Older people

President William H. Taft, as a young boy, kneels on the arm of a rocking chair and leans over to put his arms around the shoulders of an elderly woman, labeled “Ultimate Consumer,” who is knitting a large sock.

Comments and Context

With a strangely sinister smile on his face, the lad representing the new president, William H. Taft, almost overwhelms his Granny in her rocking chair. She represents the consumer, a class that was continually pictured as worried about the possibility of a rise in the cost of living.

Whether the president was meant to appear slightly sinister or fully reassuring, artist L. M. Glackens still asserted the cartoonist’s prerogative and had fun at Taft’s expanse.

An old woman sits on a bench, holding a purse labeled “G.O.P.,” with Benjamin Harrison on the left and William McKinley on the right, vying for her attentions. Caption: Old Party (coyly)–Oh! you presidential aspirants are such flirts!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-06-13

An old man kneeling on a sack labeled “182,000 Majority in Pennsylvania for Galusha A. Grow” is proposing to an elderly woman sitting in a chair and holding a fan labeled “Republican Party.” Caption: Republican Party–After all, it might not be so bad to be an old man’s darling!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-03-14

Uncle Sam flirts with a young woman labeled “The New Tariff.” She is holding a bouquet of flowers tied with ribbons labeled “Prosperity and Good Times” and “Increased Wages.” An elderly woman labeled “Republican Party” is sitting in the background. She appears shocked by Sam’s behavior.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-08-21

An old woman with a traveling bag labeled “Miss Democracy” sits alone by the side of a road. The United States Capitol is in the background, flying a flag that states “March 4th.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-03-03

Puck dances with two elderly women labeled “Republican Party” and “Democratic Party.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-05-06

Emilio Aguinaldo stands at center, wearing military uniform, and holding a flag and a sword. Around him are many old men dressed as women, supplicating themselves and tossing roses at his feet. Among them are Carl Schurz, John P. Jones, Charles A. Boutelle, Edwin L. Godkin holding a paper labeled “N.Y. Evening Post,” William B. Cockran, Eugene Hale, George G. Vest, Donelson Caffery, George F. Hoar playing a lyre labeled “Sen. Hoar,” William Lloyd Garrison Jr. reading his “Ode to Dear Aguinaldo,” George F. Edmunds, Joseph Pulitzer, Oswald Ottendorfer, [and] William Jennings Bryan. A bundle of “Editorials” lies on a rock in the left foreground.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-05-10

Print shows a veteran Confederate soldier on the left and a veteran Union soldier on the right shaking hands with a veteran of the Spanish-American War in the center.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-05-31

Outside a building labeled “Washington Inn” with an image of the U.S. Capitol on the sign, a large group of Republican legislators, politicians, and others are laughing at an old man wearing tattered clothing labeled “Democracy.” He looks dazed, as though he has just wandered in from the past; his walking stick is dated “1861.” Two dogs labeled “N.Y. Tribune” and “N.Y. Times” sniff at his heels. Among those present are George M. Robeson, Ulysses S. Grant, John Logan, James Gillespie Blaine, Chester Alan Arthur (dressed as a woman, serving food and drinks), Charles J. Folger, George Frisbie Hoar, Joseph Warren Keifer, Horace F. Page, William Mahone (doing a hand-stand), J. D. Cameron, Roscoe Conkling, John Sherman, George F. Edmunds, John P. Jones, and Thomas Collier Platt.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-03-14

The illustration shows four elderly women. Three are sitting on a park bench “Reserved for Ladies.” The other is standing nearby. One of them is reading from a magazine or newspaper. Birds are feeding on crumbs at their feet.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1914-03-21

Uncle Sam is seated at a table in front of “Uncle Sam’s Inter-State Market,” with a businessman labeled “Northern Capital” on the right and an agricultural producer labeled “Southern Goods – Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco, Whiskey” on the left. Standing before the table are James G. Blaine labeled “Bloody Shirt,” and John Sherman, Whitelaw Reid, and Joseph B. Foraker, who all have long flowing hair and beards like Rip Van Winkle. Blaine is leaning on a rifle labeled “Shot Gun.” Two young African American men are sitting on a bale of cotton and a keg of “Tobacco” in the lower right corner, and in the middle ground African Americans are harvesting cotton. In the background, along the shores of a harbor, is a prosperous city. Caption: Uncle Sam “My fossil friends, the War ended twenty years ago. Have you been sleeping ever since?”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1885-09-16

Four elderly men and two elderly women watch a fashionably dressed young woman as she walks down the sidewalk.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-10-15

A well dressed old man wearing a top hat and spats lies on his back, bouncing the earth on his feet. In the foreground is a doctor’s bag with various instruments (he may have given himself an injection), and on the left is a weeping cherub. His bowstring is broken and his arrows have fallen on the ground.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-06-18

Two older men, a former Confederate soldier and a former Union soldier, walk arm in arm to purchase tickets for a double-header baseball game. A young boy in the foreground tips his hat, and in the background, a line is forming at the ticket booth and the grandstand is already crowded. Caption: One national flag. One national game.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-05-28

Four aged, nude suffragists try to drag John Bull into a pool of water labeled “Woman Suffrage.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-04-23

A dastardly figure peers from behind a bush in the background, as a matronly woman pushes a young woman, looking starry-eyed and carrying a suitcase bursting with cash and stocks, out the front door, in response to a note which shows a pink handprint and states “Put ze girl and ze money on ze doorstep or I will slap you on ze wrist. Ze Pink Hand.”

