The dress pinches

“Miss Columbia” dressed in the “present currency system” asks President Roosevelt, working in a fabric shop, “Can’t you hurry those new goods?” Roosevelt points to the sign: “New elastic goods will be received in December from Congress.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Arthur L. Bowen’s drawing in the Chicago Daily Journal was more an editorial cartoon than a political cartoon — illustrating a current situation rather than advocating or attacking a partisan position. But as such it explained well what researchers might understand about the financial crisis that precipitated and followed the Wall Street Panic that commenced several weeks earlier.

There were many causes of the panic, as such events often are constituted. An overheated economy — general prosperity since William McKinley’s election in 1896 — concealed elements of corporate corruption as well as a myopia avoided by the financial community. The latter was a problem that President Roosevelt addressed through myriad reform proposals and regulatory initiatives. The latter factor — basic flaws in the monetary and banking systems were mostly ignored, or postponed as policy agendas by Wall Street, banks, and trust managers.

Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretaries Leslie M. Shaw and particularly George B. Cortelyou anticipated the necessity of reforming an unelastic currency, the desire to integrate government reserves and banks’ assets at least in times of economic stress — as the Panic proved to be, the consideration of a reformed monetary system, government regulation of speculation, and increased examination of corporate mergers and what today is called “short selling” of stocks — still a volatile practice.

Bowens’ cartoon correctly depicts the nub of the day’s crisis, a monetary (currency) system that had ossified, and the logical attraction of an elastic structure. Promises for December, however, proved elusive, as were signs that Congress could provide a solution. Rather, the Panic was prevented from becoming a Recession or Depression largely through the foresight and frantic personal intervention of banker J. P. Morgan. He worked with Cortelyou and, for ultimate approvals, President Roosevelt. In the process Morgan virtually strong-armed his counterparts in banking and the corporate world, and moved some companies and brokerage houses like pieces on a chess-board.

Many of the reforms advocated by Cortelyou and Morgan were seeds that sprouted in the subsequent years of Progressive legislation, including the Federal Reserve Act (although Roosevelt himself scarcely commented on the System when it when it was established by Constitutional amendment in 1913).

Bowens’ paper, the Chicago Journal, was for decades a leading but second-tier newspaper in Chicago, a respectable position in a city rich with excellent papers. It had been founded in 1844, at times Whig and Republican, then independent, then Democratic. It was absorbed by the Daily News in 1929. More than for its cartoons, the paper was distinguished by notable editors and columnists, including the legendary Finley Peter Dunne (“Mr. Dooley”), Bert Leston Taylor (“B.L.T.”), and Franklin P. Adams (“FPA”), all of whom graduated to national fame and followings.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-11-14

Creator(s)

Bowen, Arthur L. (Arthur Lawrence), 1881-1916

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