Puck, v. 53, no. 1354

Legislators drop bills labeled “Bluff Legislation, The Original Trust Buster, Combination Crusher, [and] Anti-Trust Bill” into a barrel labeled “Receptacle for Anti-Trust Bills” before entering a building labeled “Congress.” They have chosen to hope for reform without having to take action. In the background, a trash-collector is dumping another barrel labeled “Receptacle for Anti-Trust Bills” into a cart.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Ehrhart’s cynicism is seen not in the discarded bills and their grand-sounding titles, but the indifference with which the ostentatiously dressed lawmakers toss them away. The rich, by implication, were in league with monopolists and were insincere trust-busters. Things were changing in America; only a decade earlier, few politicians even pretended to be anti-monopolists.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Cipriano Castro, President of Venezuela, hides behind a large rock, hoping that the large claw-type animal trap labeled “Monroe Doctrine” he set will prove effective in preventing the British Lion, a cat labeled “Italy” with the face of Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, and a boar labeled “Germany” with the face of William II, Emperor of Germany, from coming ashore to demand payment of international debts.

Comments and Context

The immediate context of this cartoon is the blockade of Venezuelan ports announced by the principal creditor nations England, Germany, and Italy. President Cipriano Castro arrogantly ignored debts owed by the Caracas government and Venezuelan banks and companies; in February 1902 those powers declared a blockade as a first step to extract debt payments. An international arbitration court at the Hague was suggested by President Roosevelt as a venue to find a solution, but it decreed that as principal creditors, those three powers had a preferential claim. However other nations, including the United States, were also owed money. As the cartoon shows, the European states might have hesitated because of the Monroe Doctrine, but Roosevelt made that a moot point one year after this cartoon by establishing the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: that in instances like this, the United States would act both as protector against foreign presence in the Western Hemisphere, and a manager to mediate, collect debts, etc., in disputes.

Note: Victor Emmanuel and Kaiser Wilhelm are superb caricatures — a hallmark of cartoonist Keppler’s work. The face of the British Lion appears to be of a specific person, but the likeness is nothing like those of Edward VII nor Prime Minister Balfour or other cabinet secretaries of the time, so Keppler evidently gave a very human and generic visage to the British lion.