Your TR Source
This article suggests that President Roosevelt’s policies destroy business, not the upbuilding of the nation’s industries. Below the article is an advertisement for the book, American Business Man.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-12-04
President Roosevelt holds “relief sauce” in his right hand and wears a belt with a buckle that says, “In God we trust.” Behind him is “confidence pudding” with steam that says, “for everybody.” In the background is a turkey labeled “bank deposits” that says, “saved.”
Cartoonist Joseph Harry Cunningham utilized the Thanksgiving holiday to find a theme for a political cartoon, and a vehicle for an entire menu of attacks on President Roosevelt. Besides the Thanksgiving holiday, in 1907 this was a season of economic distress and uncertainty — even panic, as the Wall Street bank failures and stock-market losses collectively were called.
President Roosevelt is depicted as Ben-Hur and drives a chariot of four horses: “public honesty,” “square deal,” “publicity,” and “centralization.” He leads the chariot race. Behind him are “swollen fortune” and a “reactionary.” On the ground are an “undesirable citizen” and a “molly-coddle.” In the stands are Miss Columbia, William Loeb, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Secretary of War William H. Taft, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, and Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou.
In a regrettably typical cartooning overreach, the Washington Herald‘s Joseph Harry Cunningham transforms a popular image in the public’s consciousness into a putative grand statement on the current political situation. Beyond the idea that President Roosevelt was engaged in racing ahead with several policy agendas, pursued by opponents of those programs, there was little that was prescient, or that would bring a new insight to readers.
A large President Roosevelt has several small men jumping on his top hat: “Chancellor Day,” “Justice Brewer,” and “Ex-Senator Spooner.” “Wall Street’ collapsed on the brim of his hat and says, “I’m ‘most dead!”
This clever cartoon from the political-cartoon phase of A. D. Condo’s long career displays a seldom-recognized aspect of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, specifically concerning the possibility that he might have yielded to public pressure and accepted another nomination in 1908.
President Roosevelt shakes the “popularity” tree with spikey sweet gum tree balls labeled “North-west endorsement,” “Western approval,” and “Eastern sentiment.” “Southern approval” hits Roosevelt in the head. On the ground are two books: “Studies of the Fall Season” and “Nature Stories by T. Roosevelt.” William Loeb looks over a fence and says, “I’m to blame.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-11-12
President Roosevelt holds a diabolo labeled, “Roosevelt Administration,” and the two cups labeled, “personal popularity with the people.” Caption: Still keeping it up.
The toy that President Theodore Roosevelt plays with was called, as the title indicates, the “diabolo.” It was also called a “Chinese yo-yo,” because it evidently originated in China centuries ago; but beyond a spinning object and a string has no common antecedents with the yo-yo.
In the first vignette–“Opportunity No. 1,” President Roosevelt reaches out his hand to shake with the “Florida wild cat.” In the second–“Opportunity No. 2,” Roosevelt chases down the “Florida razor back” with a knife in his right hand and a spear in his left. In the third–“Opportunity No. 3,” Roosevelt holds a “Florida bear” at gunpoint. In the fourth–“Opportunity No. 4,” Roosevelt holds a “warrant” for the “Florida tiger.”
A few days into President Roosevelt’s hunting trip in Louisiana, midway in a swing through the Midwest and South, otherwise devoted to speeches and public appearances, the Florida Times-Union whimsically addressed the trophies that Roosevelt might bag, or miss. The hunting sojourn in Louisiana was between October 6 and 19, 1907, in the state’s iconic canebrakes, a swath of dense and dangerous vegetation and animal life that actually stretched from northern Florida, where its base was swampland, to Louisiana, where bayous contributed to the inhospitable environs. It was on the Mississippi-Louisiana border where the president had hunted the black bear, unsuccessfully, earlier in his presidency and from which experience grew the legend and popularity of the teddy bear.
A Republican elephant and Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker sit in an “Ohio Rep. Convention” boat as Foraker says, “Get into the boat!” Ohio Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna holds a broom as he points toward a “Roosevelt sentiment” wave. Hanna says, “We’d better sweep it to one side at present.”
Inspired by the legend of King Canute and his efforts to sweep back the tide, cartoonist Charles M. Payne drew a typically handsome and politically prescient portrayal of the advance run-up to the 1904 Republican presidential convention.
President Roosevelt looks at three men from the “lens of public opinion.” William Jennings Bryan says, “The president is carrying out all my ideas.” Representative William Sulzer says, “The president has taken up my policies.” William Alfred Peffer says, “The president is going in the right direction.”
Cartoonist Joseph Harry Cunningham depicts President Roosevelt and three maverick politicians sizing each other up. The optics — literally, an absurd use of chart-graphics as might be found in textbooks — are rather absurd, and hardly relevant to the point of the drawing. Relevance to medical breakthroughs in optometry did not serve to elucidate the cartoon’s theme.
This photograph of President Roosevelt includes a brief biography of him, noting that he is the author of many books.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-07-11
President Roosevelt holds a paintbrush dripping with paint and a paint can that reads, “presidency paint.” In the background is a fancy “3rd term bandwagon” and the U.S. Capitol building. Caption: Roosevelt — I’ll sort of keep that band wagon in repair in case it may be needed later on.
