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Patrick F. MacAran, pastor of the Church of St. Anastasia, asks the recipient of this letter to vote for Frank Wayland Higgins as governor of New York. Edward Henry Harriman, who several years back helped repair the Church of St. Anastasia, also vouches for the candidacy of Higgins, who MacAran characterizes as a “distinguished and upright candidate.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-11-07
A tall President Roosevelt holds a big stick as a variety of groups hurl objects at him, including “so-called innocent stockholders,” “wrongdoing lawyers,” “railroad debaters,” “nature fakirs,” “undesirable citizens,” “purchased politicians,” and the “liars brigade.” John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Edward Henry Harriman are prominent figures in the center.
Theodore Roosevelt, as president or at any time in his career, famously was a master of what a historian has called “The Art of Controversy.” At the least he did not shy from debates and even vivid disagreements. When he thought newspapers engaged in fake news, he threatened to sue (The New York World and its publisher Joseph Pulitzer in one example). He was not chary of calling opponents liars, and he rhetorically consigned political enemies to what he called the “Ananias Club,” after the New Testament figure who was struck dead by the Holy Spirit for lying about his offerings.
In the first vignette, an African American man is labeled as the “proposed usher of the black rod.” In the second vignette, Secretary of War William H. Taft is labeled, “a nifty lord-in-waiting–waiting still for the nomination.” In the third vignette, Gifford Pinchot holds a tennis racket and is labeled, “first lord of the inner closet, with insignia of office.” In the fourth vignette, Henry Huttleston Rogers, Edward Henry Harriman, and John D. Rockefeller are labeled, “a group of bad barons in attitutes expressive of deep dissatisfaction and possible rebellion. In the fifth vignette is a “suggestion for royal coat of arms.” There is the big stick–;”Of course there can be but one sceptre.” The coat of arms includes the motto, “In votes we trust to bust the trusts.”
Many political and editorial cartoonists drew variations on the themes of the interests and activities of Theodore Roosevelt. As a cognoscente and polymath, the president offered inspiration enough, but his famous strenuosity added to the visual possibilities. Few cartoonists captured so many of the possibilities offered by the many-sided Roosevelt, and Garnet Warren found his “hook” when a professor from Michigan — presumably a hagiographic assessment, as Michigan was one of the nation’s most progressive states at the time — observed that the president was a virtual monarch in the glory of his presidency of the republic.
President Roosevelt celebrates his forty-ninth birthday with a variety of friends. In the upper left hand corner at the piano are New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes and Thomas Fortune Ryan singing, “Oh let us be joyful.” Booker T. Washington tells Henry Watterson, “Henry, I hope you’ll come down and visit me at Tuskegee.” Senator Joseph Benson Foraker says to Secretary of War William H. Taft, “I heard a good story today, Will.” Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon and Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks look at a picture of George Washington, and Fairbanks says, “That picture makes me sad. It reminds me of cherries.” William Randolph Hearst, James Roscoe Day, and Secretary of State Elihu Root look at a book of “Snapshots in New York.” William Jennings Bryan and Grover Cleveland play a game of checkers, and Bryan says, “After you, Grover.” J. Pierpont Morgan watches over the game with his hand on Bryan’s back. Henry Huttleston Rogers, F. Augustus Heinze, and Thomas William Lawson sit together. Lawson says, “Rogers, my boy, you must come over to Boston and visit me.” John D. Rockefeller points at Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s chest while President Roosevelt presents a bouquet to James J. Hill as William J. Long looks on. Finally, James T. Harahan, Edward Henry Harriman, and Stuyvesant Fish read “Snap Shots Along the Illinois Central.” Harriman remarks, “Very nice album, Stuyvesant, is it not?”
There are contexts behind this cartoon by John T. McCutcheon of The Chicago Tribune that might not be apparent to modern researchers. The first is somewhat evident by reading the dialog balloons between figures in the pairings or clusters. Almost appropriate for an April Fool’s cartoon instead of something closer to Halloween is the ironic juxtaposition in every case — political opponents or business rivals exchanging niceties. In fact, insights might be gained by reading the nature of their “about-face” encounters.
William Loeb holds “Speech No. 1 Canton” in his left hand and a barrel in his right hand labeled “six speeches for western delivery.” Several men look on, including “Wall Street,” J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Edward Henry Harriman. Morgan says, “Oh, for a look in.”
