Hobbyhorses

President Roosevelt rides a hobby horse labeled “declination” on a treadmill saying, “If this nag holds out I’m safe!” as he is chased by a giant trying to kick him with “third term league boots.” Three men sit in the distance: Joseph Gurney Cannon, Secretary of War William H. Taft, and Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon might have been drawn by Wexford Jones, who later in 1907 became Comics Editor of William Randolph Hearst’s American and Journal newspapers in New York City — and if so, was a better editor than a cartoonist — and is a rather uninspired variation on a theme popular with political cartoonists in the latter half of President Roosevelt’s second term: whether he would seek a third term.

Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, riding on a hobby horse labeled “Shaw’s Orations,” calls out to fleeing citizens in a valley to stand their ground in the face of a weakening “Stand-Pat Dam” in the background. Caption: Secretary Shaw — Courage, stand-patriots! You can save the dam yet!

comments and context

Comments and Context

The context of Joseph Keppler, Junior’s, cover cartoon in Puck is recent remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw. As a politician (former governor of Iowa) but with banking experience, he cast an eye on the 1908 presidential nomination.

Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks as Don Quixote stands with shield and lance next to a well on which stands a suit of armor labeled “Indiana Organization.” To the right of Fairbanks, in the background, is a hobby horse. The full moon above shows the face of President Theodore Roosevelt. Caption: The flower of Indiana knighthood keeping watch over his boiler-plate.

comments and context

Comments and Context

To history, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks is a largely forgotten figure, both as senator from Indiana and as Theodore Roosevelt’s vice president, 1905-1909.

William Jennings Bryan, as a horse racing jockey, sits on a rocking horse trying to catch Grover Cleveland, who is walking away from him on the right. Caption: “I’ll run that man down, if I have to kill the horse.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Former President Grover Cleveland never admired and scarcely supported William Jennings Bryan. While still president and after Bryan was nominated for the presidency by the Democrat and Populist parties, Cleveland supported the “Gold Democrat” candidate Palmer in 1896. As Bryan never surrendered his radical principles, Cleveland never wavered from his essential conservative beliefs. Who was titular head of the party?

President Roosevelt rides a hobbyhorse as he has his sword through the “Constitution” and uses “the big stick” to hit “South American republics.” A “conquest and expansion” bird says, “I’m the bird of freedom now.” Several countries, including “England,” “Spain,” “Italy,” “Russia,” and “Germany” watch behind a park bench in “International Park—Keep off the grass.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-08

President Roosevelt holds a sword while he rides a hobbyhorse. Caption: By permission, From the catalog of the National Portrait Gallery, for the year 2000 A.D. The portrait is described, tongue-in-cheek, as depicting “the young Prince of Oyster Bay,” who “was born to the purple, but renounced it in order to purify his country. having finished that, his great hobby was to be photographed on horseback–thousands of such records being in existence.” The gallery description continues, saying “there is some question as to whether he did not paint this masterpiece himself–on the theory that there was nothing, in his own opinion, that he could not do.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-11-05

“Wild Ted” jumps up in the air as he rides on a Republican elephant hobbyhorse, which says, “O gee, but I feel proud!” President Roosevelt says, “Your canal or your life,” as he holds a revolver and a lasso labeled “party clothes line.” He has a “Dawes” feather in his hair, and his gloves are “compliments of your bosom friend Littauer.” A tag is attached to his pants: “Panama—right or wrong any old way—hands up!” Meanwhile, a frightened “Colombia” holds a “Panama Canal” scroll and says, “I think I prefer Morgan.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-09

Uncle Sam sits in a rocking chair and laughs as he watches President Roosevelt, who wears a “constitution” hat with an “I also killed a Spaniard” feather, ride a hobbyhorse. On the wall is a sign that reads, “Theodore Roosevelt, 46 to-day.” Caption: Uncle Sam—Well, if that boy don’t want ME for a birthday present!

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-27

Uncle Sam waves an American flag as President Roosevelt on a Republican elephant, Alton B. Parker on a Democratic donkey, and Thomas E. Watson on a goat hobbyhorse line up.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-06

Puck’s stereotyped Irish man labeled “Ireland” is pictured as a military general, sitting on a rocking horse labeled “Home Rule,” holding papers that state “Muster-Roll of the Anti-English Army,” and addressing a ragged group of soldiers labeled “Germany, Russia, Venezuela, Japan, Transvaal, [and] Ashantee.” Uncle Sam is standing among the soldiers. John Bull, in a state of shock, is standing on a small island just offshore. On the ground next to the rocking horse is a box labeled “Servant Girls Home Rule Contributions.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-02-12

Diana, goddess of the hunt, trains a youthful and virile Theodore Roosevelt. They ride horses on rollers, Roosevelt’s breaking free, while roping cattle, also on rollers.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Another cartoon in Cushing’s series for Life magazine, depicting the life and career of Theodore Roosevelt by allusions to mythology.

At center, Uncle Sam and President Cleveland shake hands, with a portrait of Liliuokalani, Queen of Hawaii, in the background. The surrounding vignettes feature a cast of characters, identified or referred to in the text as “Croker,” “Parkhurst,” and “Tammany” reform, “Iago Manley” and “Othello Reed,” “Peffer, Lease, Dana, Pulitzer, [and] Depew,” Harrison sitting in his over-sized top hat, and Thomas Collier Platt turning a crank that manipulates George R. “Malby” as “Speaker” of the New York State Assembly, David B. Hill sitting in an over-sized “Senatorial Chair N.Y. State,” and “McKinley” dressed as Napoleon I, riding a “War Tariff” rocking horse. Each scene includes “Valentine” text, such as this for “Peffer” and “Lease,” each holding papers labeled “Speech”: “From bleeding Kansas’s wind-swept plains, / Where whiskers take the place of brains, / You come with all your verbose strength / Of speeches of unending length. / Here, take the hint Puck gives – resign! / Let Mary be your Valentine”; and this for McKinley: “McKinley Bill! McKinley Bill! / Why do you ride that hobby still? / The cause of pool, combine and trust, / And idle mill-wheels red with rust. / Mistaken Man! We’ll never pine / For you to be our Valentine.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-02-14

This vignette cartoon depicts, at center, the current “craze” for “Free Silver,” showing Uncle Sam riding a silver rocking horse. Surrounding vignettes show him participating in several fads “Past and Present,” such as the “Blue Glass Craze” after A. J. Pleasonton’s discovery of the properties of blue light; the “Prohibition Crusade”; the “Roller-Skating Craze”; a puzzle craze in the 1880s including the “Fifteen Puzzle,” with 15 sliding blocks in a square box, and “Pigs in Clover,” a “rolling-ball dexterity puzzle”; the “Paderewski Craze” around 1891 for piano music by Ignace J. Paderewski; the cycling craze, which has not yet ended; and the “Schlatter Craze,” which did come to an end with the disappearance and death of faith healer Francis Schlatter.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-07-29

Print shows a large gloved fist with an American flag on it crashing down on Emilio Aguinaldo riding on a rocking horse labeled “Dictatorship” next to a large sword labeled “Aguinaldo” on the “Philippines.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-03-08