The rival pulpiteers

The Democratic Donkey, as a woman, sits in a pew in a church with William Jennings Bryan preaching “Jeffersonian Simplicity” from a pulpit. On Bryan’s left are Alton B. Parker, Henry Watterson, and William Randolph Hearst, and among those on his right are New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr., former Representative Tom Watson of Georgia, Representative John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, and Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman. All are preaching except Hearst, who righteously looks up to the heavens. In the background, the sun illuminates a stained glass window labeled “Our Thomas” and showing Thomas Jefferson. In a far corner of the church, Grover Cleveland is asleep. Caption: The Democratic Donkey (drowsily) — He-e-e Haw! What a lot of ways to be saved!

comments and context

Comments and Context

If “politics makes strange bedfellows,” the calendar can make them even stranger. Puck Magazine, generally and justly considered a Democratic journal for most of its life, placed itself in agreement with many of the policies of the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, after the assassination of President William McKinley. That is, until the presidential election year of 1904.

Whether the magazine and its principle owner Joseph Keppler, Junior felt obliged to revert to its Democrat roots; or were pressed by advertisers and its base; or — as sometimes happened, reportedly — the national Democratic party made capital infusions to buy the favor of the influential cartoon weekly, Puck lived somewhere between neutral and Democratic in 1904. It was, for instance, one of the initial backers of “safe and sane” Judge Alton B. Parker, the party’s eventual presidential nominee.

Only two months into President Roosevelt’s new administration, however, Puck‘s chief political cartoonist Keppler drew a centerspread cartoon that mocked every variety of Democrat and every putative leader. William Jennings Bryan was a traditional target, but here even the magazine’s own darling, Judge Parker, is ridiculed, even to the extent of standing on the Bible (or a hymnbook) labelled with his erstwhile commendable slogan of safety and sanity.

Of the other figures, “Marse” Henry Watterson was editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and was a longtime platform-builder of party position. William Randolph Hearst, ridiculed here as diminutive, could afford to look holier-than-thou among these figures, because he had aspired to the 1904 Democratic         nomination himself, opposing both Bryan and Parker. White-haired “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, an unreconstructed Southern senator, is depicted as scorning them all. The ranting Thomas Watson of Georgia was variously a Democrat and Populist, and had vied for the presidency in 1904. He had served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat and was the Populist candidate for vice president in 1896 (he was elected United States Senator from Georgia in 1920). The shaggy expostulator behind Bryan is John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, the minority leader in the United States House of Representatives.

Even the party’s titular leader, former President Grover Cleveland, sits dozing in the farthest pew, unimpressed by all, as is the Democratic donkey; the only smile to be seen is on the face of the party’s founder Thomas Jefferson, and he is made of glass. Such was the popularity of President Roosevelt that a Democratic journal could not find a Democratic leader to extol.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1905-05-10

Creator(s)

Keppler, Udo J., 1872-1956

Period

U.S. President – 2nd Term (March 1905-February 1909)

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