Organ grinders

Print shows a “Hayseed Legislator” standing on the sidewalk of “Fifth Ave.” in New York City, pointing his umbrella toward a tenement house labeled “The Vanderbilt Flats Formerly the Marble Palace.” On Fifth Avenue there are street urchins, a hurdy-gurdy man with a monkey, a fruit vendor, and a man picking through the trash. Seen through windows on the ground floor of the tenement house are a woman using a sewing machine and a Chinese laundry. On the rooftop, a woman is hanging clothes on a clothesline. Caption: The New York up-country legislator will never be satisfied until he has taxed the millionaire out of the state.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1898-10-26

President Roosevelt, as a hurdy-gurdy player, grinds an organ labeled “Party Harmony” among a group of bears labeled “Elkins, Parsons, Dick, Platt, Penrose, Woodruff, Foraker, Barnes, [and] Odell,” each holding a large club across their shoulders.

comments and context

Comments and Context

“The Boss Bear Trainer” is a rare cartoon from the career of President Roosevelt wherein bears are cartooned characters, but related to teddy bears, either as hunting trophies or as children’s plush toys.

A monkey turns the crank on an organ labeled “Home Sweet Home Rule” with one foot. It is wearing a hat with a feather labeled “Parnell,” and holding a shillelagh labeled “80 members” in one hand and in the other a chain attached to the belt of a British man labeled “J. Bull,” who is dancing. The British “Parliament” building is in the background.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1885-12-23

Uncle Sam stands at the head of a table at a dinner party in honor of the “Bi-Centennial Celebration of the First German Settlement.” Columbia sits next to him. Around the table are a “Spaniard, Swede, German, Englishman, Russian, Chinese, Irishman” and at the far end an “Italian” hurdy-gurdy man, also a “French” chef entering on the left, carrying a large peacock on a tray, and an African American servant spilling trays of food on the Englishman and the Chinese man. In a cradle on the floor next to Columbia are two infants labeled “Malagasy” and “Corean.” Uncle Sam is offering a toast to the well-dressed German man standing at center. Puck, standing on the front side of the table, holding his lithographic pencil, offers a bouquet of flowers. Hanging from a garland on the wall in the background, beneath the heading “Germantown 1683-1883,” are portraits of Baron von “Steuben,” George “Washington,” and Marquis de “Lafayette.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-10-03

Barbara MacGahan is in Washington, D.C., and would like to personally thank President Roosevelt for a kindness paid to her family when Roosevelt was a New York City Police Commissioner. MacGahan credits Roosevelt for saving her son, who was ill with typhoid, by preventing organ grinders from performing on the street and therefore disturbing her son’s recovery.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-02-01