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Theodore Roosevelt continues to inform his sister Anna of his honeymoon travels with Alice Lee Roosevelt. He describes coming down the Rhine and seeing “robber knight” castles. At Cologne, they met General and Mrs. Cullum who introduced him to Colonel Baldwin. He begins to wonder if he will find everything in life “too big for him.”
1881-08-21
President Roosevelt appears as a knight on horseback carrying a lance labeled “Reciprocity” over his shoulder with a sack labeled “Campaign Funds” hanging from it. In the background is a giant ogre labeled “Infant Industries” sitting against a castle with a club labeled “Dingley Tariff” nestled against his right arm. Over the castle is flying a banner of “High Protection,” and a despondent maiden labeled “Fair Trade” is standing at the top of a tower.
President Roosevelt, as a knight on horseback, carries a lance labeled “Reciprocity” and faces a giant ogre labeled “Infant Industries” and leaning on a club labeled “Dingley Tariff.” In the background on the left is a castle flying a banner “High Protection” and with a maiden labeled “Fair Trade” standing at the top of a tower. Caption: And so the knight promised to take up his late lord’s lance and carry on the fight.
This is a brilliant cartoon by Keppler, wholly reliant on its surfeit of labels and slightly inaccurate as to history. That is, it predicts that the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, would take up the late President William McKinley’s lance and battle against high tariffs. McKinley’s views on may issues evolved, but as a Protectionist, his ideas about Reciprocity — fair trade with nations, one by one — were tepid. Roosevelt, who admitted that he never fully understood tariffs and economics, would prevent his Republican Party from enacting any tariffs, upward or reductions, during his presidency. He know that every administration that did so (e.g., the previous four) suffered from the polarized public debates. His successor, William Howard Taft, presided over both a high-tariff act and reciprocity treaties, both leading to electoral defeats. With a few changed labels — for instance, trusts and monopolies instead of high tariffs and protected industries — the cartoon better could represent a major theme of the Roosevelt presidency.
Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt from October 1858 to December 1870. Notable events include the Roosevelt family’s involvement in the American Civil War, Theodore Roosevelt meeting John Hay as a child, and the Roosevelt family’s first European trip.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt between January 1879 to December 1883. Notable events include Theodore Roosevelt’s engagement and marriage to Alice Hathaway Lee, his appointment to the New York State Legislature, and his first visit and buffalo hunt in North Dakota.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
This postcard shows Morro Castle, situated on a hilltop overlooking the bay near Santiago de Cuba.
1910
Print shows a “Hayseed Legislator” standing on the sidewalk of “Fifth Ave.” in New York City, pointing his umbrella toward a tenement house labeled “The Vanderbilt Flats Formerly the Marble Palace.” On Fifth Avenue there are street urchins, a hurdy-gurdy man with a monkey, a fruit vendor, and a man picking through the trash. Seen through windows on the ground floor of the tenement house are a woman using a sewing machine and a Chinese laundry. On the rooftop, a woman is hanging clothes on a clothesline. Caption: The New York up-country legislator will never be satisfied until he has taxed the millionaire out of the state.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-10-26
Several rogues, including Jay Gould labeled “R. Road Monopolist,” William H. Vanderbilt labeled “Corporations,” Cyrus W. Field labeled “Telegraph Monopoly,” Russell Sage(?) labeled “Stock Jobbing,” and George M. Robeson labeled “Congress,” rob a “Tax Payer” of his “Income” (Robeson/Congress strangling him with “Unjust Tax”). In the right foreground the tools and “Cloth” the “Tax Payer” needs are “Taxed” as others help themselves to his “Products of Honest Labor.” Vanderbilt directs some carrying bags labeled “Plunder” and “Gains” up steps labeled “Tax Steals, Land Grants, Friendly Judges, Lobbyism, [and] Public Apathy” that lead to a large building labeled “Castle Monopoly” atop a mountain. In the background, on the right, are buildings labeled “Manufactory Closed [and] Foundry Closed” and other industrial buildings “Closed.” A chain labeled “Protection” blocks the harbor, preventing ships with products for export from departing.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1882-06-14