Bribery

Ambassador Meyer writes to President Roosevelt regarding his dinner meeting with English Ambassador Egerton and Egerton’s words about the Russian loan. Meyer then mentions his discussion with the King who anticipates Meyer’s move to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The King foresees Russian conflict over China, shares his bad experience involving his tampered letters in Russia, and describes a case in Saint Petersburg involving an Italian Embassy official being bribed by someone seeking to crack the telegraph code.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-02-14

James N. Tyner writes to President Roosevelt about Roosevelt’s “proclamation” published the previous November and accusing Tyner of “gross corruption” and acceptance of bribes while he worked for the United States Postal Service. Tyner accuses Roosevelt of writing the letter for political reasons and asks that Roosevelt acknowledge that a jury found Tyner not guilty of corruption.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-08

Various forms of graft, fraud, and bribery were committed by San Francisco mayor Eugene Schmitz and members of the Board of Supervisors. Following trials of many offenders, a report is published on the causes of the corruption and recommendations made on how to prevent municipal corruption in the future.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1910-01-05

This cartoon depicts various components of President Roosevelt’s annual message, including international relations with Colombia, Canada, the Philippines, Turkey, and China; support for Civil War veterans and General Leonard Wood; and “more lighthouses for Hawaii.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-12

President Roosevelt and Assistant Postmaster General Joseph L. Bristow pull back a curtain to reveal black paint that reads, “Bristow’s report regarding the Post Office Department scandal: corruption, fraud, bribery, and theft.” Roosevelt holds a paper in his hand: “The guilty shall be punished to the limit of the law.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-12

A bruised and beaten “Congress” is surrounded by a group of men: a “crook,” a “thief,” a “timber thief,” a “land thief,” a “briber,” and a “forger.” President Roosevelt holds the “logic” big stick and walks back to the “White House.” The timber thief says, You pretty near whipped him,” while the briber says, “Old interference is spoiling everything.” The forger says, “It was a noble battle,” while the land thief notes, “You did the best you could for us.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

When this cartoon was drawn, William C. Morris was at the beginning of his chameleon-like career as political cartoonist. That is, as with some (but relatively few) cartoonists, his loyalties, advocacies, and opposition wildly shifted. Usually he took the opinions of whichever publisher was paying his salary at any given time. His views of Theodore Roosevelt, other public officials, elections, and issues were as constant as weathervanes.

President Roosevelt forwards to Postmaster General Meyer a letter written by Senator William Joel Stone. Roosevelt characterizes the letter as representing one of the “get-rich-quick concerns” in which Stone is said to have taken part. He reminds Meyer that at one time it was alleged that Stone could have been indicted in connection with the “baking powder legislative bribery charges.” Roosevelt instructs Meyer not to change what his predecessor ordered in the Stone matter without bringing it to Roosevelt’s attention.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1907-03-07

A large police officer turns the crank on a large press labeled “Blackmail,” squeezing money out of a variety of merchants labeled “Boot Black, Gin Mill Keeper, Dive Keeper, Merchant, Green Goods, Contractor, Gambler, [and] Pawnbroker.” Caption: “Let no guilty man (or woman) escape – widout dey put up de stuff!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-10-03

On the left, a “New York Police” officer accepts money from a woman’s hand extending from a window labeled “N.Y. Den.” At right, a man labeled “U.S. Senate” accepts “Stock” from a hand extending from a window labeled “Trusts.” Both men are leaning on a solid pedestal labeled with a large “$” and the word “Protection.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-08-01

Print shows a man reclining on a “Map of New York” with Thomas Collier Platt holding a platter catching gold coins raining down in the form of bribes from above.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-09-13

Roscoe Conkling holds a corkscrew labeled “Investigation,” and attempts to pull the cork that shows the face of Jacob Sharp out of a bottle with a label that states “Jacob Sharp’s Private Information about the Broadway Railroad Steal.” On shelves in the background are the “Aldermanic Bottles to be Opened Next.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1886-02-17

A man, possibly Jacob Sharp or one of the aldermen he bribed, holds a carpetbag labeled “Broadway Street Car Boodle,” and looks up at a street sign pointing in two directions, to the left “To Canada” and to the right “To Sing Sing” where a policeman waits, holding a “Warrant Arrest.” A man on the left, carrying a similarly labeled carpetbag, is running toward the river where there is a sign labeled “Ferry.” Across the river are estates labeled “Chase, Stewart, Scott, Eno, [and] Mandelbaum.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1886-01-27

A man hands money to a Congressional Page to purchase the legislative services of a Congressman. On the left and in the background, Congressmen are shown sitting in the House or Senate chamber with signs advertising their prices, such as “I will do anything for $20,000, I can be bought for $10,000, My price is according to the size of the job, [and] My price is only $5000.00.” Caption: As it is plain that most of our Congressmen are for sale, they might as well display their prices prominently.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-01-09

