Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

A picture without words

A series of images starts in the upper left, with a kitten labeled “Romish Influence” drinking from a saucer labeled “Toleration,” and a young boy holding a book labeled “Public School System,” standing with Liberty. As the images progress across the top, the kitten grows into a young tiger, until on the bottom left, it becomes a frightening tiger sitting on a table. In the final vignette, it has grown to full size, wearing clerical robes labeled “Romish Influence” and now stands over both the boy and Liberty, with a paw on each of them. Caption: Reprinted from Puck of January 16th, 1884. – Puck finds no stronger comment on the renewal of Catholic agitation for a share of the Public School Funds.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-01-03

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

The result of the Star Route trials

A well-dressed Robert Green Ingersoll carries two large bags of money labeled “Counsel Fees” as he departs the “Washington Court House.” Exiting on the right side, wearing tattered clothing, are defendants Thomas Jefferson Brady and Stephen Wallace Dorsey.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-06-20

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Old-school etiquette

A woman appeals to a man holding a cane labeled “Allopath” and topped with a skull who has turned his back on a sick child lying in a bed. On the far side of the bed is another man with papers labeled “Homoeopath” and “Apothecary” extending from a pocket. Caption: Dr. All. O’Path – “Very sorry, madam, if your child must die; but you ought not to have called in a Homœopath first.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-06-13

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Boycotting the Pope

Charles Parnell wears a tiara and sits on a throne, with many Irishmen bowing before him and placing bags of money into a container labeled “Parnell Fund.” On a table next to him are papers labeled “Remission of Rents” and “Assassination Absolution.” Sitting on a throne on the left, unattended by anyone, is Pope Leo XIII wearing the papal tiara and looking on with dismay. At his feet, on the left, is a basket of papers labeled “Indulgence” and “Absolution,” and, on the right, a container labeled “Peter’s Pence” that appears to have been broken into and emptied.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-06-06

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

The same old boom

Charles A. Dana blows a large bubble that shows the face of Samuel J. Tilden. Dana is using “Sun Soap,” “Iroquois Club Suds,” and a pipe labeled with a “$.” In the background, the sun is visible on the horizon. Caption: C.A.D. “It’s no matter how big this Tilden bubble gets – I can burst it at any time!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-05-02

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Three monuments

On either side of a broad street, “Vanderbilt’s Palace” and the “Cooper Institute to Science and Art” appear. In the distance is “Stewart’s Cathedral” (the Cathedral of the Incarnation, built as a memorial and mausoleum for Garden City’s founder Alexander Turney Stewart). Symbols of wealth frame the left side and symbols of art and science frame the right side. Puck is seated at center, over a quote by Joaquin Miller: “For all you can hold in your cold dead hand is what you have given away.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-04-18

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

A destructive worm

A caterpillar labeled “Communism” chews on a grape leaf showing “$” signs and labeled “Capital.” Underneath is a bunch of grapes, some of which are labeled “Law, Order, Rights, Talent, Worth, Industry, Education, Respect, Business, [and] Peace.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-04-04

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Stalwart stupidity

Puck, holding his lithographic pen, and the Independent Party figure, holding an axe labeled “November Election,” stand inside a cabin next to the head of Roscoe Conkling that has been cut off a large rattlesnake labeled “Stalwartism,” its rattle labeled “Stalwart Office Seeker.” In the background, a large fire labeled “Government Patronage” burns in a fireplace. Caption: Puck – What! Isn’t it dead? Independent New Party – Oh, yes! but it hasn’t got sense enough to know it!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-01-03

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Those dogs won’t fight – they are dying of starvation

Charles A. Dana, editor of the “Sun,” and Stephen B. Elkins, wearing a plumed hat, attempt to push an emaciated dog labeled “Clerical Slanderer” up steps leading to where Grover Cleveland is sitting in a rocking chair. Another dog labeled “Common Slanderer” is lying on its back, apparently dead. Nearby is an overturned bowl labeled “False Witness.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-08-20

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

An apparatus by means of which suicides can get the better of the “penal code”

A man whose offer of marriage has been rejected, and who is now determined to kill himself as a means of ending his suffering, is sitting in a chair with two handguns aimed at his chest, mounted on the arms of the chair, facing a cannon. Beneath him are “Dynamite Cartridges,” and overhead is a large rock labeled “500 lb. weight.” A tube from his mouth extends to a container of “Poison,” two straight-edge razors are aimed at this throat, and a “Charcoal” burner spews carbon monoxide fumes. The letter from his girlfriend is on the floor next to the chair. It states, “Dear George, I can not marry you. Carri.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-02-07

