Foraker, Joseph Benson, 1846-1917

As he says, “I mean, help me fight Roosevelt!” Joseph Benson Foraker holds up a mask of his face, which says, “Your race has been outraged!” and looks at an African American man. Foraker holds a knife labeled, “Hatred of Roosevelt.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Ohio has called itself “the Mother of Presidents,” and through the years it has been, at least, the mother of many Republican presidents. Between the Civil War and 1920, many presidents and presidential candidates hailed from Ohio.

Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, depicted as Marc Antony, gestures to a group of African American men looking down at one man on a pole stretcher covered with a blanket labeled “Brownsville Battalion” with the number 23 on the side. Caption: Antony: “If you have votes, prepare to shed them now.”

Comments and Context

The New Orleans Times-Democrat was one of the South’s newspapers that beat the editorial drum loudest against the cashiered soldiers in the Brownsville Affair. While the shooting death and wounding of two men outside a saloon near Black Army barracks was — and still is — an unsolved matter, cartoonists like Trist Wood were judges and juries all by themselves.

In this cartoon the blacks are portrayed stereotypically, even to a straight razor supposedly favored in internal squabbles, and the Republican (and longtime, preternatural anti-Roosevelt partisan) Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio haranguing them. Oddly — since black votes carried little weight at the time — his motives are cast as electoral pandering.

President Roosevelt drives a steamroller labeled “Message to Congress on the Brownsville Outrage,” flattening a man labeled, “Foraker Negrophile Agitator.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The New Orleans Times-Democrat, a Southern and therefore reliably Democratic paper with traditional Southern attitudes of the day, had lambasted President Roosevelt when Booker T. Washington was invited to dine at the White House in 1901. In 1906, however, when the Brownsville “incident” erupted — a bartender killed and a policeman wounded in a neighborhood near an Army base with an all-black regiment — the newspaper and its cartoonist Trist Wood pictured President Roosevelt more favorably.

The distinctive teddy bears make a visit to Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, who is dressed up in Christmas pajamas. There is a picture on the wall that says, “Yours Truly Dick” along with a toy soldier with the numbers “23 + 2” on it.

comments and context

Comments and Context

When cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman of the Washington Post drew an innocent observational cartoon about President Roosevelt refusing to shoot a captured bear on a Mississippi hunt, the subsequent fame of the drawing resulted in Berryman (and other cartoonists) adopting a little bear as a “mascot” in their drawings, and the creation of the plush-toy Teddy Bear still beloved by thousands of children.

President Roosevelt shows Uncle Sam a “quilting bee in aid of the suffering public.” Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Wisconsin Senator John C. Spooner, Iowa Senator William B. Allison, and Texas Senator Joseph W. Bailey sit at a table stitching amendments on a “rate bill” quilt. Spanish Treaty Claims Commissioner William E. Chandler looks through a window and holds a paper that reads, “I’m no liar.” There is a portrait of George Washington on the wall.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-05-15

This newspaper article includes a number of cartoons and photographs about “railroad rate legislation.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-07

A number of men are in a “railroad rate bill” train car, including President Roosevelt, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, South Carolina Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, West Virginia Senator Stephen B. Elkins, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Iowa Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Texas Senator Joseph W. Bailey, Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, and Wisconsin Senator John C. Spooner. Some of them hold “amendment” cards. Caption: Engineer Roosevelt—”Who’s running this train, anyhow?”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-03-24

President Roosevelt, West Virginia Senator Stephen B. Elkins, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Iowa Representative William Peters Hepburn, and Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich all stir a “R.R. rates bill” soup in a pot shaped like the United States Capitol building.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-02-19

President Roosevelt holds his “big stick” as he is trapped below the “feathered bed of private life.” Meanwhile, Uncle Sam sits on him and holds up a “candidacy lightning rod” with multiple prongs on it: “peace of Portsmouth,” “rate legislation,” “Panama Canal,” “beef trust,” “post office cleansing,” “coal strike,” “railroad merger,” “New Orleans,” and “departmental investigations.” Lightning from the “Republican nomination 1908” storm cloud hits this rod. Three other men—Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, and Leslie M. Shaw—hold up much smaller lightning rods with no success.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905

Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, Secretary of War William H. Taft, Elihu Root, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, and Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw also listen to a sound recording from a machine that has a sign that reads, “Drop a penny in the slot and hear the president decline the nomination for 1908.” Caption: President Roosevelt, during his visit in Chicago, on two occasions reaffirmed his declaration that he would not again be a candidate for the Presidency.—News Item.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-05-12

