “Flim Flam Finance,” with a disgruntled look on its face, sits on a cobweb labeled “Wall Street,” looking at a bunch of flies labeled “The Public” hovering just beyond the cobweb, mocking the spider.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-01-22
“Cabaret Accompaniment” is introduced into various social and public settings, including “A Song & Dance With Every Shave,” a “Singing Conductor” on the street railroads, a shoe-shine man with instruments strapped to his back, a “Sunday Collection” in a church, even parents in costume who startle or embarrass their children during courtship with cabaret routines.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-02-12
George Washington, carrying a small, potted cherry tree, turns to flee after reading notices posted on the “United States Bulletin Board,” some of which state, “Delicatessen Trust to be Investigated Next Week,” “Investigation of the Steel Trust Daily Until Further Notice,” “Investigation of Everything & Anybody,” and “Corned Beef Trust to be [In]vestigated Pretty Soo[n].” Also to be investigated are “Child Labor, White Slave, Campaign Fund, [and] Peanut Trust.” Caption: George Washington – This is no place for a man who couldn’t tell a lie!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-02-19
James Roscoe Day, chancellor of Syracuse University, stands with his arm around President Roosevelt. The caption states that Roosevelt has decided to accept a nomination for a third term from the Republican National Convention.
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site
1908-06-10
In the first two panels, Theodore Roosevelt is depicted as a young child in a dress and is crying. His nurse is standing holding a ball and then a jumping-jack. In the last panel, the nurse is holding a big stick and Theodore Roosevelt is smiling with his arms outstretched.
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site
1907-05-15
William Jennings Bryan offers a bowl of “Anti-Injunction Cream” and William H. Taft offers a sprig of “Anti-Injunction Catnip” to a cat labeled “Labor Vote” that has the face of Samuel Gompers. Bryan and Taft are dressed as children learning how to get along with cats without getting scratched. Includes eight lines of verse.
Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor and immigrant (British, born Shmuel Gumpertz) cigar-maker, prodded his movement to be more and more politically active, especially in 1906 when a list of legislative reforms was presented to Congress. None was adopted, but Gompers had his hearings, and the AFL was marked as a player in electoral contests, not only in labor or union disputes.
Charles W. Fairbanks sits with a distressed, rotund man who has a cocktail in each hand. Several more cocktails lie on the ground at his feet, and an African American servant is holding a full tray as Fairbanks suggests that the man help himself to more. Caption: Fairbanks (to Hoosier caller) — Have another cocktail, old man! Have a tray of ’em! I’m a private citizen now!
Puck evidently was chary of letting one of their favorite targets go with a parting shot. Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks was never depicted as corrupt or incompetent, but, rather, silly and a person of comic frustration. Ostracized by a president who cared little for him or his opinions, and forever pining for the presidency, Fairbanks also invited the chiding of cartoonists for his tall, skinny frame, a bald pate and cowlick, squinty eyes and an icy demeanor that ill fit an ambitious politico.
On an extremely hot day in New York City, a man decides to go to Coney Island to cool off. Vignettes show that first, he has to ride on a stuffy streetcar through Brooklyn, then he stands in a long line for the bathhouse, next there is a thunderstorm, after that is a sweltering ride on the subway, and finally he arrives at the comfortable confines of home. Caption: The combination of a hot day, a sizzling mortal and the Isle of Coney.
This center-spread cartoon is a typical Puck midsummer topic — and a respite from the incessant political news of candidates’ machinations and the two nominating conventions in 1908 — by the typically clever L. M. Glackens, who was assuming an increasing workload in the weekly.
Uncle Sam works at the “Free Pie Kitchen” offering daily distribution of free pies labeled “Long Term Franchise, Graft Tariff, Land Grant, [and] Special Privilege” to crooked businessmen labeled “Public Service Corporation, ‘Infant Industry’, Trust, Public Land Thief, [and] Predatory Wealth” standing in a long line or already enjoying their “Free” pies. Caption: The pie line.
The handsome cartoon by L. M. Glackens in Puck, depicting corporations, trusts, and the “predatory wealthy” receiving public funds under false pretenses probably was as ad hominem as the magazine ever got in its crusades. There are no specific politicians or moguls portrayed; Uncle Sam is the only recognizable figure. Additionally, no specific trusts are named or identified.
A well-dressed man carries his wife’s Easter bonnet beneath an umbrella, so that in her absence, due to an illness, at least her bonnet will be seen in public. Caption: His wife was ill.
Cartoonist L. M. Glackens had the assignment to draw the cover for Puck‘s holiday issue (special numbers usually were arranged for Easter, Mid-Summer, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) in 1908. As he matured as an artist, his handsome work was ever more evident in Puck; and the young Welshman J. S. Pughe was ill throughout the year, reducing his own workload.
A dastardly figure peers from behind a bush in the background, as a matronly woman pushes a young woman, looking starry-eyed and carrying a suitcase bursting with cash and stocks, out the front door, in response to a note which shows a pink handprint and states “Put ze girl and ze money on ze doorstep or I will slap you on ze wrist. Ze Pink Hand.”
L. M. Glackens’s cartoon presumably is a cartoon reference to a crime wave that existed throughout America cities starting in the 1890s and having a peak of activity in 1908 — extortion of innocent people through letters signed by a Black Hand. The activity was most active in the Italian immigrant enclaves of New York City, Chicago, and coal-mining regions of northern Pennsylvania. That, as well as internal evidence of the notes and confessions of blackmailers, confirmed the Southern Italian component of the movement.
The “G.O.P.” elephant, wearing an engagement ring, and William H. Taft, wearing a tuxedo, embrace. Taft is smiling, while the elephant is weeping as it holds up a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.
Two weeks prior to the Republican nominating convention in Chicago, L. M. Glackens drew “The Great Renunciation” — a cartoon that presented the stark reality of American politics that summer, with no nuance or implications. Symbolism there is, of course: the Republican elephant with shiny engagement ring, hugging her intended, William H. Taft.
At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Theodore Roosevelt is passing the pike of “Policies” to William H. Taft, as “The New Mahout,” sitting on the “G.O.P.” elephant. Seen through the left lens of Roosevelt’s spectacles, labeled “Before Taft is Nominated,” are James J. Hill, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas Fortune Ryan, John D. Rockefeller, Edward Henry Harriman, Joseph Gurney Cannon, Joseph Benson Foraker, and Nelson W. Aldrich looking very somber. Seen through the right lens labeled “After Taft is Nominated,” the same group is cheering. In the lower right, Roosevelt refuses another curtain call. On the lower left he offers “Taft Bitters” to a cowboy. Across the bottom is Roosevelt’s familiar toothy grin.
Forsaking harsh criticism of the Republican Party, or President Roosevelt or the imminent nominee William H. Taft, the nominally Democratic magazine Puck instead had it cartoonist L. M. Glackens devote this Convention Issue’s centerspread drawings to topical humor and light commentary.
A turtle with the face of William Jennings Bryan is racing a rabbit with the face of William H. Taft. Caption: The Tortoise — If that chap only goes to sleep, I’ll win out by a mile.
Few observers of the American political scene in 1908 expected the Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to win the election over Republican William H. Taft for the open seat in the White House. In 1904 the “Solid South” was broken, with Missouri breaking its long-term ranks and swinging in line for the Republicans.
A group of men and women march under such banners as “The Lips That Touch Corn Likker Shall Never Touch Ourn,” “W.C.T.U.,” and “Carrie Nation Cadets,” with one man carrying a small barrel labeled “Vegetable Tonic,” and a large wagon labeled “Water Wagon No. 1” immediately behind the leaders, to show their support for prohibition. They are all colored blue.
Puck celebrated –or, rather, observed — the passage of statewide Prohibition in Georgia in this cartoon by L. M. Glackens. To the surprise of many, given backwoods Georgians’ reputations, the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages was banned statewide — the first state besides Maine (which long ago repealed such restrictions in many of its counties) to do so. On the other hand, in the deep South, the hold of moralistic Christians, represented by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was strong.
A “Naval Line Officer” crashes through a window at the “White House” where he has been booted out. A small dog observes from the ground.
Since Theodore Roosevelt’s late college days, when he commenced work on his first major book — still a standard reference work — The Naval War of 1812, he took an active interest in the American Navy and the influence of sea power on world history (as per the title of his friend Captain A. T. Mahan’s influential book). During his service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1897-1898), he effected improvements and sent the fleet to Manila when war was declared on Spain. At the end of his presidency, Roosevelt famously sent the painted white “Great Fleet” on a circumnavigational cruise.
A man labeled “Republican Campaign Manager” waves a cane, topped with the head of an elephant, at a small dog wearing a collar labeled “The Tariff” that has been following him.
L. M. Glackens’s cover cartoon is a masterpiece of simplicity, portraying a political situation with many implications: a handsome cover, simple but eye-catching on newsstands.