Puppets

Grover Cleveland, Arthur P. Gorman, and August Belmont control a wooden Alton B. Parker with strings. David B. Hill holds Parker in his hand.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-09-03

At the “Republican National Convention,” President Roosevelt presses a button that controls Frank Swett Black who holds a “nominating speech that approves T. R.” New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt and New York Governor Benjamin B. Odell sit beside each other on the stage while Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon receives shocks. Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge holds up “the platform.” Indiana Senator Charles W. Fairbanks is on a wire and wears a sign that reads, “great vice-presidential slide for life.” All the delegates are puppets who vote for “Roosevelt.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-06-21

A group of women in a gallery “Reserved for American Wives of English Lords” hold strings attached to crowns on the heads of their husbands in the House of Lords. Caption: A sure guarantee of peace between America and England.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-12-18

A “Silver Mine Owner” depicted as a “silver-tongued ventriloquist” sits on a box labeled “16 to 1” on a stage, with William Jennings Bryan as a dummy sitting on his lap, holding papers labeled “Free Silver Harangues.” In two boxes at the mine owner’s feet are dummy Arthur “Sewall” on the right and dummies William A. “Peffer,” Benjamin R. “Tillman,” John Peter “Altgeld,” and George Fred “Williams” on the left. Caption: If the show succeeds, he’ll get all the profits.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-08-12

Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Oscar Hammerstein throw puppets labeled “Tenor, Second Tenor, Contralto, Baritone, Basso, Mezzo Soprano, [and] High Soprano” at each other.

Comments and Context

Operas in New York City once were popular attractions, with many productions in many theaters through the year. In opera season international stars would sing and prominent conductors lead orchestras. Similarly, talents from America and abroad launched careers on New York opera stages, especially after the advent of phonographs.

The traditional rivalry between German and Italian operas was particularly intense. The adulation of celebrated singers and conductors, the occasional premiers of some productions, and publicity battles went unmatched in New York until, perhaps, the performances of Frank Sinatra in the 1940s and Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1950s.

The child king Alfonso XIII, as a wooden puppet, is slumped over on the “Throne of Spain” with a clergyman standing next to him. On the walls to the right are portrait paintings of “Charles V, Ferdinand and Isabella, [and] Philip II.” On the left, an arm labeled “Home Riots” reaches through the curtains with a torch to ignite a bomb labeled “Anarchy” next to the throne.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1898-06-08

William Jennings Bryan is pictured as a puppet being manipulated by a well-dressed man sitting on a large money bag labeled “Silver Mining Syndicate” and listing names and dollar amounts: “Hearst $75,000,000, Fair 40,000,000, Mackay 40,000,000, Wm. Stewart 40,000,000, W. A. Clark 30,000,000, Moffatt 30,000,000 [and] J. P. Jones 25,000,000.” Byran is holding cymbals labeled “Free Silver and Prosperity” and “Promises of Good Wages.” His audience is a laborer with his lunch pail labeled “Labor” and in his back pocket a “Bank Book.” Caption: They can never catch American labor with that combination.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-10-07

A crazed man representing the Czar of “Russia” sits on a throne, manipulating marionettes that represent “France” (Felix Faure), “Austria” (Franz Joseph I), “Italy” (Umberto I), “Germany” (William II), and “England” (John Bull) playing musical instruments.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-05-05

Print shows Robert Green Ingersoll speaking from a stage in an auditorium filled with an audience whose heads are half-dollar coins. Dangling from a cord at the edge of the stage is T. De Witt Talmage as a marionette or wooden toy, with one hand pinned to the Bible.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-05-03

William Jennings Bryan, as a puppet, uses a large stick to beat another puppet labeled “Public Duties” in a marquee labeled “Chautauqua Circuit.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-08-06

An old man labeled “Mormon Hierarchy”, wearing a coat of stitched together fragments of cloth labeled “Polygamy, Mormon Rebellion, Resistance to Federal Authority, Blood Atonement, Murder of Apostates, [and] Mountain Meadow Massacre,” stands outside the door to the “U.S. Senate” and places a puppet labeled “R. Smoot” inside the Senate chamber.

Comments and Context

This cartoon was drawn at the commencement of the first trial in the United States Senate of Reed Smoot of Utah, elected the previous year but challenged over his status as a prominent “Apostle” in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As a Mormon he was scrutinized over policies and controversies surrounding the denomination. Polygamy supposedly had been outlawed — a major concern of Americans — but Smoot himself had a mother who was the sixth of his father’s simultaneous (“plural”) marriages. Smoot was seated by the Senate, but trials continued for four years.

The “sins” or offenses and controversies surrounding Mormonism are emblazoned on the coat of the elder holding Smoot as a puppet.

A puppeteer labeled “Russia” with marionettes labeled “Bulgaria” and “Macedonia” engage in a sword fight. The Bulgarian puppet is about to cut the head off the Macedonian puppet who has dropped his sword. Hanging on the side of the theater, to the left, are three puppets labeled “Roumelia, Servia, [and] Roumania.” Caption: A continuous performance since Peter, the Great.

Comments and Context

It was not a mere hobby-horse of Puck cartoonists and editorial writers, but other publications, diplomats, and the world at large, to take note of Czarist Russia’s adventurous and irresponsible actions on the world stage in the first years of the twentieth century. Czar Nicholas’s own cousins, German Emperor William II and English King Edward VII, routinely were wary of Imperial Russia’s intentions, and irrational policies.

Brutal suppression of growing domestic dissent, persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, economic mismanagement, and rudderless interventionism abroad — all made for Russia to be the powder-keg that history now knows it to have been. At the time of this cartoon, Russia thought it was filling a vacuum in Manchuria following the agreements after the Boxer Rebellion and considered it safe to challenge Japan over disputed islands and ports in its far East. It was not safe; they quietly pleaded for international assistance to negotiate an end to the ensuing war, and it came in the person of President Roosevelt.

A railroad lobbyist puts on a puppet show. The puppets, labeled “Nicaragua Route” and “Panama Route,” stand in opposition to each other. Caption: Railroad Lobbyist — The railroads won’t have to compete with a canal so long as I can keep these figures fighting.

Comments and Context

Largely forgotten in history’s considerations of the Panama Canal — and debates that still rage — is the general opposition of American railroads and railroad barons to the concept of a trans-oceanic canal. The railroads of course benefited from commerce and passenger business over the North American continent, absent a canal. The theoretical military advantages (savings of sailing times) mitigated in favor of a canal after the Spanish-American War. These were issues that raged, and Keppler’s cartoon is a reminder of the cynical role of the railroad interests. Ironically, as the United States developed a two-navy policy through the years, the strategic importance of the Panama Canal has receded as security concerns, including terror attacks, have increased. And a large percentage of international trade through the Canal in our times is between eastern South American countries and Pacific powers like China and Japan.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs