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In the upper left cartoon, President Roosevelt jumps off the “Brooklyn Bridge.” In the upper right, Roosevelt rides in a barrel at Niagara Falls. In the bottom left, Roosevelt drives a “1000 horsepower ‘smasher car'” in the “International Automobile Contest.” In the bottom right, Roosevelt rides in an “air ships” with a “gasoline tank.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-09
A variety of boats and ships, as balloon aircraft loaded with tourists and travelers, float above the Panama Canal. It is suggested that the age of aviation will render the canal obsolete. Caption: At which distant day ocean navigation will be a trifle out of date.
This is another shooting-fish-in-the-barrel cartoon for Puck and cartoonist J. S. Pughe — humorous speculation; it is not a political, and barely an editorial, cartoon. The Panama Canal remained in the news; in 1906 it was beset by challenges of earth-moving, new technologies, labor troubles, and budget questions. Yet its progress, and its opening set for the mid-teens, was widely anticipated. It was expected to be (and was) a modern miracle, a Wonder of the New World.
The wreck of an airship labeled “High Finance” appears at the leading edge of storm clouds labeled “Investigation [and] Merger Decision Law.” The crash has ruined the blades that lifted or propelled the airship, labeled “Over Capitalization, Manipulation, Ship Building Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Northern Securities,” and has brought down six men (“Morgan, Schwab, M’Cook, Harriman, Schiff, [and] Hill”) with the wreckage and two men (“Dresser [and] Nixon”) in a swamp labeled “Ship Trust Receivership.” A lightning bolt labeled “Publicity” flashes from the clouds.
There is a specific context of this cartoon.
President Roosevelt will take up the Indian Agent issue but can not assist with the airship, as he would not be of much help and is quite busy. He sends his love to Florence Bayard Lockwood La Farge and the children.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-12-26
A woman moors an airship to her chimney by the light of a full moon. On board the airship are “American Goods Bought in England” that are being smuggled into the U.S. because of high tariffs that make the products too expensive. Caption: Let him invest in an airship and smuggle his necessities.
Except for the sarcastic aspect of an airship used for smuggling, the Puck cover cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell predates by a neat one hundred years the advent of another airship whose household applications, including shopping, are commencing — the drone.
A large winged serpent wearing a friendly mask frightens the passengers aboard an airship. The caption reads, “Which of our aerial navigators will report him first?”
With the presidential election over and a new national government in place, Puck returned to a pattern it had begun to adopt before the wave of political, social, and financial scandals; mid-term elections; Muckraking revelations; furious rounds of legislation and regulations; a Wall Street Panic; and the 1908 campaign. Interrupted around 1905 was the magazine’s growing tendency to give covers to full-page, color jokes — that is, no politics or partisan commentary. Even the cauldron of the Theodore Roosevelt presidency and White House activities and his extra-curricular distractions sidelined Puck‘s “secular” evolution.
German soldiers and officers invade England by means of hot-air balloons and other types of airships. In other scenes, German Emperor William II dictates “Fall of Albion / An epic poem by the Kaiser” to his secretary, and war correspondent Richard Harding Davis writes “How to Conduct a Campaign.” Caption: From the secret archives of the German War Office.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1909-08-18
An old man labeled “Republican Reactionary” and an old woman labeled “Democratic Reactionary” stand together, looking up at a dirigible labeled “Progressive Policies.” Caption: “Well, the young folks may go if they want to, but they’ll never get you and me in the breakneck thing.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-05-10