Click on image to zoom in
William Randolph Hearst hosts a dinner for a gathering of cartoon characters at the White House. On the left, a dinosaur is eating a portrait of President Roosevelt. Caption: The inaugural dinner at the White House.
Comments and Context
William Randolph Hearst is a fascinating American figure who dominated many fields he pursued and influenced various areas of American life. His father was George Hearst, a miner whose discoveries of silver and gold made him fabulously wealthy. A term as United States senator from California was one of his toys, as was the purchase of newspapers — one of which, the San Francisco Examiner, he gifted to his son after the latter was expelled from Harvard for lassitude and pranks.
The younger Hearst turned the Examiner into a major force in West Coast journalism after assuming control in 1887. In a few years he set his sights on New York City, where he learned sensationalist newspaper as a reporter on Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and then purchased three newspapers to rival Pulitzer. “Yellow Journalism” and the papers’ rivalry, of which the birth of comic strips and the agitation for war with Spain, boosted their circulations to more than a million readers a day.
Hearst served in Congress, ran for New York City mayor, placed second in balloting for the 1904 Democratic presidential nomination, and supported William Jennings Bryan and other radical politicians and causes. By 1912 Hearst cooled to Bryan, and was skeptical of Woodrow Wilson; by 1920, when Hearst opposed the League of Nations, his transformation from radical to conservative was complete. He and his chain of newspapers (forty-odd papers at its greatest extent; supplemented by many magazines, movie and newsreel studios; and real estate holdings) moved further right, opposing the New Deal, supporting the America First anti-intervention movement before World War II, and endorsing the investigation of Communists in government in the late 1940s. To many people, the portrait of Hearst according to the thinly veiled and critical caricature in the movie Citizen Kane represents his career.
Pughe’s cartoon here appeared as the Democratic Party met in 1904 to nominate a presidential candidate. Judge Alton Brooks Parker by then was the presumptive nominee, yet the second-place status of Hearst was significant. Hearst had inherited some of Bryan’s die-hard support, and he battled the perception of himself as a dangerous radical.
Dangerous, radical, or not, Hearst is here dismissed as an insignificant ringleader of comic strip characters — portrayed as guests at an inauguration dinner. The characters are stars from the nationwide Hearst color comic supplements: Happy Hooligan, Gloomy Gus, Alphonse and Gaston, and an Antediluvian Ancestor (created by Frederick Burr Opper); the Katzenjammer Kids, Mama, der Captain, and Uncle Heinie (Rudolph Dirks); the Journal Tigers, Mr. Jack (James Swinnerton); and Foxy Grandpa (Carl E. Schultze). A framed portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt is chewed by a denizen of Swinnerton’s Ark cartoons.
Ironically, in 1917 Hearst became the owner of Puck Magazine as a constituent of his string of periodicals.
Collection
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Creation Date
1904-06-29
Creator(s)
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909
Period
U.S. President – 1st Term (September 1901-February 1905)
Repository
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Page Count
1
Record Type
Image
Resource Type
Rights
These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.
Citation
Cite this Record
Chicago:
If–. [June 29, 1904]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o277833. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
MLA:
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909. If–. [29 Jun. 1904]. Image.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. May 14, 2026. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o277833.
APA:
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909., [1904, June 29]. If–.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
Retrieved from https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o277833.
Cite this Collection
Chicago:
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/collection/library-of-congress-prints-and-photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
MLA:
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. May 14, 2026. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/collection/library-of-congress-prints-and-photographs.
APA:
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. Retrieved from https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/collection/library-of-congress-prints-and-photographs.
