Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909 | - Theodore Roosevelt Center

Unto them that hath

The “G.O.P.” elephant holds a tambourine labeled “Stand Patism” and hands out free baskets labeled “Tariff Graft” containing a turkey, duck, or chicken to ragged figures labeled “Coal Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Wool Trust.” A long line of trust figures await their turn. Joseph Gurney Cannon, Nelson W. Aldrich, Joseph Benson Foraker, and Leslie M. Shaw appear in women’s clothing as the “Republican Salvation Army” singers, singing “There are no flies on Dingley.” A man labeled “Protected Monopoly” stands in the foreground, at the edge of the platform. Caption: Distribution of Christmas goodies by the Republican Salvation Army.

Comments and Context

Politics occasionally did intrude in holiday issues of Puck as this centerspread cartoon by J. S. Pughe attests. The Salvation Army was a relatively new force in 1906, but there had been urban missions and soup kitchens in lower Manhattan for generations. Pughe’s venue is a larger auditorium than might have been typical of a Salvationist Christmas food charity, but other stereotypes are there: music with a tambourine, female singers with bonnets sharing their sermons in song.

Trimming the Filipino’s Christmas tree

Santa Claus, labeled “G.O.P.,” reaches to place the “Star of Hope” on top of a Christmas tree trimmed with lemons, marble hearts, a stuffed bear “From Teddy,” two “Little Big Sticks” and a “Big Stick,” a ball of “Promises,” and three balls labeled “Gas, Guff, [and] Wind.” On a nearby table is Joseph Cannon as a “Joe in the Box,” a “Home made frosted cake from Uncle Joe’s Pantry,” and a book of “Fairy Tales by Uncle Sam.”

Comments and Context

J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon directly addresses a crisis in America’s handling of the Philippine Islands as an American territory, during an important moment of policymaking. The matters at hand were important to the Filipinos, of course: trade, tariffs, and economic sovereignty.

How many have you sent?

At center, Uncle Sam is drowning in the “Souvenir Post Card Craze.” Surrounding vignettes show scenes from the North Pole, North Africa, Hell, and with Robinson Crusoe on a desert island.

Comments and Context

The century’s first decade was the high-water mark of “penny postals,” greeting cards, holiday cards and comic-themed cards. This is evidenced by the uncountable numbers of surviving cards at flea markets, antique shops, and collector sites.

“Let the gold dust twins do your work”

Nelson W.Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller appear as dark-skinned men wearing skirts labeled “Gold Dust.” Aldrich stands on top of a replica of a building labeled “Stock Exchange” and holds up a replica of the U.S. Capitol building. Rockefeller stands on the ground next to him, holding up an oil can labeled “Standard Oil” and a wallet stuffed with money. Uncle Sam stands to the left, in the foreground, stroking his beard, with a concerned look on his face. Caption: (You might as well, Uncle. They’ll do it, anyway.)

Comments and Context

The seemingly curious depiction of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller as little native boys is explained by the background of the cartoon. This was a parody of the popular, now obscure, brand of cleansing powder, Gold Dust Cleanser. Cartoonist J. S. Pughe clearly thought that calling the Senator and the tycoon “twins” was dispositive — and the implication presented by the word “gold.” The composition of the drawing is taken straight from a Gold Dust magazine advertisement drawn by E. W. Kemble, an occasional Puck cartoonist.

The Sing Sing sanatorium

Prisoners engage in various recreations while incarcerated at Sing Sing for white collar crime. Caption: For the benefit of our grafting financiers whose health breaks down from exposure.

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. S. Pughe was not inspired by the coddling of prisoners, a putative situation that is charged, or confirmed, in cycles. Sing Sing Prison was a periodic site that, perhaps due to its 40-mile proximity up the Hudson River from the media center New York City, was alternately scorned or praised by reformers for its conditions.

The recent flurry in the Senate

On the Senate floor, several Senators engage in a free-for-all around a signpost labeled “Rail Road Interests.” Watching the melee from the “Visitors’ Gallery” is Joseph R. Burton.

Comments and Context

J. S. Pughe’s center-spread cartoon in Puck, 1906, is a reversal of many cartoons drawn through the years (most memorably by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler’s 1889 gallery of moneybags, “Bosses of the Senate.” Pughe’s variation was to draw the floor of the Senate ripped out, and the well reconfigured as the floor of a stock exchange.

“Me and Jack”

“The Yellow Dog” sits on a plank on the shore of a body of water, with its left foreleg around the shoulders of a much smaller man labeled “Corrupt Business,” watching the sunset in the distance. The dog looks back over its shoulder at the viewer.

