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

Opening of the Panama Canal

A variety of boats and ships, as balloon aircraft loaded with tourists and travelers, float above the Panama Canal. It is suggested that the age of aviation will render the canal obsolete. Caption: At which distant day ocean navigation will be a trifle out of date.

Comments and Context

This is another shooting-fish-in-the-barrel cartoon for Puck and cartoonist J. S. Pughe — humorous speculation; it is not a political, and barely an editorial, cartoon. The Panama Canal remained in the news; in 1906 it was beset by challenges of earth-moving, new technologies, labor troubles, and budget questions. Yet its progress, and its opening set for the mid-teens, was widely anticipated. It was expected to be (and was) a modern miracle, a Wonder of the New World.

The latest thing in nightmares

A frightened man lies in bed, pulling up a blanket labeled “The Senate.” He sees in the darkness the spectacles and toothy grin of President Roosevelt. There is a glowing lamp on a table in the foreground.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist J. S. Pughe’s depiction of a cowering Senate beset by harrowing visions of a ghostly President Roosevelt runs contrary to recent Puck cartoons that depicted the Senate and its ancient titans as significant opponents to the administration’s reform agenda.

Shy

An old man labeled “St. Valentine,” carrying a “U.S. Mail” letter pouch, delivers valentines to “Col. W.D. Mann,” John A. “McCall,” Henry H. “Rogers,” John D. Rockefeller Jr., John D. “Rockefeller,” “Son McCurdy,” Edward L. “Hamilton,” and Richard “Pat McCurdy.” Caption: St. Valentine — Don’t be afraid to take ’em, boys. They’re valentines; not subpoenas.

Comments and Context

Even on Valentine’s Day, Puck pursued the scoundrels of the insurance industry and Standard Oil with barbs of criticism, and not the arrows of a Cupid. The figures in the doorway were prominent names before the scandal-hungry public in 1905 and 1906.

“Mon Dieu! Are there any more at home like you?”

Rats are fleeing a sinking ship labeled “Frenzied Insurance” in the background. James H. “Hyde” has already made it to the shore labeled “France” where another rat, Judge “Andy Hamilton” is standing. Richard A. “McCurdy” and his son-in-law Louis A. “Thebaud” are still swimming ashore.

Comments and Context

The biggest rat in J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon in Puck is James H. Hyde, the disgraced former board member of his family’s Equitable Life Assurance Society, caught in both financial improprieties and a scandalous, extravagant costume ball he threw. He moved to France, which would be his home for decades, when other opportunities disappeared and social embarrassments appeared.

The tariff tots

A group of children play on the lawn in front of the “Home for Infant Industries.” They are labeled “Sugar Trust (eating “Dingley Baby Food”), Clothing Trust, Tobacco Trust, Steel Trust, Beef Trust, Paper Trust, [and] Coal Trust.” Some are playing in a rough manner with dolls labeled “Small Dealer, The Public, Independent Producer, [and] Consumer.” Another doll, “Cattle Raiser,” has been tossed aside. In the background on the left, a woman labeled “Dingley Tariff” is sitting in a chair with a child on her lap. In the left foreground, Joseph Cannon is speaking to Theodore Roosevelt, who holds a paper labeled “Tariff Revision.” Caption: Uncle Joe Cannon — Oh, Sir, you would not turn these helpless, half-grown babes out into a cruel world, would you?

Comments and Context

Joseph Gurney “Uncle Joe” Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was often characterized — as were most politicians of the day — as representing interests or trusts as much as districts of constituents or states.

The national bird of prey

A large “Corporate Vulture”, wearing a cap usually associated with John D. Rockefeller, feeds a bag of “Dough” to a chick labeled “‘Our’ Senators.” Two other chicks in the nest, which is made of money, are labeled “‘Our’ Legislatures” and “‘Our’ Judges.”

Comments and Context

With little subtlety, and a caricature (with trademark skull cap) so dispositive as to require no label, cartoonist J.S. Pughe savaged the Standard Oil mogul John D. Rockefeller in this Puck cover.

After vacation – the discovery of the home

Vignettes illustrate the comforts of domestic life at home, with the central scene showing a man bathing in a bathtub.

Comments and Context

“After Vacation” is typical of the non-political genre cartoons, collections of themed gags that by 1905 appeared roughly once a month in Puck magazine. They provide to later readers superb diaries of everyday life that might otherwise be lost to history.

The way of the transgressor is–

A large bull labeled “Beef Trust,” wearing a crown, sits on its haunches, with its front hooves crushing a “Cattle Raiser” and a “Consumer.” A jester labeled “Anti-Trust Laws” is flogging it with two bags or balloons labeled “Fines” attached to a stick. Caption: “There, you bad, wicked Beef Trust! Take that!!”

