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Fortune-telling

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Reading his future

Reading his future

An old woman, known as “Madame Democracy Palmist,” reads William Randolph Hearst’s palm and speaks of the future. Caption: “You have reason to fear a large, dark man, who will shortly return from abroad!”

comments and context

Comments and Context

William Jennings Bryan had been on an extensive world tour through 1905-1906. The tour was largely forgotten by history, but Bryan met with many world and cultural leaders on these journeys. Since he was a party leader in the United States and always a potential president, leaders and monarchs generally were happy to meet the famous Bryan. He met with fewer heads of state than, perhaps, Ulysses S. Grant on his famous and extensive post-president tour, or than Theodore Roosevelt would meet in a few years after he left the White House, yet Bryan had significant discussions about international affairs, and cultural exchanges with such as Count Leo Tolstoy.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time”

“You can fool some of the people all of the time”

John A. Dowie appears as a wizard at center, offering salvation and other products to gullible customers. The surrounding vignettes show various types of “people,” such as “The working people”, downtrodden and depressed, who are tricked into following the “Walking Delegate,” his pockets overflowing with money, and “The get-rich-quick people” who anxiously purchase bogus stocks and securities. There are those who have their palms read and those who believe they can build their own homes, as well as those who show off their castles with a huge “Mortgage.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This Ehrhart montage of thematic cartoons (that was becoming a popular, or at least common, feature in the magazine) is a caustic commentary of human nature: serving “people” as the putative motive of scammers and swindlers; and the inevitable gullibility of people in general.

Political fortune teller

Political fortune teller

Full color political cartoon depicting Theodore Roosevelt as a fortune teller. He sits inside a circus tent, reading the palm of a female figure labeled “New York State.” Leaving from the right side of the tent are Pennsylvania and Ohio. Waiting in line at the left are Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

Creation Date

1910