Taking a hand in the game

Armed with a big stick, President Roosevelt plays poker with “Bear” and “Bull” on a table labeled “Wall Street,” saying “It’s a square deal, boys!”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Maurice Ketten, who had a long and modest but distinguished career as a cartoonist of social subjects, life’s dilemmas, and daily panel serials of suburban and domestic situations, did not draw political cartoons for long, and this attempt might explain the course set for him by his editors at the New York Evening World.

Otherwise he served as Joseph Pulitzer’s answer to Thomas E. Powers of the William Randolph Hearst papers (the latter had hired Powers away from the World at the turn of the century) — cartoons of humorous commentary on everyday life.

In this cartoon, drawn as the Wall Street Panic of 1907 was still new, Ketten’s salvageable point is that the bulls and bears of Wall Street — symbols of a gaining or falling market — were facing off, investors not knowing which way the market would swing; and that President Roosevelt was watching them each, carefully. Roosevelt’s bizarre wall eyes (not present in real life) keep an eye on each. And there is the suggestion that both aspects of the stock market were corrupt, as the sharks hide cards up their sleeves.

In fact Roosevelt took little personal role in the Panic or its resolution. The recently retired Secretary of the Treasury, Philander C. Knox, maintained a reasonably good relationship with banking houses, as did his successor George B. Cortelyou. Roosevelt, famously challenged in matters economic, was happy to endorse the intervention of J. Pierpont Morgan.

It was Morgan, of course with the Administration’s approvals along the way, who brought leaders of banking interests, brokerage houses, and various corporate moguls together. Over several meetings, with frank strong-arm tactics and threats, Morgan managed rescue plans, mergers, and compromises — not wholly selflessly and in one detail of subsequent problem for Roosevelt — but averted a large-scale Depression.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-29

Creator(s)

Ketten, Maurice, 1875-1965

Language

English

Period

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

Page Count

1

Production Method

Printed

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