Comments and Context

Some of the major political battles of 1905-06 were pressed by President Roosevelt, and some issues came to a head; of course the political confrontations were engaged in synergistic fashion to varying degrees. One of the most intractable of issues concerned the Beef Trust, meat-packing monopolies, and pure food and drug matters: everything from manipulated prices of meat to adulterated canned food and drugs. These issues were all related, and exacerbated by “muckraking” writing by Upton Sinclair (the meat industry), Samuel Hopkins Adams (medicines and drugs), and others.

The slaughter season

At top, a man is being carried in a sedan chair, with many porters carrying furniture from a train on the right to his cabin in the wilderness on the left. At bottom, on the left, is a buck holding up a young hunter, exclaiming “To think of anybody mistaking a thing like this for me!” At bottom, on the right, is “The Guide’s Farewell” where a hunter stands outside the door as his guide takes leave of his family. The guide’s wife is weeping into a handkerchief, an infant sitting on the floor is crying, and his son hands him a rifle. The expectation is that he will be shot by accident by the hunter. At center, a man gestures toward his trophy wall and boasts about having “shot every one of them myself.” On the wall are portraits of many men mistaken for one animal or another, and one deer, which was shot “By Accident.”

Comments and Context

Puck increasingly turned its occasional genre cartoons — jokes revolving around one subject in center-spread cartoons — from light humor to social, if not political, attacks. S. D. Ehrhart here takes aim at hunters whose interests were desultory, not for the thrill of the hunt nor food. The idle rich are the cartoonist’s target, ridiculed as a wastrel who outfits his luxurious mountain cabin. The foppish “hunter” and his similarly represented guest are ridiculed for the only possible “trophies” such people could manage to acquire.

“Where’s my square deal?”

James W. Alexander, president the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and generically labeled “Life Insurance Company,” drowns in a sea of papers labeled “Exposure, Bribery, Syndicate Profits, Dummy Deals, Wholesale Graft, Fake Transactions, Juggled Reports, ‘Yellow Dog’ Funds, Rake-off, [and] Investigation.” He is holding in his raised left hand a “Receipt for Campaign Funds Republican Nat’l. Com.” The “G.O.P.” [Republican] elephant dashes over a bluff on the coastline, losing a top hat and halo labeled “Geo. B.” Out at sea, lightning flashes labeled “Publicity.” A bouquet of flowers labeled “J.H.H.” (James Hazen Hyde, the vice president of Equitable, who had recently been ousted from the company’s board) has been tossed meaninglessly before Alexander.

Comments and Context

Icons abound in this cartoon, but their meanings would have been clear to headline-followers in 1905. In the middle of the Muckraking Era, when public feelings rose high against Big Business and corporate corruption, the insurance industry — a “Trust” of a few major firms — was rocked by financial scandals and a high society sex scandal involving the heir to the Equitable Life fortune.

A Kansas David in the field

Henry Harrison Tucker Jr., as the youthful David with sling, confronts John D. Rockefeller, as Goliath, holding a large club labeled “Standard Oil.”

Comments and Context

In the same way that history largely remembers Thomas W. Lawson as a crusader who wrote his articles and book “Frenzied Finance” as an expose of Wall Street corruption — but was actually a non-apologetic bit of revenge on his former partners in mining trusts — so is Henry Harrison Tucker, Junior, often recalled (if at all) as the little David of the oil fields challenging big, bad John D. Rockefeller. So in Puck cartoonist J. S. Pughe depicted the blonde-haired loner.

Peace

A flotilla of ships sails with Theodore Roosevelt’s face on the lead ship. The figure of Peace, wearing armor and carrying a sword in one hand and an olive branch fashioned out of bayonets in the other, is sitting atop this ship. Two doves flying by her side are wearing armor and are armed as well.

Comments and Context

This cartoon has had a long life since its original publication in 1905 in Puck magazine. In textbooks and dissertations, magazine articles and books, it has been reprinted as a representation of President Roosevelt’s brand of Pax Americana; and often as a commemoration of the Great White Fleet, America’s two squadrons of 16 battleships and escort ships that circumnavigated the globe. Painted a glowing white, the ships were ambassadors of peace, and assertions of America’s new naval prowess.

A herculean task

Theodore Roosevelt, as Hercules, wears a lion skin and holds a sword. He faces a nine-headed hydra, with each head identified as that of a senator. The hydra’s tail is labeled “U.S. Senate.”

Comments and Context

In an earlier time, such as when this cartoon in Puck appeared, average people were conversant with elements of Western intellectual heritage like Greek mythology. The contextual background of this political cartoon by J. S Pughe might have been evident to many readers in 1905. In one of ancient Athens’ most durable myths, the Second Task of Hercules was to conquer the multi-headed monster Hydra.

