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Theodore Roosevelt compliments the front page article from Frank P. MacLennan’s newspaper, The Topeka State Journal. Roosevelt is sorry he cannot see MacLennan in Chicago but hopes he likes his speech.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1916-05-03
A newspaper owner, possibly Joseph Pulitzer, sits in a chair in his office next to an open safe where “Profits” are spilling out onto the floor. Outside this scene are many newspaper reporters for the “Daily Splurge” rushing to the office to toss their stories onto the printing press, including “A Week as a Tramp!! Wild and Exciting Experiences of a Daily Splurge Reporter,” “A Reporter of the Daily Splurge Spends a Thrilling Week in an Asylum!” “An Organ Grinder’s Life,” “Life in Sing Sing – a Splurge Reporter in Disguise,” “Divorce Court Details,” “Private Scandal,” “A Night Around Town” by a woman reporter “in Men’s Attire,” life on the streets “As a Flower Girl,” “Thrilling Exposé,” “How beggars are treated on 5th Ave. by Fanny Fake,” and “High Spiced Sensation.” A notice hanging on the wall of the office states, “The Motto of the Daily Splurge – Morality and a High Sense of Duty.” Caption: He combines high-sounding professions with high-spiced sensations, and reaps a golden profit thereby.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1894-03-07
A bespectacled man wearing a top hat and overcoat stands in the street, holding a book titled “Old Sleuth the Detective.” Near him, young children are reading the newspapers labeled “Daily Scandal Monger,” “Morning Cyclone of Crime,” “Daily Rot, Daily Scooper, [and] Morning Scavenger.” Behind are newsstands labeled “All the Sensation Papers” and “Don’t Fail to Buy the Sunday Slop Bucket,” with headlines such as “How to Poison a Whole City,” “Murder,” and “Crime.” Caption: Dime Novel Writer–And they used to say that my books were bad for young peoples’ morals!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1897-03-17
President McKinley stands at the edge of a mud-hole labeled “Slander” and “Abuse,” his right hand raised in a “stop” gesture, and holding in his left hand a mud-splattered American flag. Three diminutive figures are standing in the mud-hole in the process of throwing mud. They are William Jennings Bryan, Joseph Pulitzer labeled “N.Y. World,” and William Randolph Hearst labeled “N.Y. Journal.” The U.S. Capitol is in the background.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-09-28
A female figure sits on a stone bench writing a list of names in a large book, including “McKinley, Dewey, Sampson, Schley, Hobson and his crew, Wainwright, Clark, Miles, Shafter, Wheeler, Roosevelt, [and] Wood.” Behind her, Puck has erected two monuments on a “Barren Island,” topped with statues of “Pulitzer” and “Hearst.” Each monument is papered with yellow sheets of paper that give credit for the success of the American forces in Spanish-American War to both Pulitzer and Hearst. Caption: He erects a monument to two celebrities that history has neglected.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-10-05
William Randolph Hearst, as a jester, tosses newspapers with headlines such as “Appeals to Passion, Venom, Sensationalism, Attacks on Honest Officials, Strife, Distorted News, Personal Grievance, [and] Misrepresentation” to a crowd of eager readers, among them an anarchist assassinating a politician speaking from a platform draped with American flags. On the left, men labeled “Man who buys the comic supplement for the kids, Businessman, Gullible Reformer, Advertiser, [and] Decent Citizen” carry bags of money that they dump into Hearst’s printing press. Includes note: “The time is at hand when these journalistic scoundrels have got to stop or get out, and I am ready now to do my share to that end. They are absolutely without souls. If decent people would refuse to look at such newspapers the whole thing would right itself at once. The journalism of New York City has been dragged to the lowest depths of degradation. The grossest railleries and libels, instead of honest statements and fair discussion, have gone unchecked.”– From Mayor Gaynor’s letter published in the New York Evening Post. Caption: Those who feed it and those whom it feeds.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-10-12
Print shows newspaper editors Charles A. Dana, James G. Bennett, Carl Schurz, Henry Watterson, George W. Curtis, and Whitelaw Reid, as well as Puck, with a fleet of paper gunboats labeled “N.Y. Times, N.Y. Sun, N.Y. Herald, Ev. Post, Puck, Brooklyn Eagle, Courier-Journal, Harpers, Phila Times, Mail, [and] N.Y. Tribune.” The fleet is firing cannons, “ink” bottles, and pens, bombarding a fortress flying a flag labeled “Plunder,” where the walls are comprised of paper bundles labeled “Bills, Jobs, Bargains, Corrupt Bills, [and] Logrolling.” The fortress is defended by “Robeson Bey” standing at center with a bandage labeled “Record” around his head, “Keifer” and “Jones,” with John A. Logan labeled “306,” James D. Cameron, David Davis, John Sherman, and others. Cannonballs burst among them labeled “Criticism, Censure, [and] Condemnation.” The fortress cannons are labeled “River & Harbor Bill $20,000,000, Pension Arrears $103,962,300, Monitor Job, Public Buildings, Mileage Steal, [and] Mississippi Levee.” Within the fortress are the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Treasury labeled “Ammunition House.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1882-08-02
