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President Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan glare at each other. Caption: Roosevelt: “Your ideas are chimerical; your plans and purposes for reform would, if tried, prove ridiculous.” Bryan: “You are prostituting your great office to elect your own choice of a successor. You do not practice the square deal you preach.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoons, if they appear in traditional placements in newspapers, occasionally are not political. They might be topical, or purely humorous, and are sometimes therefore identified as editorial cartoons. Occasionally, graphic commentary on a newspaper’s front page or editorial page might serve the function of a political cartoon, but not be a cartoon drawing.

In Europe there is a tradition of “Fumetti.” These are sequential photographs of people acting their roles, with speech balloons or typeset captions carrying messages. At the turn of the twentieth century, Life and Judge magazines published posed photographs with printed captions as if they were drawn cartoons.

The Daily News, whose dateline locates it in Minneapolis (although there is no record of such a publication in either of the Twin Cities), published this photo-cartoon. It then found its way into the White House cartoon scrapbook assembled by President Roosevelt’s staff.

The front page under the masthead was adorned with clippings from familiar news photographs of Roosevelt and Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The feuding politicians are positioned face-to-face. The quotations, if not authentic, convey the tone of the barbs the men traded in late September and up until Election Day.

Their altercations virtually subsumed the presidential campaign. At issue were charges regarding political corruption, specifically the illicit contributions from the Standard Oil trust to officials and candidates. At the center of the conflict were Democratic figures Bryan had defended until the details of their involvement in the scandal were revealed.

It was a colorful diversion from an otherwise lackluster campaign. Worth noting (as many cartoonists did) is the fact that the exchanges were between Bryan and Roosevelt. The latter man was not a candidate, and was in fact preparing for his retirement from the White House. Nevertheless, Roosevelt’s disputes with Bryan provided the opportunity to vigorously defend his administration’s record and his own probity. They also largely eclipsed the activities of reticent campaigner William H. Taft, who was the actual Republican candidate for president.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-09-29

Creator(s)

Unknown

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