Smith, Jack H., -1935

President Roosevelt and the Republican elephant sit relaxed in hammocks with Roosevelt reading a quotation from Plutarch: “Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.”

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The Washington Herald‘s Jack H. Smith employed a graphic meme that was an easy fallback for some political cartoonists, or an occasional specialty of some editorial cartoonists: illustrating a headline or general state of affairs rather than advocating a point of view or persuading readers through attacks or encomia.

President Roosevelt flies down the road driving an automobile with William H. Taft in the backseat. To the left side of the car the Republican elephant tries to keep up. There is a sign, “the presidential Glen Echo,” in the foreground and the White House and the Washington Monument in the background. Senator Joseph Benson Foraker holds up a watch and cries, “In the name of the speed limit, slack up.” Caption: Town Marshal Foraker: “Stop! in the name of the law.”

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Contemporary news stories, and even local geography, inform this cartoon by Jack Smith of the staunchly Republican journal, the Washington Herald.

Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon stands on a platform with a suitcase that has a “Panama” label waving as he looks ahead and sees two men fighting, an elephant and an “Ananias cup.” The words “willful untruth,” “$5,000,000.00 conspiracy fund,” “You coughed up everything,” “deliberate untruth,” “brainstorm,” and “blame it on Loeb” appears from the kerfuffle.

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Between the fifty-ninth and sixtieth Congresses — in both of which he served as Speaker of the House — “Uncle Joe” Cannon embarked on a tour of the Caribbean and Panama. It was highly unusual that a member of Congress at that time would undertake an independent diplomatic or fact-finding mission. It was widely assumed, or at least speculated, that Cannon was burnishing credentials and doing homework for a planned presidential campaign in 1908.

Five men attempt to push the “$5,000,000.00 corruption fund” rock off a hill onto President Roosevelt who is riding a horse underneath.

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In April of 1907, there was much Washington buzz around the next year’s presidential campaign, and talk around the nation about President Roosevelt’s successor — perhaps it would Roosevelt himself, his favored candidate William H. Taft, or other Republican aspirants; and whether William Jennings Bryan would be nominated a third time by the Democratic Party. All this in addition to the Wall Street Panic, the ongoing Panama Canal construction, West Coast immigration problems, and much else.

An elephant holds a tennis rule book that reads, “Love 40–The Deuce,” and thinks, “Every evidence of a dangerous game.”

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President Andrew Jackson convened his informal “Kitchen Cabinet,” a term used more by political opponents for executive branch meetings apart from the regular confabs after the scandal-rumor events of the Peggy Eaton Affair. Eventually it came to mean presidential informal advisers, separate from cabinet secretaries. Often, such a circle has provided expert, dispassionate, and private counsel.

President Roosevelt uses his big stick to cast various reptiles into the water: “land grabber,” “spoils,” “mollycoddle,” “Brownsville,” “graft,” “rebate,” “swollen fortune,” and “Bellamy.” In the background stands an elephant about to hit a toad with a cane, “Watch me.”

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Some cartoonists are grateful for “crutches” like regular holidays as hooks on which to hang their cartoon concepts — convenient inspirations on which to affix common themes or current events.

J. Pierpont Morgan and Edward Henry Harriman stand on the side of the “Square Deal” labeled “railway interests” while President Roosevelt stands on the other side, “public interests.” In the foreground is an elephant holding a ruler labeled, “Square Deal” and a book entitled, “How to Square a Circle.”

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President Roosevelt was a voluble leader who had a gift for colorful and memorable phrases. He often encapsulated a concept or policy in a pithy word or phrase, as with “race suicide” or “malefactors of great wealth”; or by bestowing labels that would universally resonate, like his “bull moose” remarks when he renewed his electoral ambitions. “Bully” and “Dee-lighted” were words instantly and permanently associated with his personality.

Uncle Sam drives President Roosevelt in a horse-drawn carriage labeled “3rd Term” at a fast speed while an elephant races by.

