Your TR Source
Anthony Comstock, as a monk, thwarts shameless displays of excessive flesh, whether that of women, horses, or dogs, with a “Jane Doe Warrant.”
Anthony Comstock, father of “Comstockery” — the assertion of Victorian moral values on society — continued his crusades past the Victorian Era, to his death in 1915. The term has survived because some people maintain that his puritanical attitudes have survived to today.
A fashionably dressed young woman is being escorted by a rabbit and a young child dressed in a red suit. The woman looks back over her shoulder at three unhappy monks standing outside a stone church or monastery.
Puck scarcely took second place to any of its contemporary weekly or monthly rival magazines when holiday themes and seasonal issues took prominence. In Puck‘s early and purely political years, comments on Lent, Easter, and Christmas were highlighted less, frequently relegated to back pages. But during the Belle Epoque, and when Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Japonisme, and the “poster style” of advertisements and covers predominated, Puck was a player.
A young woman plays a lute as a group of rabbit cavaliers dance around her. In the background, two monks whisper to each other at the entrance to a monastery.
Louis M. Glackens continued his role as Puck‘s artist for holiday, seasonal, and specialty theme issues, with cartoons such as this. Decorative illustrations, social cartoons, and holiday artwork, more than occasionally gracing Puck covers as the century progressed, doubtlessly attracted additional readers; or, as the magazine’s business office might have noted, stopped the disinclination of partisan readers to buy a week’s issue, if they disagreed with the political message on most covers.
Outside a church, an old woman labeled “Democratic Party” stands between William Jennings Bryan as a friar labeled “16 to 1” and Arthur P. Gorman as the devil. She is smiling as she looks toward the devil. Caption: Mephisto Gorman — You’ve been fasting long enough with dull Friar William. Follow me. I’ll lead you to -.
One of the thematic preoccupations of cartoonists in these years was the end of Lent — signifying (in cartoons, if not in real life) shedding the bonds of holy circumspection. In the interior pages, black-and-white humorous cartoons dealt with society girls and eligible bachelors. Sometimes dealing with temptations. Cartoonist Pughe adds politics and current events to mix in this center-spread cartoon in Puck.
A young woman walks arm in arm with a rabbit carrying a basket of Easter eggs. A tonsured monk standing in the background is startled by what he sees.
Humor magazines of the day frequently published Easter issues or focused on seasonal themes which were seldom religious in nature. In this case, either a dreaded Lenten sacrifices, or the end of such strictures. Cartoonist L. M. Glackens was beginning his role as a major staff member on Puck at this time. After a decade drawing magazine cartoons, he entered the nascent animated-cartoon field. His brother William Glackens was a member of “The Eight,” or the “Ashcan School,” major Post-Impressionist and Naturalist schools of American art.
Puck, wearing the bright red outfit of a musketeer, walks between two rabbits who are each carrying an Easter egg. A tonsured monk in a cowl, reading a Bible or missal, occupies the foreground.
Throughout virtually all of its life, Puck magazine published special issues with non-political covers for Christmas, Easter, “Mid-Summer,” and occasionally Thanksgiving numbers.
President Roosevelt and a monk standing in a courtyard.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1903-07-18
Secretary of State Root encloses a postcard from Minnesota Representative James Thompson McCleary showing a monument in Budapest. Root compares President Roosevelt’s speaking style to that of the monk in the picture.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-09-28
Newspaper clipping of cartoon showing a man labeled “Railroad Magnate”, possibly J.P. Morgan, dressed as a monk, knocking on the door of “Doctor Roosevelt” at the White House. Cartoon refers to Roosevelt’s efforts to regulate railroads.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1903
Three smiling, bloated monks labeled “Food Monopoly, Clothing Monopoly, [and] Building Material Monopoly” walk over flames labeled “Tariff Revision” in a super-heated furnace. Caption: Will the history of the fiery furnace repeat itself?
The sixty-first Congress was scarcely seated, and William H. Taft’s presidency barely begun, when Old Guard Republicans in the Senate and House began agitating for a new tariff law. A had been promised in the Republican platform, advocated by Taft and many candidates, and anticipated by the public, but, almost universally, lower rate schedules on imported goods was assumed.
A St. Bernard rescue dog, with a blanket labeled “Tariff Reform” strapped to its back and a small barrel labeled “The Wilson Tariff Bill” under its chin, approaches a man labeled “Labor” caught in snow drifts labeled “McKinley Tariff.” Nearby, Grover Cleveland, as a monk with a hand to his ear, responds to the dog’s bark. At the top of a hill, in the background, is the U.S. Capitol.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1894-01-10
Two medieval monks labeled “McKinley” and “Reed” construct a wall using blocks labeled “War Tax on Dinner Pails, Heavy Duty on Laborers Tools, Prohibitory Duty on Necessaries, High Duty on Raw Materials, Unjust Tax on Farmers Implements, Burdensome Tariff on Clothing, Duty on Iron, Duty on Steel, [and] Class Legislation” and cement labeled “Monopoly Mortar” to bury alive a female figure labeled “American Industries.” Arriving “in the nick of time” is William L. Wilson with a sword labeled “Wilson Bill” to put a stop to the punishment and torture of “our industries.” Caption: Rescuer Wilson comes none too soon to prevent the Republican monks from walling up our industries alive, in the true old Mediæval style.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1894-02-28
Three monks, Whitelaw Reid, James G. Blaine, and John Logan, walk a few steps ahead of a band of merry revelers composed of Puck, Puck’s figure for the “Independent” party, President Cleveland labeled “Reformed Bourbon” with a woman on the right labeled “North” and a woman on the left labeled “South,” and an African American man. Reid carries a sack labeled “Bloody Shirt” and “Irreconcilable Editorials” and Logan is reading “Paradise Lost.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-07-08
Several artists identified as “Lawrence, Gainsborough, D. Teniers, Rubens, Raphael, Da Vinci, Titian, Duerer, Velasquez, Van Dyke, Reni”, and the friar Girolamo Savonarola as “S,” are being held in a holding pen labeled “Prohibitive Tariff on Art” at Ellis Island Immigration Station.
The year 1908 was a watershed year in American fine art. It was little recognized at the time — as cultural paradigm shifts seldom are — nor today, but the perceptual revolution attributed to 1913 and the landmark Armory Show in New York City sprouted from seeds planted in 1908. The Post-Impressionist and Expressionists known as “The Eight” and “The Ashcan School” collectively mounted an exhibition at New York’s Macbeth Gallery. Their work was in rebellion against academic painting, and in their ranks were several cartoonists, including William J. Glackens, whose brother Louis was on the staff of Puck.