Scapegoat

The reviewer of Donald R. Richberg’s book, The Shadow Men, writes it is a powerful story written by someone with a thorough knowledge of business and politics. The main character, John Byford, speaks of his experience as a secretary who becomes the scapegoat for the director’s misdeeds. Byford eventually realizes the men in power are not smart, they just know all the tricks and rules their opponents don’t know.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-11-18

President Roosevelt leans against a tree with a rifle smoking in his hands looking dejected as a goat labeled “Harriman” bounds away. Caption: “Whereat I was much cast down.” — T. R., “Hunting Big Game.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Occasionally Theodore Roosevelt’s breeding and education opened him up to public jesting, not quite ridicule. When he dressed as a fancy “dude” and spoke with an affected accent in the New York Assembly, it was a subject of jest on the floor and in cartoons. As a rancher joining his cowboys during a cattle stampede, he urged others to “hasten forward quickly there,” and so forth.

A ship labeled “Life Insurance” is being taken over by pirates labeled “Pres. $100,000, 1st V.P. $50,000, 2nd V.P. $40,000, 3rd V.P., 4th V.P., 5th V.P. [and] Sonny,” who are forcing scapegoats to walk the plank, an “Old Clerk, Office Boy, Pensioner, Janitor, Scrubwoman, [and] The Goat.” The ship figurehead shows two men labeled “Hendricks & Kilbourn.” Caption: After the investigation the strictest economy.

comments and context

Comments and Context

During the conclusions of the New York state investigation into abuses in the insurance industry, Puck Magazine was fairly obsessed with the revelations, the levels of corruption, the networks of prominent figures among the favored, and the amounts of money involved that did not make its way to policyholders or common investors. In this issue of the magazine, the front-page cartoon and the center-spread were both devoted to the scandal — a rare paradigm in Puck.

An unidentified man sits in a chair in a cell at Sing Sing Prison. He has changed out of his prison uniform into a business suit, and is doling out money by the scoopful in return for “Bogus Securities” and “Bogus Collateral.” Chutes of money pour into his cell through windows labeled “Cashier, Vice-Pres., [and] President.” Sticking out of a back pocket is the “Star of Hope,” the Sing Sing Prison bulletin. Caption: A washday convenience for frenzied banks.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The maximum-security prison Sing Sing, in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, 40 miles north of New York City, was built in 1825. Eighty years later its security was as secure as its physical plant: there was a porous ability of inmates to interact with the outside world, and its physical plant and sanitation were in scandalous disrepair. A state commission in 1905 reported on these conditions and implicated political parties (particularly New York’s Tammany Hall / Democratic machine) as well as various levels of New York state bureaucracy.

A police officer holds Oscar L. Baldwin, cashier at the Mechanics’ National Bank in Newark, by the shoulder while Baldwin, using “Speculation Soap Suds,” blows a soap bubble labeled “500,000 Paid in Capital” and “Surplus Fund $400,000” that drips money into a top hat in front of many old men labeled “Bank Director” and investors entering on the right, in the background. At his feet are papers labeled “Cooked Statement.” Puck gestures toward the old men and suggests the police officer consider arresting them as well. Caption: Puck to Representative of the Law–“You have got the thief – now take the men who let him steal the money of the trusting depositors.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1881-11-09

Print shows Justice sitting, blindfolded and holding her scales at her side, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Standing at her feet is Puck holding a list of names that includes “Esterhazy, Paty de Clam, Mercier, Billot, Zurlinden, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Pellieux, Delagorgue, Perivier, Tezenas” and others. Caption: Puck (to French Justice) So far, so good, Madame! You have vindicated Dreyfus; but you must punish these criminals who persecuted him, before your work is done.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-06-28

President Taft, as the biblical Aaron, pushes a goat labeled “Cannon.” Caption: “And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities … and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.” Leviticus XVI, 22.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-10-12

Full color political cartoon depicting President Roosevelt dressed as Aaron, the Biblical figure, laying his hands on the head of a goat representing Standard Oil. The goat has a bell labeled “Prosecution” around its neck and is carrying many bundles that represent other trusts. William Jennings Bryan and William Randolph Hearst are nearby and appear to be clapping.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

Creation Date

1907

A man wearing a crown labeled “Money Power” sits on a throne at his place of business labeled “Goats to Satisfy Popular Clamor,” among goats in cages labeled “Insurance Goat, Political Goat, Clerical Goat, Banking Goat, Labor Goat, Trust Goat, [and] Wall St. Goat.” At his feet is a wastebasket filled with papers labeled “Indictments.” A policeman labeled “The Law” is dragging a goat toward a crowd reaching for someone or something to blame, with one man pointing to a “Jail” in the background.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-01-17

Louis E. McComas discusses a letter he received from S. Davies Warfield and their discussion of John W. Pettit.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-09-15