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The Washington Herald‘s cartoonist Jack H. Smith drew a typically challenging cartoon in 1907, maybe as obscure to contemporary readers as to those a century later. The challenge is not to expect yet another reference to President Roosevelt’s declination to be a candidate in 1908, predictably questioned by cartoonists, but why the president is in the sulky (here, a carriage, with Uncle Sam at the reins) if he is unwilling to race toward a renomination. The gait is faster than a harness race, but logical horses had left the gate, so to speak; and the racing elephant utilized Smith’s cartooning “mascot” rather than implying that the Republican Party was ahead of the plans of Uncle Sam, or Roosevelt, perhaps.

Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon with a cigar in his mouth holds a folded up umbrella and a suitcase labeled “Uncle Joe” with a paper, “The Show Me,” walking toward “Panama.” Behind him is an elephant also with a cigar in its mouth. On the ground are footprints of others: President Roosevelt, Uncle Sam, and Secretary of War William H. Taft.

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Joseph Gurney Cannon was one of the most colorful, flinty, and dictatorial Speakers of the House, a position he held from 1903-1911. He was touted as a Republican presidential aspirant for 1908, but he sometimes averred that he had more power as Speaker than any president could wield; yet his name was frequently discussed in the gaggle of hopefuls, very likely to enhance his influence and prestige as a Favorite Son of Illinois.

Uncle Sam, wearing boots (one that says “Army” and the other that says “Navy”), marches forward with a shovel and a pail toward “Panama.” Beside him is an elephant holding a shovel. President Roosevelt is in the distance away from Panama waving a white paper.

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In the last week of February 1907 President Roosevelt held White Houses conferences with Theodore P. Shonts, Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) and Secretary of War William H. Taft over progress on the Panama Canal’s construction. After some challenges and delays, many caused by the necessity to choose between precise routes, health matters, and festering personnel problems, pathways of both geographical and organization natures were in place.

President Roosevelt and Eugene E. Schmitz stand hidden on the side of a mountain near a sign that reads, “To Japanese settlement.”

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This cartoon by Jack H. Smith in the reliably pro-Roosevelt Washington Herald addresses the president’s persistent efforts to diffuse, if not mediate, the ugly tensions in San Francisco engendered by Japanese immigrants: their growing presence, their role in business and social life, and the prejudice they suffered. Japanese were persecuted; there were efforts to exclude further immigration. A regulation advanced by local newspapers and politicians that kept Japanese students from public schools

President Roosevelt, mounted on a horse, jumps over a fence with poles labeled “Square Deal,” “Equal Rights,” “Corporation Control,” and “Tariff Reform” as Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks watches in the background.

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Cartoonist Jack H. Smith of the Washington Herald frequently copied from photographs, and even from the cartoons of others, as he does here. The image of a confident President Roosevelt on horseback clearing a hurdle was too good to neglect, and too inviting not to copy, if not quite as well as other cartoonists.

This cartoon depicts four different options for President Roosevelt after he leaves office: “President of Harvard,” “In charge of the Panama Canal,” “A member of the Peace Congress at The Hague,” or “U.S. Senator from New York.” Caption: A composite horoscope by the Hon. Champ Clark.

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Only a year into President Roosevelt’s second term, editorialists, politicians, and cartoonists continually speculated on his future — as a young ex-president (he would be 50) with a range of professional opportunities; or, if he were to break his word not to seek a successive term, how American politics would be affected.

President Roosevelt throws horseshoes at “honesty.” “Fair Deal” has landed squarely on the stake, and Roosevelt holds another labeled “National honor” in his hand. “Tariff reform,” “equal rights,” and “corporation control” are all on the ground beside him.

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The Washington Herald, during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, designed itself to be the most Republican newspaper in the capital. To that end it hired someone named Jack H. Smith to carry political-cartoon water in the cause. His concepts were clear, unlike those of other putative cartoonists, although routinely unspectacular.

The symbolic character John Bull gestures to President Roosevelt to come over to him. He stands beside a sign with a lion at the bottom that reads, “Precedent no. 1: ‘Once an Englishman always an Englishman.'” Roosevelt, on the other hand, stands on an area labeled U.S. with a tag that reads, “T.R. Champion Precedent Breaker.” On the left side stands Jamaican Governor James Alexander Swettenham who thinks, “Anything personal, I wonder?”