Ryan Walker joined the parade of artists speculating on President Roosevelt’s third-term ambition in the looming 1908 contest. A journeyman cartoonist whose foray into radical political cartoons had him draw for socialist magazines published in Girard, Kansas, that had national circulations, and the fledgling International Syndicate of Baltimore, the likely distributor of this cartoon that appeared in a minor paper in Des Moines.
President Roosevelt watches as a cow labeled “the public” tries to reach the “third term” haystack but is unable to do so because “Roosevelt’s no third term declaration” fence stands in front of it. In the background is a “Taft boom” haystack. The subtitle asks, “Will the farmer remove the fence?”
Cartoonist Claude Maybell of the Brooklyn Eagle, once a major newspaper in New York City, accurately depicted the political situation in the Republican Party as the 1908 presidential contest loomed.
President Roosevelt listens to a gramophone labeled “voice of the common people” project the words, “Justice. We want fair play. We demand a sample of the famous ‘Square Deal.'”
This cartoon was clipped and pasted into the White House scrapbook in mid-1907. Political cartoons were singled out and placed in the books presumably for the president to keep tabs on the editorial opinions of the nation, which of his policies resonated with the public, perhaps what initiatives were being called for, etc.
Many hands push papers toward President Roosevelt that read: “You’re it, Teddy,” “You must accept,” “You cannot leave us now,” “Teddy,” “We must have you. Pacific Coast States,” “We’re satisfied with you,” “Don’t swap horses in the middle of the stream,” “Term,” “Who said Teddy? Everybody,” “T.R. for another term,” “We want you, Teddy. New England States,” “Term,” “We’re with you, Mr. President. Solid South,” “We need your help,” “Middle West. You’re the Man,” “It’s you, just you,” “T. Roosevelt is the man,” “Accept,” “We the people demand,” and “Another term.”
In the Los Angeles Express, a newspaper that eventually was swept up in William Randolph Hearst’s consolidation of Angelino newspapers, cartoonist Robert P. Strathearn drew a frankly realistic portrait of the situation President Roosevelt faced daily, at least in his political life. Like a stray puppy or a bad penny, the rumors and questions and importunating surrounding a “third term” persisted. He seemed unable to shake the subject on the lips of citizens, politicians of all stripes, reporters, and cartoonists.
This newspaper article presents illustrations and text about President Roosevelt, beginning with his childhood and including stories of his ranching life and his military service in the Spanish-American War. The heading reads, “We begin the publication of these interesting scrapbook pages with the story of the childhood and the life of the great citizen who, by restoring peace to the world, acquired the right to recognition.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12
Uncle Sam sits in a chair smoking a pipe as a man labeled “California” and “States Rights” pleads with him. On a map of the United States in the background, an explosion appears over California; and newspapers in the foreground display headlines like “President’s Message Stirs Up Storm in San Francisco” and “California Dissatisfied.”
The year 1906 was possibly the busiest of President Roosevelt’s presidency. It was the high-water mark of the Muckrakers, the journalists, authors, and reformers who explosively attacked corruption in American business and finance. Congress passed many reform laws, and the administration promulgated many regulations, in many areas of American life from conservation to corporate affairs. The president engaged himself in battles with trust moguls like Edward Henry Harriman (whom the president called an unfit citizen); and other magnates like John D. Rockefeller had to defend themselves in lawsuits. Roosevelt’s own affairs included the Simplified Spelling and “Nature Fakir” crusades; and the controversy over dismissed Black soldiers in Brownsville, Texas, occupied his attention.
In the upper righthand corner, three beef trust men stand under an “immune” sign and hold a paper that reads, “Judge Humphreys—you can go scott free.” In the main cartoon, President Roosevelt has a “report on packing houses” on his desk as three “beef trust” men grovel at his desk. A “square deal publicity” big stick leans against the desk. Caption: (The packers who smiled over Judge Humphreys’ ruling in March now have something else to think about.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-29
President Roosevelt runs toward a “railroad rate” base as a “railroad senator” watches. The “public” jumps up in the air and encourages Roosevelt.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-15
In the top half of the cartoon, President Roosevelt grabs a man holding a rake by the neck. Caption: 1. After you had made a thrilling attack on the Man of the Muck Rake, and you had swatted and lambasted him in the most merciless manner— In the second half of the cartoon, “the common people” point Roosevelt to the “national muck heap” and ask, “Why don’t you get busy about that?” A number of individuals are in the pile: “R.R. rebater,” “official bribe taker,” “official grafter,” “U.S. senator owned by railroads,” “trust-owned U.S. senator,” New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt, Chauncy M. Depew, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Chair of the Republican National Committee George B. Cortelyou, and Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich. Caption: 2. If you suddenly learned that you ought to have attacked the Muck Heap instead of the Muck Rake. Wouldn’t it DEE-PRESS you?
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04
This poem details the events of President Roosevelt’s life and presidency, calling him “buster in war and buster in peace.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-10-26