“Do it now”
Subject(s): Ice industry, Scarcity, Trusts, Industrial
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A man sits in an ice house, wearing a fur coat and a hat labeled “Ice Trust.” He is writing “Owing to the mild winter, we regret to say that ice next summer will be dearer than ever.”
Comments and Context
J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon was a platform for a predictable attack on trusts and their venality and price-fixing. A letter that is composed by the greedy monopolist prefigures a rate hike irrespective of actual free-market factors.
The cartoon, however, addresses more than a mode of price-gouging. For one thing, the winter of 1906-07 was one of the more brutal deep-freezes of the time. This was especially so in the Pacific Northwest and the Upper Plains states, here record low temperatures and record snowfall levels would occur. Very low temperatures already had spread across the northern part of the United States when this cartoon appeared. This was not, admittedly, as severe as the blizzard of 1886 which decimated Theodore Roosevelt’s herd and cattle business in the Badlands; or the 1888 New York blizzard, which killed, among many others, former senator Roscoe Conkling as he strolled the streets.
The point of Pughe’s cartoon — more bitter irony than humor — is the wording of the letter, written in a deep freeze with ink needed to be kept liquid by a little burner, about the current “mild winter.” The face of the monopolist is generic, as often was Pughe’s wont with malefactors. New Yorkers, incidentally, warmed easily, so to speak, to attacks on its ice suppliers. For years the Ice Trust in New York City was dominated — therefore matters of supply, delivery, and price — by Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democratic “machine.”
Collection
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Creation Date
1907-01-09
Creator(s)
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909
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
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:
“Do it now”. [January 9, 1907]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o285702. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
MLA:
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909. “Do it now”. [9 Jan. 1907]. Image.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. February 26, 2026. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o285702.
APA:
Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909., [1907, January 9]. “Do it now”.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
Retrieved from https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o285702.
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. February 26, 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.
