Cannon, Joseph Gurney, 1836-1926

James Sullivan Clarkson recommends George J. Corey as president of the national organization of commercial travelers’ clubs supporting the Republican campaign. Clarkson warns that Ferdinand Ziegel, who is promoting Corey’s cause, is becoming disaffected. Clarkson also suggests several candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee and discusses campaign strategy, including states to target to secure the election.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-04-15

James Wilson reports that the Automobile Club, not the Department of Agriculture, was responsible for distributing literature concerning roads.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-02-29

Legislation creating Mesa Verde National Park and laying out its boundaries.

Collection

Mesa Verde National Park

Creation Date

1906-06-29

A man representing big business exhorts two men labeled “Trusts” to test their strength by hitting a peg shaped like a man labeled “Consumer” with a large mallet labeled “Tariff.” Joseph Gurney Cannon is standing to the left, pointing a baton at the consumer, showing the man with the mallet where to strike. The top of the tower, where the bell hangs, is labeled “Profits.” The U.S. Capitol is just beyond the trees, in the background. Caption: The harder you hit it, the higher it goes.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In this depiction of every carnival’s test-of-strength device, the generic bloated characters representing trusts encourage each other to pound the consumer so as to win prizes: higher profits.

Several congressmen labeled “Gardner, Champ Clark, De Armond, Sulzer, Goldfogle, Ollie James, Fitzgerald, [and] Burton Harrison” and others are engaged in a brawl on the floor of the House of Representatives. In the background, Sereno E. Payne is addressing the Speaker of the House, Joseph Gurney Cannon.

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Comments and Context

As the sixty-first Congress was seated in March 1909 the Democrat Party had reason to feel confident about their future in the House of Representatives. The party still was in the distinct minority, but a growing restlessness in the electorate presaged political changes; more and more Republican representatives declared themselves anti-Establishment Insurgents likely to resist the House’s Old Guard; and the popular Theodore Roosevelt would be abroad for more than a year, his Republican influence absent from politics.

William H. Moody addresses Joseph Cannon, William H. Taft, William Jennings Bryan, and other lawmakers. Standing at the end of a trail of footsteps leading from Oyster Bay, he tells them, “It would pain Mr. Roosevelt to run for president again.” Rejected title is crossed out at the top: “A few others would be pained, too.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1908

Photograph of President Roosevelt, Joseph Cannon, members of the Republican Nomination Committee, and guests in front of Sagamore Hill.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1904-08-04

A Chinese play is being acted on a small stage with Joseph Gurney Cannon and Nelson W. Aldrich offering two small doll-like figures labeled “Small Dealer” and “Consumer” to a dragon labeled “High Protection” manned by two men labeled “Special Privilege” and “Graft.” J. S. Sherman, John Dalzell, and Sereno E. Payne play musical instruments on the left side of the stage. On the back of the stage is a Buddha icon labeled “Greed.” In the foreground, at the foot of the stage, are Chinese men labeled “Lumber Trust, Paper Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Beef Trust.” On the far right, beneath a sign that states “Box Reserved for Amer. Protective Tariff League,” is a Chinese man labeled “Chas A. Moore” holding a tray with two small figures labeled “First Voter.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

“Like a Chinese Play, It Goes On Forever” is an abecedarian and awkward variation on “trusts bad, politicians subservient, consumers powerless” themes. Cartoonist Frank A. Nankivell, who had lived part of career in Japan, had a difficult job in approximating Asian pictograph lettering, and he relied on stereotypes of culture and attire for the cartoon.

President William H. Taft, as Saint Patrick, wears a miter with the spectacles and grin of Theodore Roosevelt on it. Carrying Roosevelt’s big stick wrapped in “His Policies,” he strides ashore toward lizards, snakes, and frogs labeled “Aldrich, Cannon, Rockefeller, Harriman, Land Grafter, Ship Subsidy, Beef Trust, [and] ‘Preserved’ Food.”

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Comments and Context

Barely weeks into his Administration, President William H. Taft is in Puck Magazine’s honeymoon phase, depicted in the cover cartoon by L. M. Glackens as a Saint Patrick who legendarily drove snakes from Ireland. Taft, caricatured as almost thin — anyway, not of the roly-poly corpulence in campaign cartoons — and earnestly about good deeds.

An oversized, bloated man labeled “Protected Monopoly” receives a blood transfusion from Uncle Sam who is being attended to by (left to right) Vice President J. S. Sherman; Senator Nelson W. Aldrich (Rhode Island); Representative Sereno Elisha Payne (New York); and Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon. Sherman stands on the left, on a stepladder, taking the pulse of the “Protected Monopoly.” Caption: “Uncle Sam–They say he needs it, but he doesn’t look sick to me.”

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Comments and Context

The subject of the cartoon is the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, the first upward revision of rates since 1897; and which proved massively unpopular with voters, particularly farmers. The Republican tariff was so unpopular that the party suffered major defeats in the 1910 midterm elections. President William H. Taft attempted to ameliorate the perennial tariff woes by drafting reciprocity treaties with many countries, but even the difficult Canadian negotiations could not please the angry consumers and disaffected voters.

