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The ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley put their hands on President Roosevelt’s shoulders as he uses the “Republican record” and “prosperity” reins. Caption: “The shades of Lincoln and M’Kinley are guiding the nation in the way it should go!” Tenor of President Roosevelt’s Speech of Acceptance.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-07-27
President Roosevelt holds his “presidential letter” big stick over an open box labeled “woman suffrage” that has female ghosts coming out of it. A teddy bear cowers behind him.
Theodore Roosevelt was one of the earliest American political leaders to forcefully advocate for women’s suffrage, in 1912, and at that time his wife Edith was relatively lukewarm on the issue. In a long letter to his son Ted shortly before this cartoon appeared (and in which he released a letter, to Ted and to the public, about women’s voting rights sent to a suffrage leader), the president confided that his sisters Bamie and Corinne were opposed to women having the franchise. “I do not myself think it makes much difference one way or the other,” he wrote. “I do not think that either enough good or enough harm has been done [where women had the vote] to warrant much interest in the movement.”
William H. Taft sees what appears to be a ghost in front of him although it is actually William Jennings Bryan and a donkey hidden in a sheet. Taft says, “That’s the same one that tried to scare Teddy.”
An elaborate Hallowe’en theme conveys the idea, which was close to the truth of the political situation, that with less than a week until election day, neither the Democratic donkey (the party) nor a jack-o’-lantern (its presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) presented no reason to be scared.
President Roosevelt with a teddy bear nearby awakes from slumber and sees the ghosts of Edward Henry Harriman, J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Huttleston Rogers, and John D. Rockefeller.
The young Clifford Kennedy Berryman employed lines from the Eugene Field poem “Seein’ Things,” in this cartoon. His references for the boogymen scaring President Roosevelt in bed were unfortunately photos of the smiling robber barons John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Edward Henry Harriman, and Henry Huttleston Rogers. They are out of perspective, and too genial, to be appropriate in the drawing.
A standpatter wakes up sweating and sees a “free trade” ghost shaking Uncle Sam.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-05-20
The Spirit of the Forest talks to Uncle Sam, pointing to denuded hillsides as a result of the tariffs on the import of lumber and wood pulp. Caption: The Spirit of the Forest.–Will you wait until then to admit lumber free?
To twenty-first century eyes, this drawing by Udo J. Keppler presents a magnificent vista; Keppler, an outdoorsman and eventually man of the West and honorary member of Indian tribes, likely regretted a landscape bereft of trees and vegetation. Under the misty foreground cloud he pictured lumber trucks with logs.
His father, Joseph Keppler, had drawn a similar double-page cartoon in Puck in 1881 — the Spirit of the Forest beseeching loggers to stop their lumber harvesting, predicting runoffs and floods. Almost three decades later, the same Spirit of the Forest made a similar plea.
President William H. Taft sits on a tree branch labeled “Cost of Living,” which bends lower under his weight, above a smiling man labeled “Consumer” lying on the ground dreaming of the commercial products that soon will be within his reach.
By 1909 the covers, and most of the color and black-and-white artwork, in Puck was of a higher level than in immediately preceding years. Udo J. Keppler, chief cartoonist and son of the magazine’s founder, improved in conception and execution. The emergence and stylistic maturity of L. M. Glackens contributed to the improvements; and the work of of new artists like Carl Hassmann (a brief stint), Will Crawford, Gordon Grant, Albert Levering, and Art Young made the period one of Puck‘s brightest.
Unfortunately and ironically, the fortunes of the magazine — circulation, advertising sales, influence — waned at this time. The reasons are not obvious and can only invite speculation. Many journals were turning toward radical political stances, as Puck did, so it was unlikely that readers, or new readers, were offended. Perhaps the day of political-humor magazines was over. Puck‘s rivals Judge and Life were thriving in great degrees, and they both virtually dropped politics, at least prominently, from their contents. After all, a magazine devoted to one side or other in partisan and political debates automatically risked offending roughly half of its potential audience.