In this vignette cartoon, William Dorsheimer is seated at center in the “Office of the U.S. District Attorney and Editorial Rooms of the New York Star” where he receives a letter from “Daniel Manning Sec’y Treas.,” asking him “to stop the acceptance of bribes by the employees of the Custom House, without delay.” The surrounding cartoons all show instances of customs officials being offered bribes by travelers returning from abroad, including a “sketch by our special artist,” i.e., Puck, showing a customs official headed home, laden with merchandise in the form of bribes.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1885-10-14

A large old tree grows at the edge of a body of water, with Albany, New York, on the right, and the U.S. Capitol on the left, in the background. Hanging from the branches are many coins with “$” and a few blossoms labeled “Bribes for Legislation, Bribes for Lawyers, Bribes for Judges, Bribes for Editors, [and] Bribes for Congress.” Telegraph lines are tangled in the branches, and the face of Jay Gould is formed by limbs and branches at center. The bodies of several people lay among the debris beneath the tree. Roscoe Conkling is slumped against a row of buildings. “Westbro[?]” has expired over the same row of buildings. A skull labeled “Jim Fisk” lies next to “Whitelaw Reid.” Ulysses S. Grant, at center, is labeled “Black Friday.” Beneath a railroad is the body of a woman labeled “Stockholder.” Against the trunk of the tree is a man labeled “Stockholder E.R.R.” who looks a little like Cornelius Vanderbilt, and on the right is Alonzo Cornell labeled “Blind Pool.” All appear to have succumbed to greed through the machinations of Jay Gould. Caption: “This tree … was said to be so exceedingly poisonous that no one could even approach it without certain death.” Zell’s Encyclopedia.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-08-30

Theodore Roosevelt offers some opinions on “legitimate campaign expenses.” In a postscript, he requests a particular type of “transparent soap.” Two pages are missing from the letter.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1886-04-15

The Greek mythological figures of fate are represented in the form of a man (representing Lachesis) labeled “Commercial Lawlessness,” sitting with a pile of money on his lap and handing money labeled “Bribery” to a man (representing Atropos) wearing a uniform labeled “Crooked Inspection.” The latter holds a pair of scissors labeled “Disaster,” and is about to cut a thread that extends from the businessman to the figure of Clotho labeled “Human Life” standing between them. At their feet, on the left, are railroad and steamship accidents, a building fire, and dead bodies, and, on the right, is a ticker tape machine.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The Muckraking era, once enlivened with spirits of zeal and righteousness, focused on corrupt areas of American life that were not inevitable curses. Institutional corruption — bribery, lax enforcement of laws, and favoritism — had cancerous effects on American life despite laws and reform. In his career, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt encountered overcrowded and unsanitary tenements were cigars were made, when he was a crusading Assemblyman in the 1880s, and “arrangements” between policemen and saloon owners when he was a crusading police commissioner in the 1890s. Rules and regulations could be irrelevant on the street.

An elderly man labeled “The Law,” with a long beard and holding a broken gun labeled “Fines,” peers at a group of bloated criminals standing and sitting on the porch of “The Jolly Grafter’s Inn, Successor to Ye Stern Justice” who are laughing at the old man before them. Those on the porch are labeled “Big Offender, Respectable Crook, Handy Judge [with a glass of] Judicial Favors, Corporate Lawyer [with mugs of] Legal Aid, Tax Dodger, Special Privilege, Insurance Grafter, Corrupt Business, Rail Road Merger, [and the] Oil, Coal, [and] Beef Trust[s].” On a table is a newspaper labeled “The Daily Graft,” and growling at the man is a dog labeled “Subsidized Press.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck had fought cheek-to-jowl with reform politicians, Muckraking journals, and President Roosevelt over most of the recent years, week after week. In this crowded center-spread cartoon, J. S. Pughe expressed the utmost cynicism about laws and regulations that were hard-fought and hard-won in 1906.

George A. Kessler & Company, American agents of Moët & Chandon, are advertising that Moët & Chandon champagne was used to christen the Meteor, Emperor William II’s yacht. This goes against the German Emperor’s instructions to use Schaumwein Rheingold champagne. The author believes that a “trick” was used to make the switch. In a handwritten note, it is suggested that a bribe given to one of President Roosevelt’s associates allowed the champagne switch.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902

Joseph Bucklin Bishop comments on the “rascally methods” of the New York Evening Post, which he says used bribes to get the names of regular subscribers to Bishop’s newspaper, The Commercial Advertiser.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-02-01