Millionaires

Octogenarian Henry Gassaway Davis, as a runner, is attended by Arthur P. Gorman who is putting a bandage on Davis’s right knee.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Henry Gassaway Davis, an industrialist and former senator from West Virginia, is caricatured here being conditioned by Senator Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland. Davis, at 80, was and is the oldest candidate for president or vice president in United States history. The Democrats in 1904 nominated him for his “barrel,” an immense fortune they expected he would tap to finance the national campaign. He did underwrite about a third of the national party’s expenses, which was disappointingly less than hoped.

The vacant home of a millionaire appears at center, surrounded by vignettes showing the whereabouts and activities of the millionaire’s family members. His wife and a daughter are on the golf course, a son is cruising on a yacht, another daughter is at the seminary, and another son is marking time on a ranch, while “Papa [gambles] at Monte Carlo” and the pets spend their days in the kennel.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Besides showing off Ehrhart’s considerable talents as an illustrator-cartoonist, this cartoon is benign group of drawings whose points illustrate the sharp observations of critics like the economist Thorstein Veblen. The critique of Veblen’s controversial but influential book The Theory of the Leisure Class (Macmillan, 1899) focused on the excesses of the wealthy. It described an unflattering pattern of the accumulation of personal wealth and its inevitable corrupting effect on societies. Veblen introduced the phrase “conspicuous consumption” to the language, and Ehrhart’s cartoon of a mansion made redundant by its family’s outside activities, could serve as an illustration of Veblen’s critique.

An old man labeled “Millionaire” sits in a chair atop a pile of moneybags, bemoaning the fact that he now has little time to give away his money in a satisfactory manner. On the left are the church and the university looking for contributions and on the right are the hated “Relatives” looking to inherit new found wealth. Caption: “If I had begun earlier I might have had some fun in giving it away. Now I must leave it either to relatives whom I hate or to churches and colleges in which I have no interest.[“]

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1901-08-07

An “Absentee Millionaire” stands on land labeled “Europe” spraying money from a hose connected to an “American Hydrant source of income,” suggesting that wealthy Americans spend more money in Europe than in their own country.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1901-08-28

Illustration showing a rich, frail old man sitting in a chair attending to his numerous social invitations while servants bring him medications for his health.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-03-28

Due to a severe drought in Austin, Texas, James B. Milam has suffered a pay cut as a Baptist missionary and is struggling to provide for his family. Milam has written to the “rich men” in New York asking for money, but has either been rejected or ignored. He wonders if Theodore Roosevelt will send $500 to help the Milam family. 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-05-18

Florence Bayard Lockwood La Farge lets President Roosevelt know that she is pleased that he had a luncheon with Franklin MacVeagh.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-05

Richard Watson Gilder thanks President Roosevelt for his kind words about Gilder’s anti-Hearst letter. Gilder notes that Jacob Riis has procured the printing of his own fierce letter in the New York East Side Jewish papers on a daily basis until the election. Gilders says the Republicans have the millionaire back roads well-beaten.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-10-27

Uncle Sam stands in a cashier’s window labeled “U.S. Treasury” next to a notice that states, “Pay Your Income Tax Here – No Escape for Millionaire Tax-Dodgers.” Russell Sage, Hetty Green, and George J. Gould stand in line, looking forlorn and crying as they pass their “Check for Income Tax – Russell Sage, Check for Income Tax – Hetty Green, [and] Check for Income Tax – George Gould” to Uncle Sam. In their pockets are papers labeled “Taxes Evaded.” Caption: Uncle Sam–I’m sorry for you, my unfortunate friends; – I know the Income Tax is “inquisitorial and oppressive;” but I’ve got to meet the one hundred and sixty million dollars of pension appropriation, somehow!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-02-06

John Jacob Astor, wearing a military uniform and carrying a flag that states “On to Manila. Astor’s Mountain Battery” and a sword, holds the reins to many mules carrying cannon barrels, as he leads the way to Manila in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. Caption: The war is proving that even millionaires can be patriots.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1898-06-22

A trial is taking place at the U.S. Supreme Court where the regular justices have been replaced by hayseed justices. In the foreground is a “Waiting Pen for Gold Bugs and Millionaires” where “W. Rockefeller, J. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Astor, Sage, Vanderbilt, [and] Gould” are waiting. Caption: If the silverites ever get a chance to put their populistic and revolutionary platform into force.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-09-09

A millionaire is shown, at center, in familiar surroundings at home, “Dignified, important and respected.” Surrounding vignettes show him while traveling through major European cities, where he is ignored, ridiculed, laughed at as the butt of practical jokes, and sometimes prone to boorish behavior at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-05-12

Several wealthy men, “Gould, W. K. Vanderbilt, W. H. Vanderbilt, Sage, Cornell, [and] Cornelius Vanderbilt,” some dressed as women, hold ticker tape and dance around a may pole. Cyrus W. Field, dressed as a woman, sits on a safe next to the pole. Sitting on a bench to the left are Chauncey M. Depew playing cymbals labeled “Monopolist Music” and Whitelaw Reid playing a horn labeled “Tribune.” Behind them is William M. Evarts looking out a window in a building labeled “Millionaires Snug Harbor,” and in the background is a “Monopoly Mill” labeled “Stocks” and “U. S. Bonds.” Lambs gambol nearby. Includes verse.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1885-04-29

Puck hangs onto the coat-tails of William H. Vanderbilt, who is holding a money bag labeled “Donation of $500,000 to Build a New Medical College,” as he climbs the steps to a building labeled “N. Y. College of Physicians & Surgeons.” At the top of the steps are trustees and men with surgical instruments eagerly awaiting the donation. On the right, in the background, is a man standing in the doorway of a building beneath a sign that states “Crape & Plantem. Undertakers.” He is waving a white cloth. Caption: Vanderbilt – “The public be – doctored!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1884-10-29