“Where’s my square deal?”
James W. Alexander, president the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and generically labeled “Life Insurance Company,” drowns in a sea of papers labeled “Exposure, Bribery, Syndicate Profits, Dummy Deals, Wholesale Graft, Fake Transactions, Juggled Reports, ‘Yellow Dog’ Funds, Rake-off, [and] Investigation.” He is holding in his raised left hand a “Receipt for Campaign Funds Republican Nat’l. Com.” The “G.O.P.” [Republican] elephant dashes over a bluff on the coastline, losing a top hat and halo labeled “Geo. B.” Out at sea, lightning flashes labeled “Publicity.” A bouquet of flowers labeled “J.H.H.” (James Hazen Hyde, the vice president of Equitable, who had recently been ousted from the company’s board) has been tossed meaninglessly before Alexander.
Comments and Context
Icons abound in this cartoon, but their meanings would have been clear to headline-followers in 1905. In the middle of the Muckraking Era, when public feelings rose high against Big Business and corporate corruption, the insurance industry — a “Trust” of a few major firms — was rocked by financial scandals and a high society sex scandal involving the heir to the Equitable Life fortune.
