For future delivery

President Roosevelt rolls up a “message to the Senate and House of Representatives” “guaranteed to make a noise when opened.” A teddy bear stares as Roosevelt rolls up two sticks of dynamite and an “alarm clock” as Maurice Latta heads toward the United States Capitol building.

comments and context

Comments and Context

As the weeks counted down to the Republican National Convention, the practical perception of President Roosevelt as a lame duck accelerated. However, he would be president for a full ten months after this cartoon’s publication, and no one should have expected a man like Roosevelt to slow down in activities, or controversies.

The week this cartoon was published, Roosevelt was in either furious (busy) or outright contentious engagement with Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon, the German Kaiser William II, Congress over the role of the Secret Service, the Senate over naval appropriations, and several parties over the never-ending Brownsville Affair.

The president had delivered a major “Special Message” to Congress on a plethora of topics and agenda items for years beyond his administration. But that was several weeks earlier, and there is no record of another major message in close proximity to this cartoon. So it is likely that virtually all of Roosevelt’s communications with Congress at this point in his presidency were in varying degrees incendiary. In fact, he did issue a stinging rebuke of Congress for its “inaction” — not a major address or state paper, yet important in its bellicosity. Hence the murderous contents wrapped in the scroll.

It would appear that the figure labeled “Secretary Latta” plays a role that is dispositive to a point of the cartoon. This is not case. Maurice Latta was a presidential secretary (not a cabinet secretary) much trusted by Roosevelt, particularly as a stenographer, but an assistant to the relatively high-profile William Loeb. Almost lost to history, Latta served presidents from William McKinley to Harry S. Truman as a personal secretary and transcriber. It is unclear why Berryman endowed him with prominence in this cartoon, except perhaps as a bit of bonhomie toward a Washington friend.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-04-30

Creator(s)

Berryman, Clifford Kennedy, 1869-1949

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