The burdened ones:—”You carry least and complain the most.”

Three men struggle under tariff burdens–“on the salaried man,” “on labor,” and “on farmer”–as the “one cent newspaper publisher” refuses to pick up the “tariff on wood pulp.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This unsigned cartoon by W. A. Rogers, who recently had switched affiliations from Harper’s Weekly magazine to the daily New York Herald, drew this cartoon during a period of intense debate about United States tariff rates and import duties. It might appear to depict a family quarrel about arcane tax and trade matters, but it was a very contentious issue at the time.

The United States had not revised the tariff in a major way, upward or downward, since the Dingley Tariff of 1897, which was a Republican act maintaining high import duties. Through the McKinley-Roosevelt prosperity years, some adjustments would have been expected, but even more so since the United States had become, in that decade, the leading manufacturing and agricultural power in the world’s economy. Among a passel of other factors, American exporters could not afford to have other nations imposing retaliatory duties on exports from America.

President Roosevelt, always wary of tinkering with the tariff (knowing its nearly inevitable harm to the party in power when adjusted), avoided addressing major revisions during his administration. (He was beginning, however, to be persuaded toward lower rates, or “fair trade,” or targeted reciprocity treaties.)

A major tariff bill was expected early in the next presidential term, and indeed President William H. Taft oversaw the Payne-Aldrich Act early in his presidency — and indeed suffered electoral reverses for his party.

The specific point of Rogers’s cartoon had much to do with the newspaper business. The early twentieth century was an era of unparalleled expansion of newspapers and magazines in America. Only the Depression slowed that proliferation, as well as shortages of newsprint: wood pulp. This was one of several reasons that President Taft, quite apart from the Payne-Aldrich Act, made a major goal of his presidency the negotiation of a reciprocity agreement with Canada — that is, virtually no tariff barriers between the countries.

Newspaper publishers would have been happy, as there was an abundance of forests and wood pulp north of the border. But Midwestern farmers were upset at the potential invasion of produce and grain from Canada, and that traditional Republican constituency rebelled.

A further subtext to the cartoon is Rogers’s attack on a newspaper publisher: biting the hand that fed him? The New York Herald, when founded by James Gordon Bennett in the 1830s, was a pioneer of the “penny press,” charging only one cent. The New York Sun did the same, but it long was not a full newspaper like the Herald, being either one broadsheet, or one sheet folded.

Famous as a “penny paper,” it eventually raised its price to two cents and three cents per daily edition, which enabled Rogers to disdain the “penny press” for whining about tariffs, and the Herald to feel above the fray.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-04

Creator(s)

Rogers, W. A. (William Allen), 1854-1931

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