Comments and Context

In the first half of 1906 the insurance-industry scandals and revelations continued in the daily press, moved somewhat to aftermaths like resignations of executives, flights to Europe, and continuing revelations.

Save Niagara Falls – from this

The waterfalls at Niagara Falls are being diverted to provide power for the factories that have been built along the river ahead of the falls, leaving a cliff and a series of pipes where the water used to be. New tourist attractions, such as a barrel jump chute and a “Whirlpool” carousel, have been developed to take advantage of the dry riverbed.

Comments and Context

Relatively forgotten in history (except in the environs of Niagara Falls) and in Theodore Roosevelt’s disputes and presidential victories, is the controversy over Niagara Falls that roiled in 1906. It is interesting, beyond its long-range significance, as an example of Roosevelt’s winning skills in such matters.

Arms and the men

President Roosevelt stands on one side of a scaffold, holding a large sculpted arm with a huge stick labeled “The Big Stick” for placement on a large sculpture of a female figure labeled “Inter-State Commerce Laws.” On the other side of the scaffold is a man labeled “The Rail Road” directing Nelson W. Aldrich, Stephen B. Elkins, and Joseph Benson Foraker to use instead a much smaller arm labeled “Delay” and “Fines.” Caption: A difference of opinion as to what will fit the lady.

Comments and Context

J. S. Pughe’s cartoon is one of the cleverer uses of the Big Stick as an icon during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. The depiction of four men against his lone self is also a fair representation of the opposition Roosevelt faced.

He used to be “A Menace” – now he finds himself a fad

A “Foreign Socialist” is being fêted and toasted by high society. An inset at left shows a jail cell full of the types of anarchists who are now being welcomed to America.

Comments and Context

Time marches on; a theory of evolution is illustrated in this J. S. Pughe cartoon about socialism and socialists in America. Only months earlier Puck commented on socialism as an intellectual plaything of society, and in this cartoon Pughe takes “parlor socialism” a step further.

“Killed in committee”

Nelson W. Aldrich appears as a large spider on a cobweb labeled “Senate Committee Room” spread between the U.S. Capitol and a “Standard Oil” tower, on which several flies labeled “Anti-Trust Bill, Free Alcohol Bill, House Bill, Philippine Tariff Bill, [and] Legislation Needed” have landed.

Comments and Context

Nelson W. Aldrich was not the most senior member of the United States Senate, but by wily tactics, ability, and connections he clearly was the most powerful in the Republican-dominated Upper House during the administration of President Roosevelt. From his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee he managed to affect virtually every piece of legislation that passed (or did not) through the Senate.

“Who’s first, gents?”

A female figure labeled “Peace” stands in a barber shop, holding a large pair of shears labeled “Disarmament.” Sitting in the shop are the heads of state from “Spain, U.S. [Uncle Sam], Austria, Japan, Italy, France, England, Germany, [and] Russia,” each with bayonets and artillery as hair. A sign on the wall states “No hair tonic used here.”

Comments and Context

Disarmament. Yes, the word existed in pre-nuclear times. Theodore Roosevelt, as president and before, sought to increase America’s arms, and especially its naval defenses, yet knew that the world was in jeopardy of hurtling toward a major war, probably on the European continent. His diplomatic interventions in the Russo-Japanese War and in Venezuela, but especially in the German-French tension that led to his Algeciras Conference were in the belief that a European land war could be delayed or averted.

Learning to walk

A bearded, hairy man appears as a young child labeled “Russia,” learning to walk with a walker labeled “The Douma” while playing with toy figures of royalty.

Comments and Context

The Douma, or Duma — Russian for consultative assembly, similar to a Parliament or House of Representatives but never with powers those bodies possessed — existed, on and off in Russia under czars as far back as the 18th century.

The Commercial Club of Washington

Nelson Aldrich sits on a throne as king of the “U.S. Senate,” with a diminutive Theodore Roosevelt kneeling before him bearing the “President’s Message.” Around them senators are reading ticker tape or enjoying the success of their investments. The surrounding vignettes show Chauncey M. Depew as a doorman welcoming a man labeled “The Trusts” into the “U.S. Senate”; John D. Rockefeller sitting at a desk pouring over “Reports” and “Expenditures”; Charles W. Fairbanks as an office boy stopping Uncle Sam at the top of the stairs demanding who he needs to see and why; and two men stuffing papers labeled “Esch-Townsend Rate Bill, Tariff Legislation, House Bill” and others into a trash can. Caption: Formerly known as the Upper House of Congress.