New York Senators Thomas Collier Platt and Chauncey M. Depew led a durbar procession, which includes President Roosevelt, who holds a paper that reads, “the presidency compliments of the people,” sitting on a Republican elephant. Democratic party leaders, including Arthur P. Gorman, David B. Hill, Alton B. Parker, August Belmont, and Henry Gassaway Davis, watch from the side. Uncle Sam bows toward the procession.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-29

Archbishop Ireland suggests that John Watson Foster lead the mission to the Vatican to discuss Filipino matters. At the end of January, Ireland plans to take up the “Storer matter” with Senator Foraker. The Archbishop is pleased that the citizens of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota approve of President Roosevelt’s leadership.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-01-02

The “G.O.P.” elephant holds a tambourine labeled “Stand Patism” and hands out free baskets labeled “Tariff Graft” containing a turkey, duck, or chicken to ragged figures labeled “Coal Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Wool Trust.” A long line of trust figures await their turn. Joseph Gurney Cannon, Nelson W. Aldrich, Joseph Benson Foraker, and Leslie M. Shaw appear in women’s clothing as the “Republican Salvation Army” singers, singing “There are no flies on Dingley.” A man labeled “Protected Monopoly” stands in the foreground, at the edge of the platform. Caption: Distribution of Christmas goodies by the Republican Salvation Army.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Politics occasionally did intrude in holiday issues of Puck as this centerspread cartoon by J. S. Pughe attests. The Salvation Army was a relatively new force in 1906, but there had been urban missions and soup kitchens in lower Manhattan for generations. Pughe’s venue is a larger auditorium than might have been typical of a Salvationist Christmas food charity, but other stereotypes are there: music with a tambourine, female singers with bonnets sharing their sermons in song.

Joseph Gurney Cannon leads a procession including Nelson W. Aldrich, Joseph Benson Foraker, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Leslie M. Shaw who are carrying the golden ark of the Dingley Tariff, with figures labeled “Trust, Infant Industries, [and] Protected Monopoly” bowing as it passes.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Approximately a decade had passed since the last major revision of tariffs in the United States, when Puck Magazine published this scathing cartoon by Udo J. Keppler. It depicted the sacrosanct regard for high tariffs among Republicans and industrialists (trusts), and specifically the inviolability of the Dingley rates. Those schedules took effect in 1897 after a major Depression during the second Cleveland administration, and prosperity returned, punctuated by good weather, record crop yields, the war with Spain, and a presidential assassination. The five years of President Roosevelt saw unprecedented prosperity.

President Roosevelt writes his son Kermit regarding arrangements for their hunting trip to Africa. He talked with Carl Ethan Akeley and Colonel J. H. Patterson on the matter. He also mentions the Harvard-Yale football game, Kaiser Wilhelm II angering the German people, and finishing two speeches.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1908-11-22

President Roosevelt informs Joseph Bucklin Bishop that he enjoyed his editorials. He also discusses “big moneyed men” acting for Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna in Ohio, but says he does not expect any trouble. Roosevelt says he is finding it hard not to take sides when Hanna’s people oppose him and Joseph Benson Foraker’s people support him.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1904-01-19

President Roosevelt thanks Joseph Bucklin Bishop for his letter and comments on Senator Joseph Benson Foraker’s amendment, saying it has good elements and bad. Roosevelt says he asked Attorney General Philander C. Knox to release a statement saying the amendment was not presented at the right time. He also mentions the dishonest reporting of the Evening Post.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1904-02-02

Newspaper clipping announcing a dinner given by President Roosevelt in honor of William H. Taft.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1902-02-06

President Roosevelt writes his son Kermit about a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson and encloses pictures of Roosevelt and Ted jumping their horses. Roosevelt mentions that the excitement over the conspiracy, revealed by Senator Boies Penrose while drunk, has died out. He adds that big business in New York is against him and Republican Senator Joseph Benson Foraker is leading the fight. Roosevelt closes by mentioning speeches he has to finish and Archie.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1907-04-11

President Roosevelt writes to his son Kermit to tell him that after reading his letter, Edith is okay with inviting Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ferguson to travel abroad with the family. Nick and Alice returned from their honeymoon trip and Ethel is now moved into Alice’s room. Cousin Sheffield Cowles has the measles and Roosevelt is going to visit although his eye is bothering him. Roosevelt says that he has been working very hard and has a hard time with passing the rate bill, the Philippine tariff bill, and some of his nominations in the Senate. Archie and Quentin went to a dog show.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1906-03-04