President Roosevelt’s private secretary William Loeb advanced from taking dictation and handling White House correspondence to managing logistics and sometimes, at the end of Roosevelt’s term, interacting with officials and politicians
President Roosevelt travels in a riverboat that is headed toward tree branches in the river: “beef trust,” “tobacco trust,” “railroad trust,” “Harriman interests,” and “Standard Oil.” A teddy bear keeps him company in the barge.
Cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman used the title of Mark Twain’s famous book of recollections, Life On the Mississippi, for his depiction of President Roosevelt’s progress toward Louisiana, mid-way through an extended speaking tour in the Autumn of 1907.
President Roosevelt meets with his cabinet in a room filled with snakes: “Harriman interests,” “panic,” “tobacco trust,” “powder trust,” “beef trust,” “railroad trust,” “Standard Oil,” “immunity,” “Japanese war scare,” and “telegrapher’s strike.” The chairs for Secretary of State and Secretary of War are empty.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-27
While hidden, President Roosevelt watches two men who look like hobos, Edward Henry Harriman and John D. Rockefeller, march toward “Sagamore Hill.” There are two signs on the mountain, “Beware of Pete” (President Roosevelt’s bulldog) and “Keep off the grass.”
This cartoon by Kirk L. Russell in The Washington Post was published two months to the day before the Wall Street Panic, a “banker’s crisis” that financier J. P. Morgan helped to keep from becoming a Depression.
President Roosevelt holds a net and chases the “Harriman bug” that looks like a locomotive. On Roosevelt’s shoulder is the “presidential bug” and in the “specimen case” across his shoulder is the “oil bug,” “powder bug,” “tobacco bug,” “securities bug,” and “marine bug.” In the background is a building with the label, “hay all stored,” and a group of people cheering him on — “other varieties of bugs.”
Sometimes cartoonists employ icons for clarity’s sake, or to be a “crutch” to convey a point; and sometimes a cartoonist will load a drawing with numerous signs, symbols, and icons out of desperation. Such, it appears, was the motivation of Joseph Harry Cunningham.
President Roosevelt with his big stick and Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte with a “law” bucket sit on a log at “Harriman Pool.” The water is labeled, “watered stocks,” and a speech balloon rises from the water, “Not yet but.”
Of the many robber barons and “malefactors of great wealth” with whom Theodore Roosevelt contended in and out of the White House, no relationship was bitterer than that with the railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman. John D. Rockefeller himself sat through a criminal trial in 1906, indicted on many charges of corruption, and during a break in proceedings (Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, presiding) he considered going into hiding, yet Harriman was considered the worse malefactor, at least in the President’s view.
At the time of this cartoon, Roosevelt and Harriman were locked in myriad controversies and recriminations — accusations, insults, leaked correspondence, etc. The President had elevated Charles J. Bonaparte from Secretary of the Navy to Attorney General, and two saw eye to eye about corruption in American business and the need for reform.
President Roosevelt is on the hunt as a bear, a sheep labeled “the weakling,” and a rhinoceros labeled “new finance” run away while an octopus wrapped in a tree and a bull stay out of the way. In the background is a “muck rake” and a goat labeled “E.H.H.” on a mountain, “reserved for scape-goats.”
W. A. Rogers is a singular figure in American political cartooning. He never was a facile cartoonist or caricaturist, and his concepts seldom were persuasive; that is, the cartoons only mildly attacked or supported men and movements. For the most part he was more an editorial cartoonist, illustrating events and situations rather than attempting persuasion. This is one reason his cartoons illustrate more reference works today than many of his fellows. Yet he was highly regarded in his day, and worked for years at Harper’s Weekly and the New York Herald, substantial publications.
President Roosevelt leans against a tree with a rifle smoking in his hands looking dejected as a goat labeled “Harriman” bounds away. Caption: “Whereat I was much cast down.” — T. R., “Hunting Big Game.”
Occasionally Theodore Roosevelt’s breeding and education opened him up to public jesting, not quite ridicule. When he dressed as a fancy “dude” and spoke with an affected accent in the New York Assembly, it was a subject of jest on the floor and in cartoons. As a rancher joining his cowboys during a cattle stampede, he urged others to “hasten forward quickly there,” and so forth.
A variety of fingers point at Edward Henry Harriman with signs that read “improper multiplication of securities,” “stop crimes of cunning,” “evils in railroad management,” “punish every dishonest man,” “punish any criminal,” “predatory man of wealth,” “wherever evildoers can be, they shall be brought to justice,” “clever gamblers,” “any man who by clever swindling devices robs investors,” and “great railroad wrecker.”