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Sir James Alexander Swettenham was a member of Great Britain’s vast colonial diplomatic corps, in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. He held posts in Ceylon, Cyprus, and Singapore, before being named Governor of British Guiana from 1901 to 1904 and Governor of Jamaica from 1904 until the time of this cartoon, 1907.

President Roosevelt, George F. Edmunds, and Secretary of State Elihu Root all hold boards behind their backs labeled “Ship Subsidy.” Meanwhile, a man labeled “Congress” walks toward them holding a book that reads, “O, long may it wave” and “My country ’tis of thee.”

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The federal government’s attitude toward the building of large ships — for military as well as maritime trade use — was a thorny subject at the time of Jack H. Smith’s cartoon.

President Roosevelt stands with a big stick in his hand looking ahead to dishes that are running away. One is labeled, “Arrangement of Courts.” Behind him are several broken dishes, “Precedent No. 6–The president never leaves the United States,” “The president should not smile,” “The president should not bust trusts,” “Precedent No. 4–The president should not work hard,” “Precedent No. 10–The President sends few messages to Congress.”

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A type of challenge for historians and researchers is represented by this cartoon. When an inferior political cartoonist addressed a contemporary issue, it is sometimes difficult to discern the intention of the drawing.

Jack Smith was the political cartoonist of the Washington Herald, a daily that was founded in 1906, and fought for its share of the morning market in the nation’s capital. It would have a tortuous but somewhat influential career, with owners including Frank Munsey, Cissy Patterson (of the McCormick-Patterson family, publishers of the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News), and William Randolph Hearst. It eventually merged with the evening Times; then absorbed by Eugene Meyer’s Washington Post.

Secretary of War William H. Taft labeled “Full-back,” President Roosevelt labeled “Quarter-back,” and Uncle Sam labeled “Center” holding a ball with the words “Justice for Treason” stand on a football field looking at a group of men with a sign, “25th Infantry.” In the stands beside the group of men is one man holding a pennant labeled “T–Traitor” while the other side has a big “W” with a megaphone shouting, “Rickety Ram, Rickety Ram, Theodore, William, and Uncle Sam.”

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It would be hard to find a political cartoon about the Brownsville Affair more blatantly dismissive of the implicated black soldiers. The controversy was the dishonorable discharge of an entire regiment suspected but never found guilty of any act related to the murder and wounding of two men outside a bar near their barracks. Outside the South, this cartoon by Jack H. Smith was the boldest in support of President Roosevelt’s hardline position, his Secretary of War, William H. Taft; and by the cartoonists’ icon of Uncle Sam, the nation as a whole.

President Roosevelt watches naval officers rush forward, shouting, “Double Quick.” Beside him is a sign that reads, “To Promotion. Wanted–More Naval Officers–Get in Young and Get More Experience–Commander in Chief.” Secretary of the Navy Victor Howard Metcalf stands on a boat labeled “The U.S. Navy” and says, “Them’s My Sentiments.”

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“A Probable Naval Order”? The Washington Herald’s cartoonist Jack H. Smith was prescient, because before President Roosevelt left office, he promulgated the Physical Readiness Training (PRT) program for naval officers. Roosevelt, since his days as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was appalled at the indolence and general physical decrepitude of naval officers, desk and line both.

In one circle, President Roosevelt holds a box labeled, “Nobel Peace Prize.” In another, Andrew Carnegie cuts a paper labeled “Inheritance” that is divided in half. One side reads, “This piece is for the children,” and the other reads, “This piece is to be returned to the ‘community.'” In the last circle, Henry Watterson faces Roosevelt and holds a bag with a tag, “To Europe,” and a paper sticking out that says “T.R. is all right.” Two men are outside the circles with a paper that says, “We got ours,” while a government clerk looks through a telescope at the number “20%.”

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This genre cartoon by Jack H. Smith was typical of drawings many newspapers and magazines produced at the time — weekly or monthly pictorial round-ups of recent news events; not commentary or advocacy, but summaries.