Your TR Source

Puck, v. 50, no. 1289

Search by Date Range

Clear Filters

2 Results

Going through the rapids

Going through the rapids

A young man asks his girlfriend’s father for her hand in marriage. Caption: Cholly — Mr. Jones, I want your daughter; – our mutual love is as strong and tumultuous as the rapids of Niagara. / Mr. Jones — Well, have you got a “barrel” big enough for two?

comments and context

Comments and Context

Nankivell’s cartoon is a big target, satirizing multiple groups and attitudes of the day. The joke about having a “big enough barrel” refers to a slang term of the day: one’s fortune is a “barrel.” The depiction of the girl’s father shows him to be a parvenu; in the era of prosperity, there were many nouveau riche families aspiring to enter high society. Finally, while almost gratuitous, the aspiring bridegroom is a diminutive effeminate boyfriend. It then was common of cartoonists to portray American girls as pretty and assertive (like the Gibson Girl), and many of their suitors as sissies or impoverished foreigners.

The old and the new

The old and the new

William Jennings Bryan stands with the Democratic Donkey with bandages labeled “1896” and “1900.” They are watching David B. Hill, sporting a feather in his cap labeled “I’m a New Dem.”, getting into an automobile labeled “The New Democracy” with passengers William C. Whitney, Perry or August Belmont, Jr., and driver Daniel S. Lamont.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Very seldom did cartoonists depict the Democratic donkey as something that could actually be ridden, or almost so. In Pughe’s cartoon the donkey of two-time standard-bearer William Jennings Bryan has two bad legs: his failed presidential campaigns. The cartoonist seizes upon the opportunity to depict a new-fangled automobile. What likely dismays Bryan is not only the “old versus the new”; three of the four “New” Democrats in the car are industrialists — William C. Whitney, one of the two Belmont brothers, and Daniel C. Lamont. Only David Bennett Hill is the traditional politcian; for two years the former governor aspired to be president — but when he dissented from Bryan’s populism, Hill famously declared “I am a Democrat” (and cartoonists thereafter drew him with a feather in his hat bearing that legend), which is here updated to “I am a NEW Democrat.”