Bryan finds new issue

President Roosevelt crouches in “Nomination Alley” watching William Jennings Bryan tempted to pick up the bait of an apparent lost wallet, tied to Roosevelt’s string, labeled “centralization.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The cartoon illustrates the policy adjustments, evolution, and outright reversals in platforms of America’s political parties during the second administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt, always a reformer throughout his career in public life, adopted (or advanced for discussion) some radical policies that shook the political landscape — a federal tax on incomes, municipal ownership of utilities, and inheritances taxes, for instance. His new nationalism in 1910 and the Progressive Party platform in 1912 went further.

Many observers noted that some of his ideas sounded like those of Democrats and former Populists, especially Democrats and former Populists. It presented a dilemma for the perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat and former Populist: should he embrace the president’s new views, or, as a politician, resist them?

The cartoonist and the Brooklyn Eagle were prescient or pixilated in their view of politics’ changes: President Roosevelt is depicted as fooling Bryan with the idea of a more centralized federal government (when in fact Roosevelt advocated a strong executive); Bryan appears tempted to pick up the billfold (wallets on strings was a popular ruse and subject of cartoons of the day) despite the caption quoting Bryan’s opposition to a strong central government; “Nomination Alley” suggests that the president was angling for re-election, which he emphatically worked against; and the title, “Bryan Finds New Issue” reflects the long caption rather than the cartoon’s concept.

Further testament to the day’s topsy-turvy political world is what the Bryan quotation reveals. He asserted his loyalty to Jeffersonian ideals, and indeed Roosevelt was a Hamiltonian with a “national” agenda. But Roosevelt as legatee of Populist discontents and solutions, saw Jeffersonian ideals best carried forth by Hamiltonian methods. This became, by 1912 the dividing line between progressives of the Bryan-Wilson school and progressives of the Roosevelt movement.

The cartoonist likely was Clarence Russell Skinner, son of the recently deceased Charles M. Skinner, Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle and prominent folklorist (and relative of actor Otis Skinner and author Cornelia Otis Skinner).

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-08-26

Creator(s)

Skinner, Clarence Russell, 1881-1949

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