Comments and Context

With only the political cartoonist’s traditional “license” to exaggerate, cartoonist J. S. Pughe fairly depicted the state of affairs regarding the United States Senate in 1905.

“Bill, ye’d better go up to the barn an’ git some more fodder”

Theodore P. Shonts milks a cow labeled “Canal Commission” that is feeding on a mixture of hay and money labeled “Appropriation.” Shonts has a bucket labeled “Progress” between his knees. Secretary of State William H. Taft stands in the background holding a pitchfork. Up a hill on the right is an outbuilding labeled “U.S. Treasury” full of hay.

Comments and Context

J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon in Puck is a virtual lesson in cartoon iconography — hay-barn, fodder, milk, funds. The actual context is the figures and the dialog-caption, addressing a rather continuing challenge in the construction of the Panama Canal, centered in the Culebra Cut.

A Thanksgiving truce

Theodore Roosevelt, wearing his Rough Rider uniform, shares a feast with many wild animals sitting around a large banquet table in the wilderness. A bear is making a toast. Wearing buckskin, “Teddy Jr.” is sitting on a rock at a small table with a bear cub. Caption: The Bear (with deep feeling) Here’s hoping that when next we meet, we see you first.

Comments and Context

Puck took another opportunity at a holiday time, Thanksgiving 1905, to run a non-political cartoon. J. S. Pughe’s drawing certainly was not partisan, either, but today might be considered as advocating a social cause: Opposition to animal cruelty. Theodore Roosevelt’s joy of the hunt, and descriptions of shooting and slaughtering (though always for food, hides, or specimens) are off-putting to more readers today than in his time.

The American Samson

Theodore Roosevelt, as Delilah, holds a broken pair of shears, one side labeled “Senate” and the other labeled “House.” Behind, reclining on a bed, is “Samson,” a long-haired old man labeled “The Railroads,” his hair labeled “Rate Fixing Power.” He appears to be asleep, having pleasant “Rate Fixing” dreams, caressing his long locks with his left hand. Caption: Delilah Roosevelt — I must get these shears to work together before I can do any hair-cutting.

Comments and Context

“The American Samson” by J. S. Pughe is an example of Puck — and many reformist and muckraking journals — addressing a burning issue of the day, and invariably portraying Theodore Roosevelt as an ally, not an opponent or a leader who equivocated. Cartoons of the day, taken as a whole, and beyond individual issues and momentary controversies, help posterity understand Roosevelt and his place in contemporary movements.

Farewell performance by Robbin’ Hood and his merry men

The cast of a theatrical production “Robbin’ Hood and his Merry Men” appears on stage for the final song of the production. Shown are, from left, Francis Hendricks as “Alan-a-Dale” playing “The Insurance Lyre,” John R. Hegeman as “Friar Tuck” with a small bag labeled “Loans” at his waist, John A. McCall as “Little John,” Richard A. McCurdy as “Robin Hood” with an animal horn labeled “Bluff” hanging at his waist, James H. Hyde as “Will Scarlett,” Chauncey M. Depew as “Maid Marian” with a bag labeled “Retainer” hanging at his waist, and in the background, Charles Evans Hughes as “The Sheriff of Nottingham.” A diminutive figure labeled “Policy Holder,” his arms and legs bound, is standing between McCall and McCurdy. Includes the lyrics of the song.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist J. S. Pughe closed out the year 1905 and one of its most spectacular news stories, the scandals uncovered in the insurance industry — with a parody of an opera company’s “farewell performance.” The investigations lasted so long, however, with Puck milking every opportunity to make cartoon commentary, that readers might have wondered whether there ever would be a farewell.

Football in 1906

Illustration shows a lighthearted look at the game of football as though it were played by dainty men of effeminate natures.

Comments and Context

In one of Puck‘s ever-increasing center-spreads given over to humorous commentary and multiple genre gags, cartoonist J. S. Pughe lobbed two softballs, not one, at readers: easy targets.

The headsman

A large man wearing a red outfit, labeled “The Senate,” holds an axe above his head. He is about to chop a legislative bill, shown as rolled-up papers, labeled “Progressive Legislation.” Other bills, some labeled “Tariff Revision, R.R. Rate Bill, State Hood, [and] Pure Food Bill,” await their turns on the chopping block.

Comments and Context

The United States Senate as Grand Executioner is how Puck its cartoonist J. S. Pughe held the Upper House, and in the context of “progressive legislation,” the cover drawing is dispositive.