Another cause for thanksgiving
Uncle Sam holds a rifle labeled “Prosperity” in his right hand and a hammer in his left hand. He has just nailed a fox pelt labeled “Bryanism” to the wall of a log cabin.
Comments and Context
As a summary, a simple post-mortem, of the 1900 election, by the end of November Puck expressed the situation, and the hope, that “Bryanism” was dead. William Jennings Bryan ran again in 1908, and served as king-maker, and Secretary of State, in Woodrow Wilson’s political career in 1912 and afterwards, but Keppler’s cartoon expressed the current situation. Perhaps unknowingly, for all the issues enunciated by Bryan, it was prosperity that made his economic cure-alls practically irrelevant. Ironically, “Bryanism” itself did not wholly die, as Theodore Roosevelt and others eventually transformed or absorbed many of its aspects into their programs.
