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Theodore Roosevelt writes his sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles about England disgracing herself and the probable choice of John Hay for Ambassador to England over Chauncey Depew. Roosevelt’s work as Police Commissioner is becoming intolerably difficult due to colleagues Frederick Dent Grant and Andrew D. Parker. He is ready to be done with the job.
1897-02-28
Theodore Roosevelt informs his sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles that they are looking forward to meeting her husband William Sheffield Cowles. Roosevelt’s work as Police Commissioner is hopeless because he cannot accomplish any more. He feels William McKinley has begun his presidency well and likes the choice of John Hay over Chauncey Depew for Ambassador to Great Britain. His naval manuscript is complete.
1897-03-07
Theodore Roosevelt writes to his sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles to criticize United States Ambassador to Great Britain Thomas F. Bayard, but says he would shine compared to Chauncey Depew. Roosevelt does not know if he will be offered the Assistant Secretaryship of the Navy but would accept if the chance arose. He would be content to stay as Police Commissioner though he has probably done all he can.
1897-02-21
Various photographs from the wedding of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Butler Alexander, featured in the picture section of the New York Times.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-06-26
A page from an unknown magazine featuring pictures of well-known guests at the wedding of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Eleanor Butler Roosevelt. Eleanor has handwritten corrections to some of the captions.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-07-15
A newspaper article describes the upcoming nuptials of Thomas Collier Platt and proposes that “old men” like Platt must save the human family from race suicide. The writer suggests that a few words of encouragement from President Roosevelt would be in order.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903
Text of the speeches delivered by Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver, Senator Chauncey M. Depew, Senator Thomas Henry Carter, and Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker at the 1904 Republican National Convention.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-06-23
On the Senate floor, several Senators engage in a free-for-all around a signpost labeled “Rail Road Interests.” Watching the melee from the “Visitors’ Gallery” is Joseph R. Burton.
J. S. Pughe’s center-spread cartoon in Puck, 1906, is a reversal of many cartoons drawn through the years (most memorably by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler’s 1889 gallery of moneybags, “Bosses of the Senate.” Pughe’s variation was to draw the floor of the Senate ripped out, and the well reconfigured as the floor of a stock exchange.
A large man labeled “Big Shipper” appears as a blacksmith holding a diminutive man labeled “Small shipper” on an anvil labeled “The Rail Road” and striking it with a hammer labeled “Rebates.” On the floor at his feet is a pile of coins labeled “Illegitimate Profits,” and eager schoolchildren (Nelson W. Aldrich, Chauncey M. Depew, Thomas Collier Platt, and others) gather at the entryway hoping to “catch the burning sparks that fly like chaff from the threshing floor.” Includes verse.
This cartoon by Udo J. Keppler appeared only two weeks before the passage of the Hepburn Act, the long-awaited, intensely contentious, law that granted the Interstate Commerce Commission power to review and cap railroad rates; extending regulatory jurisdiction over lines and competition; and eliminated rebates and free passes. The Hepburn Act technically was a group of amendments to the toothless Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.
Chauncey M. Depew and Thomas Collier Platt hold awards “For Good Attendance” and “Reward of Merit” at commencement exercises, with Charles W. Fairbanks sitting in the background in the Senate chamber.
Puck began to focus its aim New York State’s two Republican senators on January 10, 1906, in a cover cartoon portraying Thomas Collier Platt and Chauncey M. Depew as Falstaff and Prince Hal from Shakespeare’s King Henry IV casting about for some men to bribe. Word had leaked out — if a huge publicity campaign can be called “leaking” — that William Randolph Hearst had bought Cosmopolitan magazine. It pledged to be the muckraker among muckraking journals. It hired David Graham Phillips to be its lead investigator; he was to expose the United States Senate as a cancerous center of corruption, and the face of Depew would dominate the first cover.
Nelson Aldrich sits on a throne as king of the “U.S. Senate,” with a diminutive Theodore Roosevelt kneeling before him bearing the “President’s Message.” Around them senators are reading ticker tape or enjoying the success of their investments. The surrounding vignettes show Chauncey M. Depew as a doorman welcoming a man labeled “The Trusts” into the “U.S. Senate”; John D. Rockefeller sitting at a desk pouring over “Reports” and “Expenditures”; Charles W. Fairbanks as an office boy stopping Uncle Sam at the top of the stairs demanding who he needs to see and why; and two men stuffing papers labeled “Esch-Townsend Rate Bill, Tariff Legislation, House Bill” and others into a trash can. Caption: Formerly known as the Upper House of Congress.
With only the political cartoonist’s traditional “license” to exaggerate, cartoonist J. S. Pughe fairly depicted the state of affairs regarding the United States Senate in 1905.
