No difference
Thomas Collier Platt and Cornelius Newton Bliss, as police officers, receive “Hush Money” at the door of an “Insurance Co.” from Richard A. McCurdy. Standing in the window of the building are James H. Hyde, Francis Hendricks, and John A. McCall, among others. An insert labeled “Tenderloin Dive” shows police officers accepting a bribe.
Comments and Context
In the Muckraking Era, the public became aware of the odious similarities, first exposed in critiques during the Gilded Age of the 1870s and subsequently, between street crime of the “Other Half” and corruption among the cream of society. Keppler’s cartoon depicts that situation with almost textbook clarity.
The immediate context was the recent insurance industry investigation by a committee of the New York State Assembly, spearheaded most prominently by counsel Charles Evans Hughes. Although many of the shocking exposes were related to the Equitable Life Assurance Society, in this cartoon the dispenser of bribes at the door is Richard A. McCurdy, president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. Mutual was an older company but similar in its blatant transgressions as perceived by the public, for instance, larding its corporate board with trust magnates and prominent politicians. McCurdy also served as president of the Bell Telephone Company.
