Nankivell, Frank A. (Frank Arthur), 1869-1959

An African-American man holds two hands of playing cards. One hand includes cards that feature the faces of President Roosevelt, Chair of the Republican National Committee George B. Cortelyou, J. Pierpont Morgan, Charles W. Fairbanks, New York Governor Benjamin B. Odell, and New York Lieutenant Governor Frank Wayland Higgins. The other hand includes cards that feature the faces of Patrick Henry McCarren, Charles Francis Murphy, William Jennings Bryan, David B. Hill, Alton B. Parker, and Henry Gassaway Davis.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10

“The trusts” walk a lamb with President Roosevelt’s head on it toward the United States Capitol. Roosevelt wears a crown.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-12

“James Hazen Hyde, Abdul Hamid, [and] Castro” step off the earth hand in hand.

Comments and Context

Puck took a bit of vacation in late May 1909 and devoted its front cover, tabloid-like, to three odious personalities in the news.

In cartoonist Frank Nankivell’s drawing, Abdulhamid, last of the Ottoman Empire’s sultans, was deposed. He had ruled over the progressive dissolution of Turkish-controlled lands, loss of suzerainty influence over tribes and peoples, and management of modern reforms. Despite his attempts to secularize and liberalize Turkey, he resigned with virtually no support, and managed to live a decade and a half in exile.

A Chinese play is being acted on a small stage with Joseph Gurney Cannon and Nelson W. Aldrich offering two small doll-like figures labeled “Small Dealer” and “Consumer” to a dragon labeled “High Protection” manned by two men labeled “Special Privilege” and “Graft.” J. S. Sherman, John Dalzell, and Sereno E. Payne play musical instruments on the left side of the stage. On the back of the stage is a Buddha icon labeled “Greed.” In the foreground, at the foot of the stage, are Chinese men labeled “Lumber Trust, Paper Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Beef Trust.” On the far right, beneath a sign that states “Box Reserved for Amer. Protective Tariff League,” is a Chinese man labeled “Chas A. Moore” holding a tray with two small figures labeled “First Voter.”

Comments and Context

“Like a Chinese Play, It Goes On Forever” is an abecedarian and awkward variation on “trusts bad, politicians subservient, consumers powerless” themes. Cartoonist Frank A. Nankivell, who had lived part of career in Japan, had a difficult job in approximating Asian pictograph lettering, and he relied on stereotypes of culture and attire for the cartoon.

Infrequently caricatured through the years, or mentioned in histories, is the “power behind the throne” figure on the right, Charles A. Moore. A member of the Ohio Society and president of the American Protective Tariff League, Moore was an early advocate of William McKinley’s career and worked largely behind the scenes to advance McKinley’s career as congressman, governor, and president; and Moore was a vital associate of McKinley amanuensis Mark Hanna.

Theodore Roosevelt holds a large bottle of champagne labeled “My Policies.” Roosevelt looks like he is about to christen a ship depicted as the face of William H. Taft.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1909-03-03

The bust portrait of “Miss Africa” appears over a heart on a Valentine’s card that states “Will You Be My Valentine?”, with two black putti.

Comments and Context

Seven and a half years after Theodore Roosevelt, practically in his first days as president, invited the black educator Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner, Puck chose to traffic in the outrage and opposition to the act with this Valentine cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell.

Not even timely, but certainly gratuitous, the black Valentine must certainly have referred to that incident; during his presidency there were other interactions with blacks, including further meetings and consultations with Washington; and the insistence on the appointment of a black postmistress in a Mississippi town, also over the objections of white southerners. Roosevelt had received criticism (continuing somewhat to this day) for dismissing a regiment of black soldiers in an incident on a Texas army base; but anyone who thinks Roosevelt would have acted differently with an all-white regiment does not know Roosevelt well.

John Bull, standing with one foot on England and the other on Ireland, holds strings attached to many warships which encircle the United Kingdom, while overhead fly menacing armed aircraft. Caption: “Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep; / Her march is o’er the mountain wave, her home is on the deep.”

Comments and Context

This cover design, commencing the period when Puck routinely incorporated its logo into cover artwork, proved remarkably prescient.

Cartoonist Frank A. Nankivell, in the first week of 1909, offered an observation on the proliferation of airships, lighter-than-air planes, and speculation about military uses. Paris at this time hosted magnificent international Air Shows, at which inventors, manufacturers, and countries displayed their newest productions and prototypes. Of course passenger and commercial “aeroplanes” were showcased, but military applications were stressed.

A large winged serpent wearing a friendly mask frightens the passengers aboard an airship. The caption reads, “Which of our aerial navigators will report him first?”

Comments and Context

With the presidential election over and a new national government in place, Puck returned to a pattern it had begun to adopt before the wave of political, social, and financial scandals; mid-term elections; Muckraking revelations; furious rounds of legislation and regulations; a Wall Street Panic; and the 1908 campaign. Interrupted around 1905 was the magazine’s growing tendency to give covers to full-page, color jokes — that is, no politics or partisan commentary. Even the cauldron of the Theodore Roosevelt presidency and White House activities and his extra-curricular distractions sidelined Puck‘s “secular” evolution.

This cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell highlights the fact that the automobile was not the only technological distraction in American life. Unlike cars or sailboats, the middle class could not afford “aeroplanes” in every garage or marina, but airships were a rage.

A woman moors an airship to her chimney by the light of a full moon. On board the airship are “American Goods Bought in England” that are being smuggled into the U.S. because of high tariffs that make the products too expensive. Caption: Let him invest in an airship and smuggle his necessities.

Comments and Context

Except for the sarcastic aspect of an airship used for smuggling, the Puck cover cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell predates by a neat one hundred years the advent of another airship whose household applications, including shopping, are commencing — the drone.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

William Jennings Bryan pulls on a saddle strap labeled “[18]96, 1900, 1908” on the Democratic donkey, trying to get it tight enough for the pin to fit into “The Third Hole” labeled “1908.” Caption: Same old cinch, but considerably tighter this time.

Comments and Context

Only three weeks before the presidential balloting in 1908, and students will notice several factors displayed in this cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell.

Theodore Roosevelt appears as a two-faced Janus chess game piece. On the left is an angelic “Roosevelt The National Savior” and on the right a devilish “Roosevelt the National Menace.” Caption: It all depends on the way you look at him.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-11-09

“Postmaster General” George von Lergeke Meyer, dressed as Santa Claus, stands beneath a sign that states “What is home without Statistics,” placing sheets of paper labeled “On Everything” in stockings hung before a fireplace. He carries a mail pouch stuffed with notices labeled “Mr. Taft on the Tariff, Mr. Bryan on the Tariff, Mr. Taft on Publicity, Mr. Bryan on Publicity, Mr. Bryan’s Conception of the Presidency, Mr. Kern’s Conception of the Vice Presidency, [and] Mr. Sherman on Protection.”

Comments and Context

George von Lengerke Meyer was a college friend of Theodore Roosevelt (one year ahead of the future president, class of 1879), and was a Massachusetts businessman and politician. He was appointed to offices in government and the diplomatic corps by President William McKinley and by Roosevelt, finally serving as Postmaster General of the United States, 1907-1909.

A traditional role of the Postmaster general in those days, even after successive civil-service reforms, was as a political dispenser of jobs, from within the department’s upper levels to local post offices. The national party in power was able to hold and expand its influence thereby.

At a gathering of “The Undiscovered Club,” the North Pole, recently discovered by either Frederick A. Cook or Robert E. Peary, is making a tearful departure. Those gathered and awaiting discovery are “The Man in the Iron Mask, Perpetual Motion, The man who wrote Shakespeare, Fountain of Youth, South Pole, The Lost Lenore wearing a pin labeled ‘Poe’, Universal Peace, Captain Kidd’s Treasure, Honest Graft, The Great American Novel, [and] Something for Nothing.” Caption: The North Pole leaves the ranks of the Undiscovered.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1909-10-13

Print shows an upper class British man shaking hands with Richard Croker at an equestrian event.

Caption: Lord Slapbang–I am proud to shake the hand of one of America’s uncrowned kings! / Richard Croker (to himself)–One! I wonder if he thinks there are two of us? Somebody must have been stuffing him about Platt!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Print shows a young messenger boy asking a fashionably dressed young woman to sign for the delivery of her Easter bonnet.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-04-05

Print shows two fashionably dressed young women, one sitting in a chair with her left foot resting on her right knee, holding a cane and gloves, and smoking a cigarette. The other is sitting on the edge of a table, holding a paper with the word “Freedom” at the top; there is an alcoholic beverage between them. These liberated women are discussing a remark made by the husband of one of them the prior evening. Caption: “I had a row with my husband after the play, last night.” / “What about?” / “He tried to call me down for going out between the acts to see a woman.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-03-29

Two fashionably dressed women, a mother and her daughter, attend a football game. Caption: Mrs. Newcome (her first game)–Oh! isn’t it awful? Horrible! Why, they will kill that man underneath! / Her Daughter (an enthusiast)–Oh! he doesn’t mind it, Mother. He’s unconscious by this time!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-12-20

Print shows Puck pushing a fashionably dressed young woman on ice skates on a pond or river in a wooded area.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-12-13

Print shows an Irish American miner returning home to his wife who asks why he is later than usual, suspecting that the miners are on strike again.

Caption: Mrs. Dolan (as her husband returns at an unusual hour)–An’ yez bees on anither stroike, eh? Phat’s the’ cause this toime? Mr. Dolan (grimly)–Oh! Oi guess th’ Walkin’ Dilegate’s behoind in his rint ag’in!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Print shows Admiral George Dewey, full-length portrait, facing slightly right, wearing military uniform, holding hat in right hand and sword in left hand, with silhouettes of battleships in the background and firecrackers at his feet, on the occasion of his return to New York.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-10-04