Uncle Sam, as Rip Van Winkle, wakes up next to his broken rifle labeled “Competition.” Joseph Gurney Cannon, wearing colonial dress, stands before him, offering him a flagon of “Stand Pat Schnapps.” Sitting on a rock in the background is J. S. Sherman holding up a flagon as well. Caption: “No more of that, thank you. I’m awake.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This handsome cartoon cover of Puck weeks into the Taft presidency and sixty-first Congress, illustrates the assumption of Old Guard Republican Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon that years have passed, as per the Rip Van Winkle legend, and that Uncle Sam may awaken to life as it was before Theodore Roosevelt. “Stand Pat” conservative policies of high tariffs and a free hand for big business are Cannon’s presumptive “good old days.”

Joseph Gurney Cannon, holding a rifle, stands with John Dalzell and Nelson W. Aldrich, operating a moonshine still at the opening to a cave in a wilderness area. A retort is connected to a barrel labeled “‘Still’ Legislation.” On a rock in the foreground is a shadow of a bust portrait in profile of Theodore Roosevelt. Caption: Or, the mooonshiners of Capitol Hill.

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Comments and Context

This January 1909 cartoon — published in advance of President Roosevelt’s presidential retirement in March — nevertheless showed the influences still held by the president, a check on then schemes of Old Guard leadership in Congress.

The sixth draft of a news release with handwritten edits. President Roosevelt formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination. He then reviews several campaign issues and the achievements of his administration, especially focusing on tariffs, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. He also attacks his opponents for their contrary views, especially in regard to downsizing the military and increasing public spending.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-09-12

Rip Van Winkle educates himself about the events of the past twenty years, surrounded by newspapers referring to William Jennings Bryan, the Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Kendall Thaw scandal, hostilities with Mexico, President Roosevelt’s clashes with Speaker of the House Cannon, and Roosevelt’s attacks on the Tammany Hall political machine. Van Winkle exclaims, “Shucks!! I’m going back to sleep!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913

Theodore Roosevelt finds that the old parties of Massachusetts are “wedded to their idols” and do not offer any hope to the “man of vision.” He feels that there was “no surer touchstone of Bourbonism” than the support of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act. He urges the people of Massachusetts to remember that the present Wilson tariff, or the Revenue Act of 1913, was rendered possible only by the passing of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act and that the men who supported it represented the “extreme of reactionary Bourbonism within the Republican Party” against the interests of the American people. Roosevelt warns the people of Massachusetts that the man who supports the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act “has his face toward the past” and will lead the state “backward against the current of proper political development.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1914

A runaway pig labeled “The Tariff Issue” drags Joseph Gurney Cannon behind it. They are being chased by John Dalzell, Nelson W. Aldrich, Sereno Elisha Payne, and J. S. Sherman. An overturned cart labeled “Steel Trust” has spilled its contents of steel railroad rails. Andrew Carnegie, wearing a kilt, stands next to the cart waving his hat and gesturing to the congressmen. In the background is a large crowd, some in pursuit, and the U.S. Capitol.

comments and context

Comments and Context

After the Republican party’s sweeping victory in the 1908 elections, the major goal of the party establishment, after the oath-taking of William H. Taft, seemed to be the passage of a tariff bill. It had been a decade since the last revision of import duties (the Dingley Act of 1897), and the tariff was a hot topic in the campaign.

A congressional inquiry is shown based on the painting Phryne before the Areopagus. The illustration depicts “High Tariff Phryne” being disrobed by a man labeled “Special Privilege,” causing much excitement among the group of unidentified congressmen. Most prominent among them is Joseph G. Cannon. The golden “Ark of the Dingley Covenant” rests in the center of the room.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The famous 1861 painting by the French Academician Jean-Louis Gerome, “Phryne Before the Areopagus,” is the basis of Udo J. Keppler’s cartoon — or, rather, the model of the cartoon’s composition, for the painting became more notable for its parodies and allegorical uses.

Joseph Gurney Cannon, speaker of the House of Representatives, stands at right, facing two elephants, a large one labeled “For President” with Theodore Roosevelt on its back, and a small one labeled “For Vice President” awaiting a rider.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1904-06-15

On a winter’s night a small figure labeled “Consumer” sings a Christmas carol at the bottom of the steps to a large federal building. Standing on the steps, a large, bloated man labeled “Special Privilege,” along with Joseph Gurney Cannon, J. S. Sherman, and others, present a formidable barrier to the sad and complaint-filled tidings of the meek caroler. The carol begins, “Confound you, merry gentlemen! Will nothing you dismay? Won’t you revise the tariff until the Judgment Day?”

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Comments and Context

“Waits” were part of an ancient profession once common in medieval and Renaissance Europe and England. Evolving from street musicians to salaried ensembles of pipers and singers, waits roamed the streets to provide entertainment, warnings and announcements, greetings, and ceremonial music at events. In Germany the waits were called stadtpfeifers (town pipers) and sometimes were installed in towers throughout towns, providing what later generations would know as background music during daily activities.

A troop of soldiers wearing red coats, some labeled “Clothing Trust, Franchise Grabber, Food Trust, [and] Land Trust,” march past Daniel Chester French’s sculpture, “The Minute Man.” Among the soldiers are Nelson W. Aldrich wearing a miter and carrying a flag decorated with an emblem of a crowned hand pointing thumb-down in a squashing gesture, John Dalzell, J. S. Sherman, and Sereno Elisha Payne. Joseph Gurney Cannon is pictured kissing the boot of a fat officer labeled “Privilege” riding on a horse. In the background, more red coats are ransacking “The American Home” and tearing down the American flag.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Udo J. Keppler’s Fourth of July cartoon was a scathing indictment of the American economy, 1909, and specifically a gallery of politicians and business leaders he portrayed as dismissive of patriots and patriotism.