Holy trinity
Subject(s): Business enterprises, Catholic Church, City and town life, Diseases--Tuberculosis, Poor, Slums, Tithes
Click on image to zoom in
A priest stands at the pulpit in a cathedral, preaching from the “Holy Ledger.” Beneath his feet is a cut-away of an area labeled “Rentals” and revealing bags of money above the phrase, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The bottom half of the image shows the squalor of poor families living in sections of the city identified as “Filth Lane, Tuberculosis Alley, Bacteria Court, Thug Corner, Squalor Street, [and] Fire Trap.”
Comments and Context
The great radical cartoonist Art Young, creator hundreds of effective and famous cartoons over his long career, once called “Holy Trinity” the favorite among his cartoons. The color double-page in Puck was prompted by an article about the Episcopal Church in New York City owning a multitude of tenements. Its clergy, in Young’s powerful Puck cartoon, were in effect slumlords
This Puck cartoon garnered much attention at the time, as much as the expose that inspired it. Charles Edward Russell, who had written the expose in Everybody’s Magazine, in 1911 reported that Trinity Church had quietly destroyed 156 of the tenements they owned. “It was one of the great cartoons of history,” he wrote. Young himself added in his autobiography His Life and Times, “He went on to say… that I could feel that thousands of people in New York were better housed and more comfortable because of the power of my pencil. That commendation was the fines reward that had come to me since I had begun to draw.”
Collection
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Creation Date
1909-01-06
Creator(s)
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:
Holy trinity. [January 6, 1909]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o289866. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
MLA:
Young, Art, 1866-1943. Holy trinity. [6 Jan. 1909]. Image.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. March 12, 2026. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o289866.
APA:
Young, Art, 1866-1943., [1909, January 6]. Holy trinity.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.
Retrieved from https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o289866.
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. March 12, 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.