A woman labeled “Republican Party” is held in the “Condemned Cell” of a jail labeled “To Be Executed Nov. 6th 1883,” with Charles A. Dana labeled “Jailor” and Henry Watterson labeled “Turnkey.” Watterson looks dismayed and Dana appears shocked when Puck, as a “Messenger Boy,” arrives with a newspaper that states “Reprieve – Nov. 6th – By Order of the People.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1883-11-14
Print shows a pack of hyenas labeled “N. Y. Commercial, N. Y. Sun, N. Y. Herald, Washtn. Post, The Rosecrans Letters, [and] 306” crowded around a sepulchral monument to James A. Garfield labeled “Fame.” Those hyenas labeled “306” are pulling on a rope that spells “Slander” tied to the top of the monument. A lightning bolt labeled “Public Contempt” has severed the rope, spilling the hyenas into an abyss labeled “Oblivion.” The number “306” represents the number of delegates who supported Ulysses S. Grant for a third term at the 1880 Republican Convention.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1882-03-22
In the interior of the “Political Hot House,” many plants with the heads of politicians are potted and labeled with botanical names, for example “Butleria Cockeya,” “McVeaghia No Chancea,” “Tildenus Fossilis,” “Blainea Sunstrokea,” “Hewittia Tariffia,” “Shermania Honestia,” and “Thurmania Ragbabia.” At center is a figure fashioned from quill pens, a drum labeled “Press,” and newspapers labeled “Louisville Courier Journal, N. Y. Sun, Tribune, Herald, Advertiser, Times, [and] Cincinnati C[…],” holding a potted plant labeled “Arthuria Accidentalia.” A politician holding a spade labeled “Out of a Job” gestures toward the door of the greenhouse. In the background is the “White House.” Among the plants are Rutherford B. Hayes, Thomas F. Bayard, Winfield Scott Hancock, George B. McClellan, Roscoe Conkling, Cyrus W. Field, Samuel J. Tilden, Allen G. Thurman, John Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Wayne MacVeagh, George F. Edmunds, William M. Evarts, Benjamin F. Butler, Abram S. Hewitt, Chester A. Arthur, James G. Blaine, David Davis, and a plant identified as “Adams Icebergea.” Caption: Unoccupied Politician “Oh, I assure you, my dear Mr. Press, it’s none too early to begin to set out the Presidential Plants!”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1882-04-05
Theodore Roosevelt, pictured with three reporters.
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site
1910
Theodore Roosevelt, wearing a military uniform with the Japanese Imperial seal on the hat and holding a rifle, stands behind the “Park Row Earth Works,” as two rolled-up newspapers labeled “Sun” and “World” with rifles charge the earthworks. The background shows the war flag of the Japanese Imperial Army. Caption: “The war talk is due entirely to newspapers, which seek to increase their sales, and which for political reasons attack the Government.”–Taft at Tokio.
A week after spectacular Wall Street panic, Puck commented instead, for the second week in a row, on diplomatic friction between the United States and Japan. The wall Street situation was news, however, a rolling crisis and rather complicated, so perhaps it was safer to address international matters.
Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary declines the North American Times editor’s request for Roosevelt to publish an article in the publication, as Roosevelt is now a contributing editor for The Outlook, which holds the exclusive right to publish anything he writes.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-03-27
Theodore Roosevelt thanks Father Power for his letter and the editorial from the Brooklyn Times.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-06-05
Theodore Roosevelt thanks E. C. Hayde for letting him read a manuscript but does not know any newspapers or magazines that would publish it.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-06-07
President Roosevelt compliments and agrees with New York Sun publisher and editor William M. Laffan’s editorial on the “Venezuela situation,” and invites him to visit and further discuss other topics, such as the Monroe Doctrine.
1902-12-29
President Roosevelt introduces Robert Lincoln O’Brien, of the Boston Transcript. He will be going to the Philippines.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-03-11
A letter to the editor written by Nicholas Murray Butler in the New York Times, concerning the alleged resignation of Edward MacDowell, Professor of Music at Columbia University. He points out that the Evening Post printed a story that it knew was untrue in connection with Professor MacDowell’s resignation.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-02-08
Walter C. Blagg writes to President Roosevelt about Republican politics in North Carolina. He says the Republican Party in the state is poorly organized and led by a minority in Asheville. He adds that there is no state Republican newspaper and that establishing a newspaper will strengthen the party in North Carolina.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-02-02
Judge Dickinson discusses his surprise at his appearance in a newspaper article about the situation in Panama. Dickinson explains to Eli Shelby Hammond ways in which the reporter Mr. Gates misquoted and misrepresented his views.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-12-27