As a certain party would have you believe it

A tall President Roosevelt holds a big stick as a variety of groups hurl objects at him, including “so-called innocent stockholders,” “wrongdoing lawyers,” “railroad debaters,” “nature fakirs,” “undesirable citizens,” “purchased politicians,” and the “liars brigade.” John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Edward Henry Harriman are prominent figures in the center.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Theodore Roosevelt, as president or at any time in his career, famously was a master of what a historian has called “The Art of Controversy.” At the least he did not shy from debates and even vivid disagreements. When he thought newspapers engaged in fake news, he threatened to sue (The New York World and its publisher Joseph Pulitzer in one example). He was not chary of calling opponents liars, and he rhetorically consigned political enemies to what he called the “Ananias Club,” after the New Testament figure who was struck dead by the Holy Spirit for lying about his offerings.

Consequently Roosevelt was not known to play the martyr’s role or make appeals for sympathy. Yet this cartoon by Ferdinand G. Long in the New York World depicts the president as the victim of opponents’ slings and arrows, covering his face instead of defending himself or returning fire. And the caption identifies Roosevelt (as “a certain party”) whining about his persecution. The World, the unofficial voice of the national Democratic Party, could be relied upon to be unfair to Roosevelt, especially in its political cartoons.

The opponents are hyperbolically arranged in phalanxes, with very few single enemies; and they are sarcastically labelled with Roosevelt-flavored epithets.

The cartoonist “Ferd” Long was one of the most prolific of the World‘s cartoonists after the turn of the century, and for the World Color Printing Company (no relation), which supplied small and rural newspapers with pre-printed Sunday funny sections. For all his credits, Long is scarcely known today. His style, fully on display in this cartoon, was minimalist, almost child-like, a step above stick figures. This was a “look” that some cartoonists strained to achieve, most prominently Thomas E. Powers, Long’s immediate predecessor on the World when the former was hired by Pulitzer’s rival, the New York American of William Randolph Hearst.

As in the case of Powers, Long drew strips, panel cartoons, topical commentary, short-run series, and occasional political cartoons. The composition and line-work of this cartoon, close to Powers’ style, is typical of Long’s work.

One of his earliest features for the World was The Twentieth Century Messenger Boy or The Misadventures of Shorty McNabb in 1900. He also drew the strips Mary Jane and the Kickums, Louie the Bowler, The Great American Gook, Lemons — A Cent Apiece, and What Willie Got.

Long’s most famous strip for the World, and a pioneer of the daily-strip genre, he inherited from two previous cartoonists. Mister Peewee ran intermittently for several years between 1904 and 1905, with some random individual appearances over the subsequent few years, even (probably pirated) shows in the rival Journal.

Around 1912 Long drew a plethora of cartoons and Sunday comic pages for the pre-print World Color sections, and his work appeared in smaller (and, today, generally obscure) newspapers. Among his creations in those sections were Good Night!, Romantic Rosalind, Tense Moments, When Fate Frowned, Kid Ideas, Man and Superman, But On the Other Hand, Bobby Bright and Sammy Slow, and Chanticleer Peck.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-02

Creator(s)

Long, Ferdinand G., 1870-1948

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