Comments and Context

L. M. Glackens’s cartoon presumably is a cartoon reference to a crime wave that existed throughout America cities starting in the 1890s and having a peak of activity in 1908 — extortion of innocent people through letters signed by a Black Hand. The activity was most active in the Italian immigrant enclaves of New York City, Chicago, and coal-mining regions of northern Pennsylvania. That, as well as internal evidence of the notes and confessions of blackmailers, confirmed the Southern Italian component of the movement.

At first thought to be operations of the Camorra or Mafia, the Black Hand was rather an inspiration to amorphous and independent groups of blackmailers. Other immigrants were often the victims, but middle- and upper-class Americans were not immune; and even celebrities like operatic singer Enrico Caruso were recipients of extortion letters.

President Roosevelt, as little Lord Fauntleroy, helps elderly Uncle Sam, bloated by “Overcapitalization” and a bandaged right foot labeled “Wall Street,” walk with a cane. Caption: “Lean on me, Grandpa.”

Comments and Context

Udo J. Keppler, in Puck, relies on an extremely popular book (and stage play) of the day for a metaphorical context. His front-page cartoon refers to a famous scene in the 1886 children’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy in which the privileged young scion nobly offers his shoulder to his infirm grandfather.

“‘Just lean on me,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk very slowly,” was the caption in the book’s illustration drawn (and later painted, in another edition) by Reginald Bathurst Birch. The tale by Frances Hodgson Burnett originally was serialized in St Nicholas magazine, then published as a book in 1886.

An old man labeled “T.C.P.” (Thomas Collier Platt) wears ragged clothing and holds a crutch labeled “Republican Machine.” A small jug labeled “Express Co.” is next to him where he sits, on the steps to a municipal building showing the base of columns in the background. Everyone nearby is fleeing from him as though he is a leper.

Comments and Context

Thomas Collier Platt might not have been the “Grand Old Man” of American politics, that appellation variously applied to figures through the years; and perhaps not even the grand old man of Republican politics, but he was old enough to have campaigned for the very first Republican presidential candidate, John Fremont, four years before Abraham Lincoln was elected. In 1907, the date of this cartoon, he was a veteran senator from New York, his third time serving in that role, a few years from retirement and death, but holding on to his office. His power and glory — or at least influence — was spent, and due to his faded luster and various scandals, was a virtual leper in the senate and in his party.

Platt, when first in Senate, was a “Yes-Man” to the powerful Roscoe Conkling of New York State. When the pair lost a power struggle with the new Republican president, James A. Garfield, they also lost the re-election they expected to vindicate them. Cartoonists dismissively nicknamed him “Me Too Platt” at the time, 1881. Conkling retired from politics and died in the famous blizzard of 1888. By that time Platt has succeeded him as the “Easy Boss” of New York State politics. He often allied himself with Democrats when to mutual advantage; he was ineffective as a lawmaker, intentionally, because his game was deal-making behind the scenes and representing power trusts; and he played a strong role in the amalgamation of cities into Greater New York in 1897.

An elderly man labeled “The Law,” with a long beard and holding a broken gun labeled “Fines,” peers at a group of bloated criminals standing and sitting on the porch of “The Jolly Grafter’s Inn, Successor to Ye Stern Justice” who are laughing at the old man before them. Those on the porch are labeled “Big Offender, Respectable Crook, Handy Judge [with a glass of] Judicial Favors, Corporate Lawyer [with mugs of] Legal Aid, Tax Dodger, Special Privilege, Insurance Grafter, Corrupt Business, Rail Road Merger, [and the] Oil, Coal, [and] Beef Trust[s].” On a table is a newspaper labeled “The Daily Graft,” and growling at the man is a dog labeled “Subsidized Press.”

Comments and Context

Puck had fought cheek-to-jowl with reform politicians, Muckraking journals, and President Roosevelt over most of the recent years, week after week. In this crowded center-spread cartoon, J. S. Pughe expressed the utmost cynicism about laws and regulations that were hard-fought and hard-won in 1906.

Puck knew how substantial the gains and reforms were, yet either reverted to the defeatism borne of decades of frustrated reform efforts; or it was returning to its Democratic roots.

Charles W. Fairbanks, as an old woman, sits in a rocking chair in front of a fireplace, holding a portrait of the “G.O.P.” elephant. “Blessed Are the Pacemakers” appears on a sampler above the mantle. Fairbanks is wearing a pair of shoes labeled “Nomination Sneakers,” and a basket of knitting labeled “Political Fancy Work” lies on the floor next to the chair. A cage with a bee inside is on a table labeled “Presidential Bee.”

Comments and Context

This Puck magazine cover by Udo J. Keppler is a textbook example of the political points that subtly can be made below the surface of simple cartoons. That is, deceptively simple, for some cartoons contain visual elements — signs and symbols — and some rely on labels, phrases, and “code words.”

In the days of Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly, and of Joseph Keppler Senior in Puck‘s early days (both ca. 1870s), political cartoons featured, almost by obligation, long labels and ID-tags. By the time of this cartoon in Puck (1907) simplicity and streamlining were regarded as marks of a superior cartoon.