Criminals

Ernst Benninghoven asks Theodore Roosevelt to read the enclosed article and then tell the public why Roosevelt has so much to say against James B. McNamara and Joseph J. McNamara yet nothing to say against Harrison Gray Otis who has humiliated labor organizations for the last twenty years. Benninghoven says that even Francis J. Heney agrees Otis should be in jail.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-16

Two well-dressed men labeled “High Finance” and “Big Business” are startled by the throng of petty criminals, some labeled “Card Sharp, Safe Cracker, Second Story Man, [and] Flat Robber,” who push their way ahead to a building labeled “Anything Incorporated and No Questions Asked.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by Udo J. Keppler addressed less the riff-raff class of criminals depicted in the drawings, and more the “white-collar” criminals similar to the two shocked businessmen at the lower right, and the types referred to in the caption.

Prisoners engage in various recreations while incarcerated at Sing Sing for white collar crime. Caption: For the benefit of our grafting financiers whose health breaks down from exposure.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. S. Pughe was not inspired by the coddling of prisoners, a putative situation that is charged, or confirmed, in cycles. Sing Sing Prison was a periodic site that, perhaps due to its 40-mile proximity up the Hudson River from the media center New York City, was alternately scorned or praised by reformers for its conditions.

Vignettes of life in prison show “Respectable” prisoners who play golf, wear fitted prison uniforms, go yachting, have their valets perform their hard labor, attend lavish dinners complete with speakers under the banner “The Lord Loveth a Cheerful Grafter,” and are transported in fine horse-drawn carriages. Caption: A way to aid Justice in landing the “respectable” crook.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In 1905 the first trial of Harry K. Thaw, Pittsburgh scion who famously killed his wife’s lover, was a year in the future, but readers can be assured that celebrities and trust magnates were being convicted of crimes and sent to prisons at an increasing rate. It was, after all the Age of the Muckraker, when exposes and revelations were continual fare in daily newspapers and monthly magazines.

An unidentified man sits in a chair in a cell at Sing Sing Prison. He has changed out of his prison uniform into a business suit, and is doling out money by the scoopful in return for “Bogus Securities” and “Bogus Collateral.” Chutes of money pour into his cell through windows labeled “Cashier, Vice-Pres., [and] President.” Sticking out of a back pocket is the “Star of Hope,” the Sing Sing Prison bulletin. Caption: A washday convenience for frenzied banks.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The maximum-security prison Sing Sing, in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, 40 miles north of New York City, was built in 1825. Eighty years later its security was as secure as its physical plant: there was a porous ability of inmates to interact with the outside world, and its physical plant and sanitation were in scandalous disrepair. A state commission in 1905 reported on these conditions and implicated political parties (particularly New York’s Tammany Hall / Democratic machine) as well as various levels of New York state bureaucracy.

Samuel Parks, recently released from prison on extortion charges, and still wearing his prison stripes, cracks a whip over the heads of two diminutive figures, one labeled “Capital” and the other labeled “Labor.” Sam Parks was a union walking delegate, a mediator of sorts between laborer and employer.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Once again Puck attacks the contemporary figure, and phenomenon, of the Walking Delegate and his role in the labor movement, growth of unions, and workers’ rights in the United States. Frequent cases of corruption, extortion, bribery, and even incitements to strike and riot, were associated with Walking Delegates. They usually were freelances, insinuating themselves in situations of labor strife, but sometimes represented large unions seeking to organize locals.

An automobile driver who broke the traffic laws has been placed in jail with other criminals. Caption: Fines are a farce when dealing with the auto law breaker.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The brand-new phenomenon of automobiles and “scorchers,” speed-demons who terrorized pedestrians and animals on rural roads and city streets, provided sustenance for police, ambulances, and cartoonists. Some of these reckless drivers reached speeds of 30 miles an hour.

George B. Cortelyou encloses a picture from Cornelius V. Collins, the superintendent of the New York Prison Department, for Secret Service chief John E. Wilkie. Collins told Cortelyou that this man is more depraved and “of a lower order” than his brother-in-law.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-12-04

Theodore Roosevelt compliments John St. Loe Strachey on a recent editorial, but wishes to offer his own evaluation of John Flammang Schrank, the man who attempted to assassinate him. Schrank, Roosevelt says, was not a madman, but “was a man of the same disordered brain which most criminals, and a great many non criminals, have.” Roosevelt does not necessarily have any negative feeling towards Schrank, but instead focuses on the people who, “by their ceaseless and intemperate abuse, excited him to action, and against the mushy people who would excuse him and all other criminals once the crime has been committed.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-12-16

