Pardonable curiosity

With a large question mark near his head, Uncle Sam leans against a door. On the other side, President Roosevelt sweats as he writes his message to Congress. Above him is a vulture wearing overalls that ponders, “I wonder if he will mention my pants?”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Frederick Morgan’s cartoon portrays Theodore Roosevelt in an unusual attitude for a political cartoon — in solitude, nervously sweating and somewhat flummoxed. He labors over his annual message to Congress — today called the State Of the Union Address — away from the anxious curiosity of Uncle Sam; that is, the nation.

The likely source of challenge and insecurity can be deduced from the date of publication and the depiction and comment of the vulture. The Wall Street Panic had upset the nation’s economy barely a month previously; share prices were to lose approximately half their value before calm returned, but companies went bankrupt, brokerages fell, banks failed, and many average depositors could not make withdrawals of their funds and securities.

President Roosevelt was obliged to consider how much his reform measures had adversely affected the markets — he did not reconsider his actions of criticisms — but also what remedies to propose. Among those further reform recommendations, as the address took shape, would be further regulation of fiscal and monetary policies, an increased governmental role in the economy, and a more elastic currency.

The vulture’s comment likely was Morgan’s reminder that the public had virtually “lost its pants,” the losing poker player’s lament, in the Panic.

“Pardonable curiosity” was one of Morgan’s early political cartoons. The exactitude of his crosshatching and the almost painful execution of likenesses actually remained hallmarks of his style, but though the ‘teens, his mature period, his compositions grew more solid, and his concepts were no longer pardonable but strong and lucid.

Morgan was the son of Matt Morgan, a British cartoonist who was “imported” by Leslie’s Weekly to be its own version of Thomas Nast, the preeminent illustrator and cartoonist. President Abraham Lincoln called Nast the North’s “greatest recruiting sergeant” for his trenchant allegorical cartoons; and Nast almost single-handedly brought down “Boss” Tweed and New York City’s corrupt Democratic machine, Tammany Hall. Matt Morgan never achieved the fame nor influence of Nast, but was the only cartoonist of the two whose war cartoons were collected in book form.

Two years after this cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and in a different drawing style, Fred Morgan further memorialized Theodore Roosevelt in the children’s book Hitting the Trail With the Inky Boys, a comic fantasy of Roosevelt on safari in Africa with two native boys.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-11-29

Creator(s)

Morgan, Frederick, -1932

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