Presidents--Election

Inside a convention hall, an over-sized Theodore Roosevelt leans forward at a podium, holding a gavel raised in his right hand. In the foreground are the delegates attending the Republican National Convention, June 21, 1904, in Chicago, Illinois.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Published more than a week before the opening of the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Keppler and Puck dispelled any remote vestiges of doubt or suspense in this cartoon. Theodore Roosevelt was president; his renomination was not in doubt, he was in complete control of his party’s machinery, and was beloved in all sections of the country.

In a battle scene, President Roosevelt is about to make a final charge on “Fort Democracy” labeled “Peace, Constitution, [and] Prosperity.” Performing various functions in Roosevelt’s camp are “Foraker,” “Morton” spying from a balloon, “Allison” raising a flag labeled “Up with the Trusts,” “Woodruff” attending to wounded T.C. “Platt,” “Higgins” and “Odell” with cans of money from a box labeled “Groceries N.Y. State,” “Cortelyou” sharpening a sword, “Shaw” with binoculars, “Bliss” and “Fairbanks” loading a small cannon labeled “National Committee Gun,” and “Rockefeller” with a hod full of money bags labeled “Standard Shot.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. S. Pughe was the closing salvo, so to speak, in the campaign of Puck, a leading Democrat publication, in the 1904 presidential campaign. As such, it is surprisingly mild and generic. President Roosevelt is the only figure denigrated by caricature, and the cartoon shows neither the Democratic candidate, Judge Alton Brooks Parker, nor any real representation of his party’s substantive platform positions. Beyond the assertion that the Republican Party contained rich men devoted to using their wealth in an election, the crowded cartoon diverted its focus to smaller issues and controversies.

An elderly woman labeled “Democracy” stands next to a trunk labeled “Old Issues” and with a tag that states “To the White House.” Standing at the curb are several cab drivers labeled “Parker, Olney, Johnson, Shepard, Gorman, [and] Watterson” hoping to pick up a fare, and two other drivers labeled “Cleveland” and “Bryan” sitting on their carriages. Cleveland does not appear interested, though Bryan, on his cab labeled “16 to 1,” holding up his hat, calls out above the others.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Political cartoons, when well designed, not only present issues and events clearly, but also convey subtexts, background information, and nuances that speak to readers of their time, and to subsequent students of history.

William Jennings Bryan rides on a horse fashioned out of “The Commoner” newspapers, through a town, announcing that representatives of the reorganized Democratic Party were coming, drawing out old men brandishing weapons labeled “Populism, 16 to 1, Free Riot” and a drum labeled “Dead Issues.” An old man leans out a window waving a flag that states “Free Silver or Bust.” Includes verse based on “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

In the weeks preceding the 1904 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis, the two-time presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, staged an all-out effort for another nomination, or, at the very least, to argue for the nomination of a candidate whose subscribed to Bryan’s perennial platform planks — free silver, anti-expansion, etc. He spoke across America and also used the columns of his popular newspaper The Commoner, edited by his brother Charles.

William Jennings Bryan, his hat falling to the ground and with one foot braced against a water trough, tries to pull a donkey labeled “Democracy” to the trough where the water is labeled “Bryanism,” the trough is labeled “Kansas City Platform,” and the pump is labeled “Populism.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This simple cartoon by Joseph Keppler encapsulates the situation the Democratic Party found itself in between the presidential elections of 1900 and 1908. Very simply, William Jennings Bryan, the young Nebraska congressman, had dominated the party and its councils since his “Cross of Gold” speech electrified the nominating convention in 1896 and catapulted him into the presidential candidacy. The force of his personality, and his startling agenda of Populist reforms, likely played equal roles in his leadership.