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

An appalling attempt to muzzle the watch-dog of science

Herbert Spencer appears as a statue of a large dog at the entrance to a public building emitting rays of light labeled “Science.” Many diminutive men, wearing over-sized top hats, scamper about with ladders and muzzles in an attempt to silence Spencer’s views on religion and science. On a nearby flagpole hangs a banner that states “Freedom of Thought.” Caption: “The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature proposes to get up cases against Professors Huxley and Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and others who, by their writings, have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank atheism.” Tel. London, March 5, 1883.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-03-14

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

The coming conflagration in the European forest

In a dark forest a group of men labeled “Irish Invincibles, Nihilists, Austrian Socialists, German Artisans, Republicans, Fanatical Irredentists, [and] Black Hand” carry torches or flaming sticks of dynamite and bombs, disturbing the slumber of various forest creatures labeled “France, Austria, Russia, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Germany, [and] Italy” and the British Lion heading for its lair labeled “India, Africa Malta, Canada, [and] Egypt.” A group of businessmen with a firefighter’s water pump labeled “Middle Class Conservatism” are hoping to extinguish the flames.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-03-21

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

In his second childhood

“Germania” and “Columbia” hold hands above and behind a child-like Otto von Bismarck who is tearing papers labeled “Lasker Resolution” while sitting on the floor. Around Bismarck are torn papers labeled “German Emigration” and “French Lampoon,” and a broken pull-toy of a pig labeled “American Pork” into which he has driven nails with a hammer labeled “Bad Temper.” Caption: Germania to Columbia – “We shall still remain friends, in spite of this foolish old man!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-02-27

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Our rampageous preachers

A preacher in the pulpit harangues his congregation with a speech that begins “Noise or Nothing!” Two police officers with large billy-clubs, in the pulpit with him, exchange glances. Caption: Let them be put under the same restrictions as other Sabbath-breakers.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-02-13

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

With Puck’s compliments to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago – 1884

Puck holds a portrait of Samuel J. Tilden labeled “Opposed to Kelly 1876 – Carried New York by 32,000 Votes” and a portrait of Winfield Scott Hancock labeled “Supported by Kelly 1880 – Beaten in New York by 21,000 Votes.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-07-09

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Ireland’s evil genius

“Britannia” stands on the left, holding “Concessions to Ireland,” and “Hibernia” stands on the right in a militant pose. Between them is a nasty looking man with two “Dynamite” bombs slung over his shoulders.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-06-11

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Drowning in his own “pool”

Jay Gould is drowning in “Watered Stocks” certificates, some labeled “Watered W.U.T.” and “Watered Wabash,” at the bottom of the steps to Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City. William H. Vanderbilt sits at the top of the steps, on a large bag labeled “$40,000,000 U.S. Bonds” and “Vanderbilt.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-06-04

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Coney Island and the crowned heads

Uncle Sam welcomes several heads of state labeled “Pan-Slavism, Nihilism, Socialism, Pauperism, Communism [represented by Marianne], Fenianism, Mormonism [wearing a fez], [and] Spain” to a swim at Coney Island. They have emerged from bathhouses labeled “Austria, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, [and] England” and stand in the water. Caption: Why shouldn’t the wearied monarchs of Europe enjoy a plunge in our republican waters?

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-07-19

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

The agony of the assessed – between two terrors

“G. W. Curtis” and “Jay Hubbell” appear as executioners, each wearing a mask and holding large axes labeled “Civil Service Reform Association” (Curtis) and “Republican Congressional Committee” (Hubbell). Curtis instructs the “Office Holder” seated between them to “Don’t Pay! or be Discharged” and Hubbell instructs the bewildered man to “Pay! or be Discharged.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-07-12

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913

Getting hot enough for him

Print shows Chester Alan Arthur sitting on a chair at a beach on the seashore, he is perspiring heavily and using a fan labeled “Stalwart Method” to cool himself, as the sun, labeled “Disunion-of-the-Republican-Party,” sets. As it sets the sun gives off rays labeled “Stalwarts, Independents, Anti-Monopolists, Half Breeds, Tariff Reformer, [and] Civil Service Reformer”.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-07-05

Creator(s)

Graetz, F. (Friedrich), approximately 1840-approximately 1913