The common scold!

President Roosevelt is strapped to a “condemnation” diving board across the “criticism” river. Roosevelt holds his big stick and says, “This is slanderous, villainous, scurrilous, vicious—-!!” Joseph Pulitzer and Edward Henry Harriman cheer as Harriman holds the “Ananias Club” flag. William MacKay Laffan is lying face up on the ground chuckling, “Ha-ha!” while Henry Melville Whitney says, “Let ‘er go!”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Edward Joseph McBride was among several political cartoonists at the close of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency who seemed to find daily opposition a habit difficult to break. Cartoons like this one were not about specific issues, but virtually served as compendiums of complaints that had provided Democratic cartoonists with subjects for years.

In the case of this cartoon, it was a fantasy depicting various public figures with whom Roosevelt had disagreements, in some cases questioning the truthfulness of some, and consigning them to his “Ananias Club,” a jail for liars named for the Old Testament figure struck dead for bearing false witness to the Disciples. In McBride’s vision of revenge, a squad of the accused exact a Puritanical punishment on the president.

Among those named, Joseph Pulitzer was the New York World publisher — long at odds with Roosevelt over many false accounts in his paper — who recently had accused the president’s brother-in-law of malfeasance in Panama Canal transactions — and, when those charges were withdrawn, the World intimated that Roosevelt himself lied about Canal payments to French bondholders. Roosevelt had the Attorney General sue Pulitzer’s company for libel.

The exchanges between Roosevelt and railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman over campaign matters, political donations, and trust policies grew so bitter that the president eventually declared the magnate an “undesirable citizen.” The man on the ground, William MacKay Laffan, was laughin’: As editor of the New York Sun he followed in Pulitzer’s journalistic wake with allegations about Panama Canal funds.

In the background, Henry Melville Whitney urges the dunking. The industrialist recently endured a spat with the president over Canadian tariffs. Whitney was less involved in politics, and less successful in business, than his more famous brother William. The latter had served a term in President Grover Cleveland’s cabinet as Secretary of the Navy; and Henry failed in a run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The Whitney brothers were of Mayflower stock, and in their generation and subsequently, were related by marriage to the Vanderbilts, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, almost Roosevelt himself (Flora Payne Whitney was engaged to Quentin Roosevelt, who died in World War I), owners of the New York Herald-Tribune, and even a future owner of the New York Mets.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-12-18

Creator(s)

McBride, Edward Joseph, 1889-

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