McCord, P. B., 1870-1908

President Roosevelt uses his “big stick” to destroy the “N.J. state machine,” the “N.Y. machine,” and the “Ohio machine.”

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Comments and Context

“The sword [or Big Stick] that knows no brother.” These were two colorful metaphors, allusions, and, indeed, weapons in the ideological and political battles of Theodore Roosevelt. Especially toward the end of his second term, as his policies veered toward radicalism, and as reactionary and powerful “stand pat” politicians emerged in Roosevelt’s Republican Party, the president’s lame-duck status emboldened some figures to be rebellious.

President Roosevelt uses “the spear that knows no brother” to take the “respectability” cloak off a “stock market gambler.” Caption: “There is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock market.” –President Roosevelt’s Message.

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Comments and Context

On January 31, 1908, the day before this cartoon’s publication, President Roosevelt delivered to Congress what he considered one of the most important messages of his presidency. In those days it was not accepted practice for Chief Executives to address Congress in person — even for the Annual Message, today called the State Of the Union Address — and therefore this message was delivered, printed, and distributed to the press and public.

President Roosevelt tells Secretary of War William H. Taft, who is dressed in traditional Japanese attire and holds an olive branch, “Taft, I guess you had better make a short Japanese trip” as he points out the window at explosions going off in Japan.

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San Francisco-area politicians, newspapers, and agitators had long resented the presence of the Japanese in their midst. Japanese workers arrived in the United States since the 1870s (when Tokyo ended its isolationist emigration policies) and, generally speaking, unlike Chinese field workers and railroad laborers who tended to return home, many Japanese intended to become American citizens.

A large President Roosevelt stands in front of a fire with a bag labeled “Arbitration Fund” and wording on the front that says, “Nobel Peace Prize Award to President for His Work in Promoting Peace Between Russia and Japan. $37.127.00.” Roosevelt carries a club labeled “Big Stick” with an attached olive branch across his back and looks on to two sleeping men labeled “Capitalist” and “Wage Earner.” Both men are holding daggers. There are two stockings on the hearth labeled “Labor” and “Capital.”

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Comments and Context

Cartoonist P. B. McCord engaged in hyperbolic wishes in this pre-Christmas cartoon. The back-story was President Roosevelt’s announcement that he would not keep for himself the monetary award associated with the Nobel Prize for Peace. He proposed that the fund be in escrow and used toward the establishment of an agency — or some mechanism — that would promote industrial peace in the United States.

President Roosevelt rakes debris out of a “Standard Oil” barrel: “rebate,” “secret rates,” “unlawful rebates,” and “special secret rates.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-05-07

President Roosevelt’s face is blended with George Washington’s face. Caption: “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-09-01

A small Nicholas Longworth says, “‘N then after Taft is through we can have eight more years of Teddy ‘n’ then–” President Roosevelt and William H. Taft watch in the background. Roosevelt says, “He must be supprest” while Taft says, “And stopt.” Caption: He discusses family plans.

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Comments and Context

P. B. McCord’s cartoon about Nicholas Longworth could not have been drawn in our day. It involved a disputed statement by Longworth, supposedly delivered in a speech in Rock Island, Illinois, to the effect that President Roosevelt was planning, with the implied collusion of presidential candidate William H. Taft, to attempt a return to the White House after the expected two terms of Taft.

President Roosevelt opens his cabinet, which features busts of his cabinet members, and tells them, “Come now, all of you must take the stump.” In the foreground is the “Taft campaign stump” and the following cabinet members are depicted as busts: Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar S. Straus, Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou, Bureau of Corporations James Rudolph Garfield, Secretary of State Elihu Root, Secretary of War Luke E. Wright, Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, Postmaster General George von Lengerke Meyer, Secretary of the Navy Victor Howard Metcalf, and Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte.

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Comments and Context

The cabinet as a cabinet: two factors attest to the appropriate characterization of events pictured by P. B. McCord’s political cartoon during the last week of the 1908 presidential campaign.

President Roosevelt is dressed as an angel of peace with an olive branch as he leans on one of the guns on a battleship. Caption: “I want a resistless fighting navy, because it is the most effective guarantee of peace that the country can have.”—President Roosevelt.

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On July 22, 1908, President Roosevelt traveled to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, to deliver a major address. Appropriately, he made the trip from Oyster Bay by sea on The Mayflower, the presidential yacht.

President Roosevelt drives a “White House lawnmower” down “Taft Ave.” that has a sign: “Keep off the grass.” William Jennings Bryan runs away and says, “And I thought that I was running against Taft.”

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Comments and Context

Cartoonist P. B. McCord made two salient points about the 1908 presidential campaign in this drawing. The first is that the canvass of Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan virtually was bereft of issues; that is, to attack William H. Taft was to attack the policies of the incumbent, President Roosevelt. And “keeping off the lawn” of Taft meant a somewhat electoral argument, as Roosevelt remained overwhelmingly popular with Americans.