The background of this cartoon by C. R. Macauley is not what it might first seem to be — quotations of President Roosevelt’s long-running animosity and feuds with railroad titan Edward Henry Harriman. The vivid disagreements — a two-way street, to be sure — were familiar to the public, and came to a head in 1907 when Harriman leaked private letters from 1904 (letters, supplemented by others from Roosevelt’s files, that failed to attract support for his side of disputes).
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.
Uncle Sam holds a paper that reads, “Harriman raised $200,000 campaign fund for Roosevelt in 1904” and asks President Roosevelt, “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” Roosevelt, clutching a bag of money and holding a G.O.P. elephant on a string, says, “It’s a ‘deliberate’ and ‘willful’ untruth!”
Among the bitterest anti-Roosevelt agitators of the day were The Woman’s National Daily and its cartoonist known to history only as N. Eingen. The large-circulation paper was the brainchild of the St. Louis-area entrepreneur Edward Gardner Lewis, one of several enterprises spun off the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Lewis might indeed have had political differences with the president, but friction arose when the Administration pursued Lewis for infractions of postal and banking regulations.
At “Ananias Botanical Garden,” there are a number of potted plants with men’s heads in them: “Tillmanus,” “Forakeria,” and “Harrimanium Americanus.” For the last one, the tag lists “Nativity. . . . Wall Street,” “Stock,” “Veracity,” “Acquisition,” “Aspiration. . . . Senate,” and “Analyzed by Prof. T. Roosevelt, B.S., P. Du, P.D.Q.”
The visual cliche, or device, of political figures as plants in a flower show or botanical garden was frequently employed for decades. In this version (by an anonymous artist in an unidentified publication — at least insofar as the White House scrapbook’s annotation) — the hothouse is named for the Ananias Club. This was President Roosevelt’s partly jocular designation of a fraternity for those whom he considered liars in politics and purveyors of fake news in journalism.
President Roosevelt holds a fishing line saying, “I catch this kind right along.” There are two fish to the left: a large fish and a smaller fish that says, “In the words of our good president, you’re another I’m your size.”
This cartoon, from a newspaper that White House scrapbook managers did not record (or excised the paper’s dateline) and by an artist known to us only as “Curry,” clearly takes the side of President Theodore Roosevelt in the several cases of disputes in early 1907. Vituperative exchanges between Roosevelt and trust magnate Edward Henry Harriman (the reference in this cartoon); former ambassador Bellamy Storer and his wife Maria; Senator Joseph Benson Foraker; and former senator James Ralph Burton were among the kerfuffles in the news.
President Roosevelt cuts another notch—”federal control of railroads”—in his big stick that already has several notches: “meat inspection,” “canal,” “R.R. rate regulation,” and “pure food.” In the background are James J. Hill, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Edward Henry Harriman holding knives with a banner behind them, “Angry R.R. magnates in their one act come by, entitled. We’re always agin the president.”
Seldom does a political cartoon simultaneously hit the mark in the presentation of an idea, or explanation of a situation in the news, and convey real humor (if such was intended). The otherwise little-known St. Louis cartoonist Elmer C. Donnell achieved both in this textbook-explication of President Roosevelt, his reform agenda — “his policies” — and relationship and reactions of America’s most prominent trust magnates of the day.
Eight men sleep in a bed with sweat on their forehead as they all dream about “third term sentiment.” The men include Ohio Senator Theodore E. Burton, Benjamin B. Odell, South Carolina Benjamin R. Tillman with a pitchfork, William Randolph Hearst, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, Edward Henry Harriman, and John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil.
The “Third Term” question was for President Roosevelt like a bad penny or a stray dog that he could not shake. He declared on election night, 1904, that he would not stand for re-election in 1908. He made this clear to politicians and friends and, by implication — for instance, by promoting William H. Taft as a favored successor — but seldom reasserted his intentions to the public. He felt that to say it too often — and the demands to do so were incessant — would have weakened the force of the declination or seemed like “protesting too much.” He said it, and that should have been enough.
Edward Henry Harriman and Henry Hustleton Rogers fire Senator Boies Penrose from a cannon labeled “extra dry” at the White House.
In the lead-up to the Republican presidential nomination in 1908 there were machinations aplenty in the Republican Party, both in spite of President Roosevelt’s stated preference for William H. Taft and because of it. In Ohio, for instance, Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, a bitter critic of the President, harbored presidential ambitions, and had therefore to undermine fellow Ohioan Taft, while attacking Roosevelt.