A sad case
Puck massages the scalp of a deranged-looking Richard Olney who is sitting on a bench in a padded cell in the “Hopeless ward for incurables” and holding a rattle of William Jennings Bryan as a jester. On the floor are loose papers, one labeled “Olney’s letter indorsing [sic] Bryan.”
Comments and Context
Richard Olney had served as Attorney General in the second administration of Grover Cleveland, and embodied the President’s conservative stands on Sound Money, “dangerous” unions and strikes, and regulation of monopolies if done in order to protect them. He also served Cleveland as Secretary of State, and some of his views on hemispheric affairs foreshadowed the Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine promulgated a decade later by President Theodore Roosevelt. Given this background — and as a prominent corporate and railroad lawyer, Puck was surprised that Olney supported William Jennings Bryan in the latter’s second run for the presidency.