President Roosevelt regrets to inform Representative Williams that he cannot give a pardon to Douglas W. Hickman as the evidence against him is concrete. Not only did Hickman commit the crime he is accused of, but he attempted to frame a coworker, Roosevelt says.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-02-07

An act making appropriations for the diplomatic and consular service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907. The act stipulates funding for salaries of ambassadors and ministers, salaries of secretaries of embassies and legations, contingent expenses, foreign missions, and a number of international bureaus and commissions among other things.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-08-28

Martin J. Hutchens notifies the president that the Chicago Journal has unearthed Charles H. Moyer’s criminal record and that the newspaper will give information to the Associated Press.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-05-10

William Wingate Sewall describes the pursuit and capture of three thieves that stole a boat from Theodore Roosevelt. The boat, the best one on the Little Missouri River, had been purchased by Roosevelt in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and it was very useful. Sewall and Wilmot Dow built a new boat and they headed after the thieves a few days after the boat went missing. The thieves were captured without violence and Roosevelt accompanied them to Dickinson, Dakota Territory, for trial. Sewall and Dow continued down the river with the boats to Mandan, Dakota Territory, and then took a train back to Medora, Dakota Territory.

Collection

State Historical Society of North Dakota

Creation Date

1886-04-21

Uncle Sam, as the “Pied Piper,” plays a pipe labeled “Lax Immigration Laws” and leads a horde of rats labeled “Jail Bird, Murderer, Thief, Criminal, Crook, Kidnapper, Incendiary, Assassin, Convict, Bandit, Fire Brand, White Slaver, [and] Degenerate.” Some of the rats carry signs that read “Black Hand” showing a black hand print. In the background, rulers from “France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Hungary/Austria, Turkey, [and] Greece,” along with citizens of these countries, are cheering the fleeing rats.

comments and context

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Richard Croker, a Tammany Hall boss, is pictured as Hamlet, exiting a castle labeled “Tammany Hall,” carrying a moneybag labeled “Pickings” and papers labeled “Deed $90,000 House, Ranch – Racing Stable, [and] Investm[ent] – Stock Farm.” He encounters the ghost of Boss Tweed who stands at the edge of an “Abyss for Smashed Bosses,” holding in his arms a moneybag labeled “Stealings” and papers labeled “‘Diamond Wedding’, Erie Deal, [and] 5th Avenue House.” Croker is headed for the abyss. Caption: Hamlet Croker (to Ghost Tweed)–I’ll follow thee!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-04-11

At center, young women watch a football game. Surrounding vignettes depict William McKinley as triumphant in Ohio, “New Jersey” cleaning up gambling and horse racing, an unidentified man, possibly Whitelaw Reid, eating crow with his turkey, John Y. McKane hiding in a hollow tree labeled “Gravesend” with a dog labeled “Newton” on a chain, families with baby carriages in Brooklyn under Mayor Charles A. “Schieren,” David B. “Hill” in bed nursing a big-head, a tea party in Massachusetts, and Uncle Sam enjoying the Christmas issue of Puck magazine. Poetry accompanies each vignette, describing everything for which Americans ought to be thankful.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-11-29

Uncle Sam sits on a log in a swamp labeled “Spoils System” from which snakes labeled “Quayism, Bardsleyism, [and] Tannerism,” and noxious fumes rise in the form of shades labeled “Raumism – Pension Swindler, Crokerism, McLaughlinism, Tweedism, Prendergast – Political Assassin, [and] Guiteau – Political Assassin.” Also shown among the tree roots is Charles A. Dana. Caption: It will have to be drained to get rid of the noxious miasmas that arise from it.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-11-15

Silver miner William M. “Stewart” strangles Uncle Sam who is holding a walking stick labeled “Public Opinion.” They are at the top of a cliff near the entrance to the “Stewart, Jones & Co. Silver Miners (Unlimited).” Caption: “Take my silver or I’ll take your life!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-10-04

Half-length portrait of Richard Croker, facing front, with right hand resting on papers labeled “Certificate of Stock, Consolidate[d] Ice Co., Auto Truck Company, Fireproofin[g], [and] Telephone Co.” The ghost of a disconsolate Boss Tweed, wearing prison stripes, appears in the upper left corner above Croker’s right shoulder.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-05-10

A highwayman identified as a “Silverite” holds two handguns labeled “Free Coinage” and “McKinleyism.” Papers extend from a pocket labeled “Paternalism” and “Wild Cat Schemes.” He is holding up a stagecoach labeled “National Prosperity” with passengers labeled “Lawmaker, Banker, Farmer, Workingman, Manufacturer, [and] Merchant.” The “Lawmaker” and the “Merchant” have both hands raised, while the “Banker, Farmer, Workingman, [and] Manufacturer” are reaching into their pockets.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-04-22