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A nervous man clutches a “Life Insurance Policy.” Caption: The latest epidemic.
During the Muckraking Era there was a nexus of public skepticism, distaste, and opposition to large business operations and consolidations (trusts) and the negative publicity dealt to robber barons and corporate giants. Big business generally, and the super-rich, were under scrutiny. Reform was in the air.
Uncle Sam raises a red signal flag labeled “Big Crops” and “Prosperity” and a yellow signal flag labeled “Business” and “Confidence” over the U.S. Capitol building. In the background, delegations from several states are cheering.
Puck Magazine, which was a half-hearted opponent of Republican President Roosevelt’s re-election, offers a placid celebratory cartoon by Grant Hamilton. Hamilton had taken a leave from the Republican doppelganger of Puck, Judge Magazine, in order to oppose Roosevelt, but here acknowledged Roosevelt’s thumping victory, although jubilant crowds are in the faint distance.
A woman labeled “St. Louis” bows at the final curtain for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with exhibition buildings visible in the background.
The 1904 “World’s Fair” was formally called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. It marked the United States’ arrangement with France which doubled the country’s land mass and had uncountable other implications. President Roosevelt opened the fair by telegraph on April 30, and only attended during the few weeks between his re-election and the fair’s closure; he did not want his attendance to be perceived as a campaign event.
A cherub representing the New Year 1905 rides on a winged cornucopia filled with farm produce labeled “Prosperity.”
Puck closed out the relatively tumultuous year of 1904 with a front-page cartoon blandly that was generic, but handsomely drawn by Grant Hamilton. It is an observation rather than an argument or advocacy, with the only “issue” named being economic prosperity. No foreign policy nor aspect of domestic policies is addressed.
President Roosevelt, wearing his Rough Rider uniform, looks at the style of hats worn by past presidents U.S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, but the hat he likes best, atop a stand labeled “Imported Hat – All the Style in Europe,” is a crown labeled “Imperialism.”
Since many of President Roosevelt’s policies, from sound money to governmental reform, agreed with the editorial stance of Puck Magazine, the Democratic weekly had a dilemma in 1904 as it dutifully opposed the president’s re-election.
President Roosevelt wears a white elephant costume labeled “Republican Party” with the U.S. Capitol in the background.
Trying to decipher Grant Hamilton’s cartoon, the historian likely will conclude that it is simpler than it might suggest. The “white elephant” metaphor probably does not apply; Roosevelt’s menacing grin was a simple caricature; and the caption “The Whole Thing” states the case in the political year of 1904 — it scarcely is an unfair attack.
Alton B. Parker as “Little Bopeep” sits on a rock labeled “Esopus,” tending a flock of sheep labeled “Gold Democrat” with their tails labeled “Vote.” The sheep are entering a pasture labeled “Democratic Fold – Four Years of Clover.” A ribbon tied to the shepherd’s crook states “Gold Standard.” Includes verse: Little Bopeep has lost her sheep, / But she doesn’t have to mind them. / Let ’em alone and they’ll come home / And bring their tails behind them.
This cartoon is a textbook example of wishful thinking. Puck had advocated for years that an alternative be found in the Democratic Party — a conservative who advocated in the Gold Standard and “Sound Money,” instead of the radical Populist William Jennings Bryan, the presidential standard-bearer in 1896 and 1900.
The governor of New York, Benjamin B. Odell, is tied with a rope labeled “Contracts” to a submerged barge labeled “$255,000,000 Barge Canal.” He is up to his neck in water labeled “Popular Indignation” and cannot touch the “sand” with his feet.
It was perhaps indicative of Puck Magazine’s pessimistic outlook on the 1904 presidential election that one week before voters went to the polls, the magazine devoted its front-page cartoon to a tempest in a teapot in state politics in New York.
President Roosevelt holds a sign out the window that reads, “We will bust no trust.” Meanwhile, Chair of the Republican National Committee George B. Cortelyou rolls a “J.P. Morgan bar’l” through the “back door” of the “National Republican Headquarters.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-10-12
A cover of Judge magazine depicting Theodore Roosevelt in his Rough Rider uniform created by Grant Hamilton.
Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation
Unknown