Prejudices

Vignettes lightheartedly depict Irish domestic servants being pampered and coddled by their employers in efforts to keep them happy and happily employed, chiefly, by taking their minds off their domestic duties by providing pleasant distractions.

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Comments and Context

A Puck centerspread cartoon — the home, approximately once a month, of multiple genre gags on a social (not political) topic, occasionally merged two themes. In the example, artist S. D. Ehrhart falls back on two cliches frequently used by cartoonists — interestingly, social trends headed in opposite directions at the time.

Uncle Sam’s boot kicks a Chinese immigrant off a dock as part of an anti-Chinese immigration campaign. Vignettes show how the Chinese can possibly emigrate to the United States, by coming as “a cup-challenger” in yacht races, “as an industrious anarchist,” or “disguised as an humble Irishman,” or “as an English wife-hunter” with “pedigree” in his pocket, or wielding knife and handgun, as a mean-looking “peaceful, law-abiding Sicilian.”

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Comments and Context

A 1905 Puck cartoon by J. S. Pughe might seem on the surface merely to be a humorous, if stereotype-laden, treatment of immigration issues of the day, particularly the difficulty of Chinese immigration leading to comic subterfuge. It would be that; but there were deeper, longer-lasting, and core consequential aspects to the problem. A modern version might have immigrants wishing to enter the United States to pose as Mexicans, whose ease of border crossings has been legendary; that would be upside-down as a cartoon concept, but relates to the larger issue.

Three men labeled “Riot, Lynching, [and] Violence” burn a female figure labeled “Law and Order” at the stake. She is bound to the stake with ribbons labeled “Prejudice” and “Defiance.”

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Comments and Context

 This powerful double-page spread by Joseph Keppler, Junior, in Puck is more than an argument against labor violence (was was indeed a public concern in the years following the turn of the century) or racial animosity (lynchings actually spiked in these years as well) but the general breakdown of law and order.

Uncle Sam holds a paper labeled “Protest against Russian Outrage.” He is standing with his back to a slightly open door revealing a skeleton labeled “Lynchings” and holding a handgun and rope in his closet. He looks at the skeleton, realizing he is caught in a double standard.

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Comments and Context

Whether lynchings of Southern blacks were actually on the rise in this period — and statistics indicate so — publicity about them was on the rise, in magazines and newspapers (traditional and sensationalist press), in novels and plays, and in solemn political cartoons. President Theodore Roosevelt made a particular goal of his administration to publicize and condemn lynchings, and encourage anti-lynching legislation.

President Roosevelt fires a cannon to send a lifeline to a ship in distress on rough seas with dark clouds labeled “Prejudice” forming overhead. The rope spells out the word “Tolerance.” A rainbow shines on the left with the word “Liberty.” In the lower right corner is a quotation from “The President’s Reference to Immigrants.”

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Comments and Context

President Roosevelt’s “reference” to immigrants, and a welcoming, reasonable, national policy, was contained in a note to Secretary of State John Hay, not identified by depicted in this bold cartoon.

Four men in a basket labeled “The Church” of a hot-air balloon labeled “Religion without Superstition” throw out sandbags labeled “No Museum, Blue Laws, Bigotry, [and] No Sunday Recreations” that are used for ballast, enabling them to soar higher, above dark clouds labeled “Ignorance” and “Superstition.” Caption: The more rubbish they throw out, the higher they can go.

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Comments and Context

The immediate context of this cartoon was the stir in religious and intellectual circles caused by William James’s lecture series at the University of Edinburgh in 1901, published in 1902 as Varieties of Religious Experience. Liberal Protestantism and the Social Gospel was taking hold of American mainstream denominations, reflected in James’s book and in turn fueled by it. Puck, long an advocate of liberal theology — in fact never addressing theology itself, but the Church’s role in society — portrays leaders of the Social Gospel movement in this cartoon. In the foreground, left to right, Washington Gladden, William James, and Bishop Henry C. Potter. In the background is John D. Rockefeller Junior, who advocated against Sundays closings at museums associated with his family; and who was a major benefactor of the Riverside Church in New York City. He caused to have the prominent liberal minister and anti-Fundamentalist, Henry Emerson Fosdick, installed as Pastor, at Riverside (still colloquially called the “Rockefeller cathedral”).