Visitors’ day

In a rowdy classroom at the “Pan-American School,” Uncle Sam is the teacher admonishing Cipriano Castro, President of Venezuela, who holds a slingshot, planning a prank. Four other adults are present, “Holland, France, England, [and] Germany.” Three native children are sitting at desks. One is shooting a spitball that hits “Holland” in the face. Caption: In the Pan-American school.

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. S. Pughe in a Puck centerspread might cause present-day readers to wonder whether Uncle Sam has always had difficulties with Latin American leaders named Castro, or with the country of Venezuela. Leaders were different in 1905, but challenges were similar.

“Seeing things at night”

President Roosevelt, wearing buckskin and a raccoon hat, sits by a campfire at night, holding a knife, his rifle by his side. In the shadows beyond the light of the fire are a snake labeled “Mormonism,” a bull labeled “Beef Trust,” a strange bird labeled “Merger Bird,” a large fuel tank labeled “Oil Trust” with a snake-like appendage extending from the front with the head of John D. Rockefeller, and a bat labeled “Castro.” A tent is behind Roosevelt, on the right.

Comments and Context

As most good political and editorial cartoons do, the drawings in Puck refer to contemporary issues and current events. They are remarkably fruitful for researchers of later times, but sometimes are so local and so timely as to occasionally deal in obscure controversies and forgotten figures.

“Municipal ownership”

A towering figure with three heads – of Charles F. Murphy, Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, and Israel W. Durham, political bosses respectively of New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia – places a medal labeled “Bossism” around its large neck. Papers sticking out of Murphy’s pockets are labeled “Patronage, Contracts, Graft, [and] Jobs.” Caption: Are we ready for it?

Comments and Context

The point of J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon in Puck is not the mere corruption that surrounded big-city political bosses in 1905. The bosses’ venality was a given.

Belshazzarfeller’s feast

John D. Rockefeller, as Belshazzar, sits on a throne above a group of capitalists and politicians enjoying a feast of such dishes as “Draw Back Bon-Bons, Fruits of Monopoly, [and] Rebate Plums.” The festivities are interrupted by a hand appearing from above holding “The Big Stick” and writing the words “Rate Legislation.” Caption: “And the King saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the King’s countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him.” [Daniel 5:5-6]

Comments and Context

Belshazzar’s Feast is the account in Daniel about a mysterious hand appearing as if from heaven, writing a moral warning on the wall during a feast of the Babylonian king and a thousand of his followers. The words on the wall were, in Hebrew, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” roughly interpreted as “God has numbered the days of your kingdom… You have been judged and found wanting;” and “Your kingdom will be divided.”

The struggle of the Slav

A Russian man stands on a rowboat, using an axe labeled “Nat’l Assembly” to battle an octopus labeled “Bureaucracy.” The octopus wears a crown and royal robe, and its tentacles are labeled “Graft, Exile, Oppressive Taxation, Despotism, Religious Intolerance, Cossackism, Incompetence, [and] Greed.”

Comments and Context

In cartoonist J. S. Pughe’s centerspread Puck cartoon, the embattled man is beset by many identified dangers, all parts of the same autocratic monster. The caption calls him a Slav, where it might have called him a Russian just as easily; and the crown and “Cossack” reference suggest that Russia, and not the Slavic lands and peoples, were the object of attention.

How John may dodge the exclusion act

Uncle Sam’s boot kicks a Chinese immigrant off a dock as part of an anti-Chinese immigration campaign. Vignettes show how the Chinese can possibly emigrate to the United States, by coming as “a cup-challenger” in yacht races, “as an industrious anarchist,” or “disguised as an humble Irishman,” or “as an English wife-hunter” with “pedigree” in his pocket, or wielding knife and handgun, as a mean-looking “peaceful, law-abiding Sicilian.”

Comments and Context

A 1905 Puck cartoon by J. S. Pughe might seem on the surface merely to be a humorous, if stereotype-laden, treatment of immigration issues of the day, particularly the difficulty of Chinese immigration leading to comic subterfuge. It would be that; but there were deeper, longer-lasting, and core consequential aspects to the problem. A modern version might have immigrants wishing to enter the United States to pose as Mexicans, whose ease of border crossings has been legendary; that would be upside-down as a cartoon concept, but relates to the larger issue.

The ready-made Napoleon

William II, Emperor of Germany, exchanges his coat and helmet for a hat and coat in the style of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Bernhard von Bülow stands next to him, also dressed in the style of an early 19th century French aristocrat, holding a cape draped over his right arm. Caption: Valet Von Buelow–Sapristi, Herr Wilhelm! They become you most beautifully!

Comments and Context

Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin, Furst von Bulow, was German Chancellor in 1905. Regarded as a suave diplomatic and bold strategist, he was also widely regarded as a dunderhead and lickspittle, offering Kaiser Wilhelm II as much subservience as wise advice.