The unwelcome light

Puck directs a large floodlight to illuminate a cave. Charles H. Dietrich, Joseph R. Burton, and J. Edward Addicks shy away from the light. Pennsylvania governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, as a court jester, holds up a large sheet of paper labeled “Press Gag Law.” A man running to the right holds a paper labeled “R.R. Rebates.” Another man, possibly John D. Rockefeller, stands next to containers labeled “Paper Trust, Oil Trust, [and] Gas Trust,” and a diminutive figure, possibly New York State Senator Thomas F. Grady, stands behind Pennypacker, holding up a paper labeled “Anti-Cartoon Bill.” An octopus labeled “Mormonism” is visible at the entrance to the cave on the left.

Comments and Context

The main point of Udo J. Keppler’s cartoon — the origin of Puck‘s pushback — is the infamous “Anti-Cartoon” legislation proposed by Pennsylvania Governor Samuel Pennypacker, passed as the Salus-Grady Act in 1903, and kept on the books until the end of Pennypacker’s term, but never enforced. The law was supported by Pennypacker and followed the unsuccessful passage of an earlier bill sponsored by Republican Representative Frederick Taylor Pusey. That bill, on which the subsequent law was modeled, would have outlawed “any cartoon or caricature or picture portraying, describing or representing any person, either by distortion, innuendo or otherwise, in the form or likeness of beast, bird, fish, insect, or other unhuman [sic] animal, thereby tending to expose such person to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.”

Cartoonist Charles Nelan, formerly of the New York Herald, had been depicting the former Philadelphia judge Pennypacker as a parrot, repeating the words of thoughts of state Republican boss Matthew S. Quay. The cartoons appeared in the Republican (but anti-Quay) daily, the Philadelphia North American.

Nelan, a generally innocuous cartoonist who drew mild imitations of the Homer Davenport cartoons previously in the Herald, caught fire in response to the anti-cartoon law, lampooning Pennypacker and many of his allies. So did other cartoonists. Among their salvoes was mocking adherence to the law by depicting politicians not as animals but as vegetables. In this way they repeated the responses of cartoonists Honore Daumier and Charles Philipon in 1831 in the pages of the French magazine La Caricature. They had depicted the monarch Louis-Philippe as a pear. At a libel trial, a drawing of the monarch “evolving” in four steps into a pear, presented a humorous defense that nevertheless resulted in a five-month prison sentence.

Keppler’s cartoon strongly fires back at over-sensitive politicians and even the Mormon church, which resented opposition and newspaper publicity about polygamous practices. But Puck‘s light shone the harshest on those who would restrict free speech and the ability to caricature and ridicule. Through American history, laws similar to Pennypacker’s have been proposed or enacted, but none to any great effect.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1905-01-25

Creator(s)

Keppler, Udo J., 1872-1956

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

Cartoon

Rights

These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.

Citation