Belmont, Perry, 1850-1947

President Roosevelt is at the front of the pack in a bicycle race that includes Secretary of State Elihu Root, Woodrow Wilson, former U. S. Minister to Austria-Hungary Bellamy Storer, Senator Isidor Rayner, Perry Belmont, and Secretary of War William H. Taft.

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The awkward but popular artist W. A. Rogers was a longtime book illustrator and political cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, Life, and the New York Herald. This cartoon, from the end of 1906, depicts a wide assortment of figures in the news, apparently associated only by their prominence in momentary headlines — and therefore vying with President Roosevelt for headlines.

Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin is being performed. At center, William Jennings Bryan appears in the role of Lohengrin, Knight of the Swan, who has just arrived, to the delight of “Miss Democracy,” standing on the left, in the role of Elsa, and to the chagrin of Perry Belmont and Thomas Fortune Ryan, standing on the right, who are playing the roles of Friedrich of Telramund and his wife Ortrud. James K. Jones plays the role of the King, seated on a throne on the left beneath a shield labeled “Jefferson.” A large supporting cast appears on each side.

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Through its life, and especially in its early years, Puck assumed its readership was familiar with classical references, especially German operas (the magazine originally was a German-language weekly, and published a German edition for many years).

At center, Uncle Sam looks into a mirror while descending a stairway in a hall. “Swallow” and “Watson” are standing in the hall, holding candles. In the vignette at lower left, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Roosevelt, Fairbanks, Parker, and Davis, arrive in costume. On the lower right they are unmasked and engaged in a game with Columbia. On the middle left is “Bryan” as “An Old Timer,” and on the middle right “Taggart” and “Belmont” play a prank on an elderly woman with a “Bogie Man” labeled “Militarism.” At top left, bobbing for “Campaign Funds” are “Taggart, Bliss, Cortelyou, [and] Belmont,” and at top right “Odell, Shaw, [and] Hill” are “Jumping the Issues.”

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Puck, a major Democratic publication, seems extremely unconcerned with the outcome of the imminent presidential election: little more than a week before balloting, its center-spread cartoon — traditionally a forum for powerful, persuasive political cartoons — instead published genre cartoons on a Halloween theme. Yes, with politicians as the characters, but more humorous than partisan. It possibly saw the writing on the wall, a massive Democratic defeat.

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.

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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.”

Due to a severe drought in Austin, Texas, James B. Milam has suffered a pay cut as a Baptist missionary and is struggling to provide for his family. Milam has written to the “rich men” in New York asking for money, but has either been rejected or ignored. He wonders if Theodore Roosevelt will send $500 to help the Milam family. 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-05-18

President Roosevelt wears Roman military attire and leans on a “sound honest govt” sword while Arthur P. Gorman, Perry Belmont, and David B. Hill push Alton B. Parker—also dressed in Roman military attire—toward Roosevelt. The White House is in the background. Caption: (Carnegie please take notice.) The backers—”Go ahead, Parker! You’ll be a great hero IF you lay him low.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-06

Alton B. Parker and Henry Gassaway Davis hold sheet music and sing two contradictory songs about protectionism and free trade to Uncle Sam. Caption: Special engagement of Alton and Gassaway, the celebrated team of musical daologueists. 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-09-29

Richard Croker is pictured as a radiant sun at the center of New York’s “Solar System” with such figures labeled “Pawnbroker, Brewer, Laborer, Hayseed, Fireman, Gambler, Liquor Dealer, Contractor, Soubrette, [and] Heeler,” among others, and people identified as “D. Hill, Belmont, Gould, Murphy, W. Reid, T. Platt, J.J. Astor, [and] Van Wyck” revolving around him.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1898-03-30

Moses C. Wetmore and Norman E. Mack carry a shoulder pole labeled “For Contributions” from which hangs a tiny bag. They explain to William Jennings Bryan, as Moses, seated with Henry Watterson, John W. Kern, and Alton B. Parker around him, that there is very little money flowing into the Democratic campaign coffers. Standing on the left are Thomas F. Ryan and Perry Belmont. Caption: And they returned after forty days, and they said unto Moses: “Surely it is a land flowing with milk and honey, but there is nothing doing in collections.”

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Puck Magazine’s artists, and many cartoonists of the era, frequently relied on Biblical analogies and stories as contexts for their drawings; and mythology, operatic narratives, legends, and Shakespeare as well. “The Return of the Scouts,” with Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan as Moses, is based on the Book of Numbers, Chapter 13.

William Jennings Bryan as Orpheus, singing and playing a lyre labeled “Harmony,” attracts a motley group of wild animals identified as: G. Gray, Kern, Folk, Gompers, McCarren, Mitchell, Hearst, Guffey, Watterson, Stone, Eliot, Williams, T. Johnson, Belmont, Sullivan, Pulitzer, Conners, Ryan, Parker, Murphy, and Johnson. One unidentified animal, similar to Williams, sits in a large tree, crawling through the branches above Bryan. Caption: Orpheus Bryan and the Democratic beasts.

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Orpheus was not in the underworld, but cartoonist Udo J. Keppler made the dismal swamp seem almost as pleasant in this loosely constructed allegory. The portly and unheroic-looking William Jennings Bryan had a heroic task, nonetheless, to tame the various and potentially deadly creatures.

Moses, holding the Ten Commandments, is confronted by an angry mob of capitalists, businessmen, and politicians, some shaking their fists at him. Caption: Chorus of “Conservatives” – Dangerous, socialistic, un-American doctrines!

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Comments and Context

This powerful indictment of endemic corruption at the upper levels of American society was drawn by Udo J, Keppler, whose father Joseph (founder and chief cartoonist of Puck) had addressed the same issues with classic drawing like They Can’t Stand the Light, showing United States Senators shrinking from spotlights in the dark. But his son’s cartoon — of this evergreen subject — encompassed more than political corruption.