A ghost depicting Theodore Roosevelt stands behind the figure of Hugh Johnson, who wears the emblem of the National Recovery Administration. Roosevelt holds a hat in one hand, and in the other grasps several figures with labels on them which say “Malefactor of Great Wealth,” “Liar,” “Nature Fakir,” and “Undesirable Citizen.” He speaks to Hugh Johnson, who has two similar figures with labels in his hand, as well as another seven on the table in front of him, and says, “Hugh, you’re just bully! I was only a common piker!” The cartoon seems to suggest that while Roosevelt has a few terms he likes to “pull out of his hat,” so to speak, Johnson has many more that he uses in his invective.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1933-11-29
The spirit of General Winfield S. Hancock holds a paper that states “Governors Island 1880. The Tariff is a Local Issue. Gen. W. S. Hancock.” He stands among congressmen in a congressional chamber where senators or representatives from “Maryland, New York, Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Kansas, [and] Pennsylvania” are tearing off sections of a large paper labeled “The Tariff?” that apply to their respective states. Caption: Shade of General Hancock–They laughed at me when I said the tariff is a local issue; but I was right, after all!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1894-05-02
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!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1894-04-11
A cherub labeled “1894” smashes a bottle of champagne as he launches a large, modern ship, the Ship of State, under the banner “Tariff Reform,” with Grover Cleveland and members of his cabinet standing on the bow waving their hats. In the background, the specter of “1893” hovers over a sailing ship labeled “McKinley Tariff.” Among those with Cleveland are Walter Q. Gresham, John G. Carlisle, Richard Olney, and either Daniel S. Lamont or Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1893-12-27
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.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1893-11-15
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.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1899-05-10
The “USS Merrimac,” a cargo ship, is under fire as it passes between the fortifications at the Socapa Battery and Morro Castle at the entrance to Santiago de Cuba Bay, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. Includes an American flag labeled with the names of the eight volunteer sailors, “Hobson, Charette, Murphy, Deignan, Phillips, Kelly, Clausen, [and] Montague,” intent on scuttling the ship to block the harbor and trap the Spanish fleet within. Caption: The Trojan Horse – Great Olympus! These Yankee exploits put me clear in the shade!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-06-29
The horrified ghost of “Charles V” observes Práxedes M. Sagasta filling an oil lamp labeled “Spanish Honor” from a container labeled “Bombast.” The lamp sits on the “Map of Spain” on top of a small table. Caption: Shade of Charles V – Is that all that is left of my sun that never set on Spanish soil?
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-06-15
A businessman sleeps in a bed with the spirit of a two-headed congressman labeled “House” and “Senate” howling at his bedside, trying to ruin his sleep with “War Talk!, Extravagant Talk!, Appropriations!, [and] Jingoism!” Papers on a nightstand state “Business Disturbance, Upsetting of Values, Etc.” and “Doings of Congress – Jingoism – Tariff Tinkering – Etc.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1897-01-20
A well-dressed couple sit on a sofa before a fire in the fireplace, with the spirits of three young children dancing around a Christmas tree. There are art-nouveau style furnishings (lamp and flower vase) on the table in the background.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1896-12-09
Theodore Roosevelt furiously writes at a desk covered with papers, which have also spilled to the floor. Outside the window are standing the spirits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. Caption: George, Thomas, Andrew, and Abe — How did we ever run the country without him?
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-07-20
An automobile driver is pursued by the ghosts of many animals that have probably been hit and killed by automobile drivers since the invention of the automobile.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-04-20
A ship labeled “Republican Machine,” with Nelson W. Aldrich at the helm and Henry C. Lodge, Joseph G. Cannon, Boies Penrose, James S. Sherman and Chauncey M. Depew hanging on, is starting to tip over in advance of a huge wave labeled “The Ultimate Consumer.” Riding the crest of the wave is a ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman, with Theodore Roosevelt standing at the bow or forecastle. Caption: At the height of the storm, an added terror.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-03-02