A large female figure labeled “Enlightenment” pushes open doors labeled “Pan-American Exposition” and knocks out of the way an old woman labeled “Sabbatarian Fanatic” and a man labeled “Sabbatarian Bigot” who were attempting to prevent the Exposition from opening on Sunday. Caption: The managers of the Buffalo Exposition have decided to open it on Sunday.

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Comments and Context

One of the controversies surrounding the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where Puck Magazine had its own pavilion, was Sunday operation. Traditional Sabbatarians argued that such fairs be closed on the Lord’s Days, but many people petitioned for Sunday openings, principally on the grounds that working people, when six-day work weeks were yet common, could only visit with their families on Sundays.

Theodore Roosevelt writes to Hugo Münsterberg regarding anti-German-American sentiment as a result of the Great War and German aggression in Belgium. Roosevelt states that although such feelings “grieve” him, he also understands them.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-01-04

President Roosevelt agrees with James F. Cave that it is outrageous that a man is barred from membership in any organization because he is a member of the Iowa National Guard. However, Roosevelt cannot do anything about the matter. He hopes the people of Burlington, Iowa, will regard it as their patriotic duty to take care of “such a man.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1909-01-30

President Roosevelt thanks Baron Kaneko for his concern about Archibald B. Roosevelt’s illness. He explains why the United States wishes to restrict members of the Japanese working class from migrating to the United States. Roosevelt believes that this will ease tensions between both countries. The new commission on immigration might also consider restricting immigration from Europe.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-05-23

Professor Ross was pleased to receive Theodore Roosevelt’s letter regarding Ross’s article entitled “The Struggle for Existence in China.” Ross has been anticipating an effort to end barriers against “Oriental immigration” as part of a policy to expand trade. The article was an effort to have an “unanswerable argument” against Chinese immigration without the “taint of racial prejudice.” Ross will soon be publishing a new book entitled The Changing Chinese and may be able to see Roosevelt in New York on September 15.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-08-01

Senator Dubois feels that Secretary of War Taft has been “grossly deceived” in regard to conditions in Idaho and Utah and suggests that Taft talk to his cousin, Albert Thorpe Ryan, for more details about the existing conditions.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-10-30

Senator Dubois tells President Roosevelt that he has been misinformed if he thinks that law and order is an issue in Idaho. According to Dubois, the sole issue in Idaho is “the domination of the Mormon Church in our politics.” If Roosevelt sends Secretary of War William H. Taft to Idaho to speak in support of Governor Frank Robert Gooding, Dubois assures Roosevelt that this will be viewed as a statement in favor of Mormonism.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-10-25

Print shows the “Light of Reason” shining from the upper right, illuminating bust portraits of “Johannes Kepler, I. Kant, Th. Paine, Jefferson, B. de Spinoza, Franklin, Voltaire, E. H. Haeckel, Tyndall, Huxley, [and] Darwin.” The light is blocked by a large umbrella labeled “Bigotry, Supernaturalism, [and] Fanaticism,” behind which are hiding various members of the clergy, including the Pope, Henry Ward Beecher, and T. De Witt Talmage. In the upper left, a vignette shows three female figures around an infant in a crib, with caption “God made Man and Endowed him with Free Will, Memory, and Understanding.” In the lower right is another vignette showing the Pope and other members of the clergy torturing a man, filling him with “Superstition,” with caption, “But it took a Deal of Altering in the Man before he could be made a ‘Good Citizen’.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-03-08

Silas McBee is disappointed with the prejudices of the people in the South but is glad to follow President Roosevelt’s leadership against the “degrading commercial spirit.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-02-09