The cast of a theatrical production “Robbin’ Hood and his Merry Men” appears on stage for the final song of the production. Shown are, from left, Francis Hendricks as “Alan-a-Dale” playing “The Insurance Lyre,” John R. Hegeman as “Friar Tuck” with a small bag labeled “Loans” at his waist, John A. McCall as “Little John,” Richard A. McCurdy as “Robin Hood” with an animal horn labeled “Bluff” hanging at his waist, James H. Hyde as “Will Scarlett,” Chauncey M. Depew as “Maid Marian” with a bag labeled “Retainer” hanging at his waist, and in the background, Charles Evans Hughes as “The Sheriff of Nottingham.” A diminutive figure labeled “Policy Holder,” his arms and legs bound, is standing between McCall and McCurdy. Includes the lyrics of the song.
Cartoonist J. S. Pughe closed out the year 1905 and one of its most spectacular news stories, the scandals uncovered in the insurance industry — with a parody of an opera company’s “farewell performance.” The investigations lasted so long, however, with Puck milking every opportunity to make cartoon commentary, that readers might have wondered whether there ever would be a farewell.
A group of formally-dressed men gather around a table for a banquet, as an old man labeled “Lost Reputation” departs and a cherub labeled “1906” arrives.
This is not a random group of men at a New Year’s banquet pictured by Joseph Keppler Jr. At year’s end, the double-page cartoon in Puck is another comment on the consequential news event that was the long-running and far-reaching New York State investigations into the insurance industry.
Thomas Collier Platt and Chauncey M. Depew appear in 16th century theatrical costumes in a scene from a Shakespearean play. Caption: Falstaff Depew (to Prince Hal Platt) — I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought.–King Henry IV.
Week by week in his magazine Puck at this time, cartoonist Udo J. Keppler was proving himself to be America’s foremost political caricaturist, perhaps the superior of his father who founded Puck; yet he is relatively obscure to history. This example is not a mere excuse to festoon two ugly faces on the weekly’s cover, but Keppler made a salient point, as per usual, about his political targets.
At center a valentine card features President Roosevelt as Cupid. Around the outside are other valentines featuring two European leaders, American industrial and political figures, a Russian admiral, a writer identified only as “Tom,” and a Wall Street con artist.
Whether it was a cartoonist’s creative crutch every year, or readers’ happy expectations, the easy formula of imaginary Valentine’s Day cards for political figures was a frequent feature in Puck and other satirical weeklies of the day. Frederick Burr Opper drew many of these over his years at Puck in the 1880s and ’90s.
A troop of senators, as Confederate soldiers being led by an officer on horseback labeled “Trusts,” march down a street past the house with “Barbara Fritchie” labeled “Dingley Tariff” leaning out the window, waving a flag labeled “High Protection.” Caption: “Who touches a hair on yon swelled head / Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.
The reference-point of cartoonist Pughe’s cartoon is the famous poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, “Barbara Fritchie.” The legend about the old lady is almost certainly apocryphal — the Union patriot who waved her stars and stripes as occupying Confederate forces rode by her house in Frederick, Maryland.
A frenzy of activity is underway as many politicians and capitalists join the labor forces to construct the Panama Canal. Theodore P. Shonts, chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission, is standing on the right, holding a whip, and directing the laborers. In the background, large groups of men labeled “Order of Walking Delegates, The Idle Rich, Amalgamated Aldermen, [and] Insurance Presidents Union No. 6” are waiting, with tools, to be called into action. Caption: Let our superfluous citizens do the work.
S. D. Ehrhart’s expansive cartoon in Puck seized upon the news of labor challenges in the Culebra Cut portion of the Panama Canal construction, and built an elaborate cartoon-fantasy about people in politics, the social world, and finance being put to work at manual labor.
Democrats and Republicans, capitalists, social reformers, political symbols, and others enjoy a summer outing at a park.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1904-08-17
President Theodore Roosevelt stands on a reviewing stand, holding hat in raised right hand as a large group of capitalists, industrialists, and financiers wearing the tattered clothing of tramps, march past the stand. Some carry placards with such statements as: “Irrigate the Trusts,” “No place to go but the Waldorf,” “We want the earth,” “Free quick lunches,” “Pity the poor banker,” “Dividends or we perish.” At the front of the group, J. P. Morgan carries a wooden bucket labeled “The full water pail.” Caption: “Aggregated wealth largely represented among Parker’s Supporters”–New York Tribune.
Two cameo scenes are separated by a telegraph pole labeled “Western Union.” On the left is a civic meeting claiming that “We must uphold our Public Morals and Civic Decency” where seated on a stage are businessmen labeled “Flagler, Schiff, Jessup [sic], Depew, Rockefeller, Hyde, Morgan [and] Sage.” On the right are the same men sitting in a room where they are straining to hear the report of the “Annual Statement” regarding “Sundry other profits from our Subterranean wires increase this total applicable to dividends by $5,000,000” over the din of coins spilling from a cornucopia connected to a telegraph pole and overflowing a barrel labeled “Western Union Pool Room Receipts.” Visible through a window are many buildings labeled “Pool Room.”