President Roosevelt appears as a dog in the “Republican Kennels,” with his trainer Mark “Hanna.” In the “Democratic Kennels,” an old woman labeled “Dem. Party” pats Alton B. “Parker” on the head and offers him a biscuit labeled “Political Sanity.” Other Democratic dogs George “Gray,” Richard “Olney,” David B. “Hill,” and Arthur P. “Gorman” labeled “Senatorial Leadership” and “Panama Issue” are kenneled nearby. Hanging on the wall is a picture of “Cleveland” with ribbons labeled “1884” and “1892,” and in the lower left is a cage labeled “Distemper” with William Jennings Bryan as a dog bandaged with “1896” and “1900” sitting inside before a small dish labeled “Free Silver.” In the center is a small dog labeled “Yellow Journalism Willie Hearst.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon appeared in Puck in the second week of February 1904 — five months before the actual Democrat Party presidential nominating convention. Pughe’s cartoon of a dog show mirrored Puck Magazine’s editorial desires, as per the depictions, dignified or mocking, of possibles candidates; and the nature of the labels. Also the expressions of the dogs in the kennel show reliably reflect the confidence of the various candidates. Further, the kind attentions to the otherwise obscure New York Judge Alton Brooks Parker — the eventual nominee, pushed by back-bench conservative Democrats — by the old spinster representing the Democratic Party, is prescient.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna, in a small sailboat with sail labeled “Under no circumstances will I consent to become a candidate,” sails past a rocky coastline. Two female sirens with the lower torso of chickens, one playing a lyre labeled “Wall Street Interests” and the other holding a paper labeled “Trust Influence,” try to lure him onto the rocks.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by Joseph Keppler Junior is a major example of supreme irony, and unavoidable exigencies of the publishing business.

A scarecrow in a corn field, labeled “Nomination,” is fashioned out of pieces of cloth labeled with the names of several states: “Indiana, Illinois, Mass., Mich., Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, West Virginia, [and] New Jersey.” It wears a sash labeled “Repudiation.” Standing in the background is a farmer wearing a hat labeled “Democracy” and carrying a rifle labeled “Nat’l. Convention.” A crow labeled “Bryan,” with the face of William Jennings Bryan, is sitting on a fence, eyeing the corn field. Caption: The Democratic Farmer — If that doesn’t keep him out, I’ve got something here that’ll fix him.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Pughe’s clever cartoon (and brilliant caricature) proved prescient, less than a year before the 1904 Democrat presidential nominating convention. The party (labeled “Democracy”) is depicted, in rare form, by a farmer rather than a donkey or animal form. His weapon to keep the crow Bryan from his field — if the ragtag scarecrow-of-states failed to repel the crow, is a shotgun labeled “National Convention.”

An old woman labeled “Democratic Party” stands in the “Democratic Intelligence Bureau” managed by “J.K. Jones” who is sitting behind a desk. She is “looking for help” and taking a good look at several prospective candidates, from left: David B. Hill “No objection to dirty work,” William Jennings Bryan “Used to waiting,” Richard Olney “Old but regular,” Edward M. Shepard “Will do anything,” Alton B. Parker “Neat and quiet,” and Arthur P. Gorman “Willing and obliging.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

A common theme of the time among political cartoonists, even Democrat cartoonists, is the weak field of national candidates. In Pughe’s variation, this Puck cartoon pictures the old-maid Democrat lady looking for household help — a presidential candidate for the following year.

The “Republican Party” elephant walks on “Senate” and “House” stilts, on a path covered with eggs labeled “Monopoly, High Tariff Excuses, ‘Bad Trusts,’ Labor Question, Post Office Scandal, [and] Protected Trusts.” A paper attached to the elephant’s tail states “Tariff Reform.” A sign in the background points “To Washington 1904.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The Republican elephant, drawn by Puck‘s go-to animal cartoonist J. S. Pughe, is the focal point of this cartoon that is frankly a generic concept, rare for Puck, rather than an accurate portrayal of events or analysis of issues. The cartoon’s implication is that the party in June of 1903 and a year from the national presidential convention, avoids dealing with a myriad of issues. In fact, except for plainly viewing the tariff as an issue with no urgency to address, the eggs are labelled with issues, positions, and accomplishments that President Roosevelt and the Republican Party were quite willing to discuss with voters.

The Republican elephant labeled “G.O.P.” sits on a stool with the U.S. Capitol and the White House within view. He is holding with his trunk a playing card with Theodore Roosevelt on it and has a tray of playing cards on his lap which show Roosevelt as the king and/or say “Roosevelt.” He is playing the card game “solitaire.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The joy in the face of the Republican elephant in Pughe’s cartoon is, if anything, understated. In 1903 the fortunes of the Republican Party, and of President Roosevelt, were high. Peace, prosperity, and an engaging young president whose vitality mirrored the expanding nation, combined for an “era of good feeling” not experienced by the United States since the 1840s.

