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At center, Uncle Sam is drowning in the “Souvenir Post Card Craze.” Surrounding vignettes show scenes from the North Pole, North Africa, Hell, and with Robinson Crusoe on a desert island.
The century’s first decade was the high-water mark of “penny postals,” greeting cards, holiday cards and comic-themed cards. This is evidenced by the uncountable numbers of surviving cards at flea markets, antique shops, and collector sites.
James W. Alexander, president the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and generically labeled “Life Insurance Company,” drowns in a sea of papers labeled “Exposure, Bribery, Syndicate Profits, Dummy Deals, Wholesale Graft, Fake Transactions, Juggled Reports, ‘Yellow Dog’ Funds, Rake-off, [and] Investigation.” He is holding in his raised left hand a “Receipt for Campaign Funds Republican Nat’l. Com.” The “G.O.P.” [Republican] elephant dashes over a bluff on the coastline, losing a top hat and halo labeled “Geo. B.” Out at sea, lightning flashes labeled “Publicity.” A bouquet of flowers labeled “J.H.H.” (James Hazen Hyde, the vice president of Equitable, who had recently been ousted from the company’s board) has been tossed meaninglessly before Alexander.
Icons abound in this cartoon, but their meanings would have been clear to headline-followers in 1905. In the middle of the Muckraking Era, when public feelings rose high against Big Business and corporate corruption, the insurance industry — a “Trust” of a few major firms — was rocked by financial scandals and a high society sex scandal involving the heir to the Equitable Life fortune.
Anti-imperialists George Frisbie Hoar, Carl Schurz, Edward Atkinson, Charles Francis Adams, and Andrew Carnegie are drowning in “Quicksand of Public Opinion,” with the U.S. Capitol building in the background.
The underlying issues of America’s anti-imperialists (the men depicted here, as well as Mark Twain and several other prominent figures) remained in 1902. Those included the constitutionality and moral implications of empire, but as Spain’s surrendered territories accommodated themselves to new flags and occupiers, the problems receded from headlines. A month before this cartoon’s publication, President Roosevelt formally (though not entirely cleanly) ended armed conflict in the Philippines. Rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo and other insurgents surrendered, military atrocity charges were addressed, and a general amnesty for rebels was declared. Anti-imperialists back in America might have felt subsumed by the quicksand of irrelevance.
Investors are drowning in rough seas labeled “Wall Street” and “Speculation,” and a top hat labeled “Ingenuous Investor” is caught in a whirlpool labeled “Iron and Steel Trust.”
The story behind this cartoon was one of longer and more serious complication than a short-lived panic, actually the first Wall Street “panic,” as opposed to actual economic depressions. It was a case of wealthy financiers struggling, and small companies and individual investors getting crushed as they wrestled. James J. Hill, the railroad magnate, partnered with J. P. Morgan for regional rail monopoly in the United States northwest, but were countered by financier Jacob Schiff and Edward H. Harriman, who by circumstance of acquisitions was a railroad baron himself, controlling the Union Pacific. Harriman attempted a stock raid, weakening the position of smaller railroads, leading to sell-offs, failures, and a general Wall Street panic, the first of its kind. When the dust settled, Hill, Morgan, and Harriman agreed to combine and form the Northern Securities Company. The ugly effects of the 1901 panic, as much as “bigness” of the Northern Securities Company itself, is what led to the Roosevelt Administration’s anti-trust suit the following year, a fact infrequently noted by history.
Theodore Roosevelt drowns a cat labeled “Anti-Third Term Principle.” In the next scene, the cat has appeared, grinning, in front of his office door.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1912-03
Jay Gould is drowning in “Watered Stocks” certificates, some labeled “Watered W.U.T.” and “Watered Wabash,” at the bottom of the steps to Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City. William H. Vanderbilt sits at the top of the steps, on a large bag labeled “$40,000,000 U.S. Bonds” and “Vanderbilt.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1884-06-04
Uncle Sam implores a man labeled “ISCC,” sitting on a railroad bridge, to throw a life preserver labeled “Permission to Raise Freight Rates” to a man labeled “The Railroads” drowning in a river labeled “Increased Fixed Charges.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-06-25
An ocean liner, probably the Titanic, sinks amid icebergs with many passengers jumping into the sea for lack of enough lifeboats, as a few lifeboats loaded with passengers row clear of the ship. Caption: The Grim Spectre — Why all this hue and cry about lifeboats? Have you not your veranda and Parisian cafes, palm-garden, squash-court, gymnasium, swimming-pool, Turkish baths, and a la carte restaurant?
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1912-05-08
A handsome young man rescues a beautiful young woman from drowning. Caption: Her Rescuer (soothingly) — You’re safe. I’ve got you, but I was just in the nick of time. / The Actress (weakly) — Yes; I thought it was positively my last disappearance.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-08-30