Puck, v. 48, no. 1248 | - Theodore Roosevelt Center

His finish

Richard Croker, as the Tammany Tiger dressed as a cardinal in England, receives long distance news about an explosive “Tammany Investigation” in New York. Caption: Croker Wolsey. — I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, / And, from that full meridian of my glory, / I haste now to my setting. I shall fall / Like a bright exhalation in the evening, / And no man see me more. [Shakespeare, Henry VIII, act 3, scene 2].

Comments and Context

The “boss” of Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democratic machine in New York City at this time was Richard Croker. Irish-born, he returned to Great Britain and Ireland at the time of this cartoon when things went against his plans and control in New York. He fought with the national party about support of William Jennings Bryan, his involvement, including stock kickbacks, with the Ice Trust as a blistering summer heat-wave struck, and loss of his iron grip of precincts, all paved his retreat. Nominally he looked after stables of prized race horses, and he ran his affairs by cable, but soon retired from politics when investigations were launched. The cardinal’s cassock and other vestments are to maintain the relevance of the Shakespearean analogy; Croker was a Protestant until shortly before his death.

In the Chinese labyrinth

Uncle Sam holds a lantern labeled “Prudence” in one hand and holds onto John Bull with the other, leading Austria, Japan, France, and Germany through a field of traps labeled “Casus Belli” in China during the Boxer Rebellion.

Comments and Context

Casus Belli, Latin for a cause or provocation that results in conflict, is something that Colonial powers, and would-be Colonial powers, in China learned to be wary of when the so-called Boxers erupted in violent rebellion at the time of Keppler’s cartoon. Britain’s difficult suppression of the Boers in South Africa, and the growing insurgency in the Philippines under American occupation, made nations especially wary.