A typewritten and hand edited response President Roosevelt wrote to an editorial regarding campaign funds in The Outlook. Published in Presidential Addresses & State Papers (Homeward bound edition, VII, pp. 1834-6).

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1908

William Jennings Bryan plays a drum labeled “Populism” while standing on a hatch labeled “Chicago Platform” on a ship that is going up in flames and billowing clouds of dark smoke labeled “Defeat 1896” and “Defeat 1900.” His hat is labeled “Free Silver” and a broken strap on the drum states “16 to 1.” Caption: The boy stood on the burning deck / From which all Democrats had fled; / The flames that lit the battle’s wreck / Shone ’round him o’er the dead. (Mr. Bryan says he is still standing on the Chicago Platform. – Roanoke, Va., speech).

comments and context

Comments and Context

A seemingly minor detail in this cartoon and caption is dispositive about the positions and popularity of William Jennings Bryan in 1901. Dalrymple calls upon famous lines from an otherwise-forgotten poem by a relatively obscure British poet of the 1820s, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Casabianca. “The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle’s wreck Shone ’round him near the dead.” The first line. in Dalrymple’s time and ours, has lived as an allusion: people who are too blind, or blindly dedicated, to realize the destruction inherent in their stubbornness. The main point might be found in Bryan’s reference to the “Chicago Platform.” He had twice lost the presidency, soundly, yet it was not the recent (1900) platform to which he clung, but the five-year-old “Cross of Gold,” free-silver fever that overtook the 1896 Democrat convention. Had he learned a political lesson? By 1904 he quietly had softened his myopic attention to Populist economics, but, on the other hand, did not receive a third nomination. 

A man, probably Perry Belmont, labeled “New Democracy,” wears a hat with plume labeled “1904” and holds a crossbow labeled “Jeffersonian Principles.” William Jennings Bryan sits on the Democratic donkey, speaking and gesticulating wildly with his hands. His hat labeled “Populism” hangs on a post on which is a note that states “Please Bow. W.J.B.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Perry Belmont and his brother August H. Belmont, Jr., seldom were more than behind-the-scenes brokers in the Democratic Party. Their father, August Belmont, Senior (nee August Shoenberg in Germany and originally the American representative of the Rothschild banking interests) likewise was a quiet influence, although he had served as Chairman of the Democrat Party. In 1901 the Belmont brothers went public with criticism of William Jennings Bryan and the Populist influence on their party. Perry, likely Dalrymple’s subject, is wearing a feather labeled “1904,” but he never had electoral ambitions of his own: his public criticism at this time was focused on the fortunes of the national Democratic Party, specifically the 1904 presidential election. At this time there were movements of reform aimed at the self-described reformers in the Democratic Party, Bryanites and former Populists. At the time of this cartoon, Seth Low resigned as president of Columbia University to run for New York City mayor on the Citizens Union (Fusion) ticket, and attracted anti-Tammany Democrat support in his victory.

A hunter in the woods, carrying a rifle labeled “Gov. B. Odell,” stands next to a tree with a sign that states “Presidential Timber.” He is looking at a tiger labeled “Tammany.” Caption: Gov. Odell. — What a fine White House rug his skin would make!

comments and context

Comments and Context

The date of this cartoon gives extra significance to an otherwise mundane depiction of a New York governor having presidential ambitions. Around this time, New York had a surfeit of officials with publicly-discussed possibilities, if not credentials, to be president of the United States. Democrats had President Cleveland himself, a two-term president and a rumored candidate for 1904. Former Governor David Bennett Hill was a perennial aspirant. On the Republican side, Levi P. Morton had served as vice president under Benjamin Harrison, and serious consideration was afforded former Governor Frank S. Black, Lieutenant Governor Timothy Woodruff, and Governor Benjamin B. Odell. These discussions and putative career-paths were upset by the person and public acclaim of New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt… and, while he was Vice President, the assassination of President William McKinley. Also interesting is the fact that this cartoon was published only days before McKinley was shot.

A tattered old man labeled “Silver Republicans” runs into the open arms of Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna, “Chairman of Rep. Natl. Com.” Behind Hanna is a building flying the banner of “McKinley & Sound Money” and with a cow labeled “Prosperity” looking out an open window.

comments and context

Comments and Context

A fact largely forgotten by history is that on the great issues of the end of the 19th century in American politics, the two major parties were not clearly divided. Before President Cleveland’s decisive Annual Message on the tariff in 1887 (still the lone State of the Union message devoted to one subject), there were protectionists and free-traders in each party. Until the radical platform of William Jennings Bryan and the McKinley prosperity, there were a sizable number of “Silver Republicans” who resisted the gold standard of East Coast and Wall Street Republicans. The 1878 Bland-Allison Act was a bipartisan, bi-metallic measure vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes, but overridden by Congress.  McKinley himself flirted with silver coinage around 1890, and Ohio Senator John Sherman’s name was on a Silver Purchase Act, which Cleveland believed precipitated the Depression of the 1890s. By 1900, the silver-coinage issue was dead, both for apostate Republicans as this cartoon illustrates, and for the country as a whole.

William Jennings Bryan uses the hot air from his “Speeches” to inflate a large balloon labeled “Imperialism,” of President William McKinley dressed as the “Emperor of USA,” holding a scepter in one hand and a sword in the other. On the ground nearby is a burst balloon labeled “Goldbugism.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

“Goldbugism” refers to the main thrust of William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 campaign, linking the Republicans to the gold standard and predatory monopolies. Bryan lost heavily in the Electoral College that year, and cartoonist Keppler predicted that the imperialism issue would have the same fate in the 1900 elections. It did.

William Jennings Bryan offers a large knife labeled “16 to 1” to a laborer who is daydreaming about “Contentment.” The laborer sits next to a large bucket, labeled “1900,” of golden eggs labeled “Savings, Good wages, Steady work, No shut downs, Prosperity, [and] Good hours.” Bryan wants the laborer to use the knife to kill the goose, in the left foreground, labeled “Gold Standard” that lays the golden eggs.

comments and context

Comments and Context

“16 to 1” refers to the intentionally inflationary currency plan that would require the federal government to include silver as a medium of exchange and fix its rate at one-sixteenth of gold’s value. Especially after the discovery of major silver lodes in the West, this plan would make currency more elastic, and theoretically make economic life easier for farmers. This was one reason that both parties targeted the minds and votes of farmers in this era. The United States instead de-coupled silver, and went on the gold standard until the New Deal.

Puck massages the scalp of a deranged-looking Richard Olney who is sitting on a bench in a padded cell in the “Hopeless ward for incurables” and holding a rattle of William Jennings Bryan as a jester. On the floor are loose papers, one labeled “Olney’s letter indorsing [sic] Bryan.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Richard Olney had served as Attorney General in the second administration  of Grover Cleveland, and embodied the President’s conservative stands on Sound Money, “dangerous” unions and strikes, and regulation of monopolies if done in order to protect them. He also served Cleveland as Secretary of State, and some of his views on hemispheric affairs foreshadowed the Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine promulgated a decade later by President Theodore Roosevelt. Given this background — and as a prominent corporate and railroad lawyer, Puck was surprised that Olney supported William Jennings Bryan in the latter’s second run for the presidency.

William Jennings Bryan is a large spider labeled “Free Silver” with three flies labeled “White, Schurz, [and] Godkin” caught in his web labeled “16 to 1,” “Anti-expansion,” “Chicago Platform,” and “Bryanism.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The radical economic policies and agrarian roots of William Jennings Bryan kept many Eastern, aristocratic liberals from making alliance with his Populist-based campaigns. The old-line liberal reformers Horace White, Carl Schurz, and Edwin Godkin — all on the staffs of the New York Post and The Nation magazine — were tempted to support Bryan in his presidential candidacy of 1900 on the issues of Expansionism and anti-Imperialist views. The cartoon’s layout and labels indicate that cartoonist Pughe saw Imperialism as an issue that would lead to their doom.