The rival pulpiteers
The Democratic Donkey, as a woman, sits in a pew in a church with William Jennings Bryan preaching “Jeffersonian Simplicity” from a pulpit. On Bryan’s left are Alton B. Parker, Henry Watterson, and William Randolph Hearst, and among those on his right are New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr., former Representative Tom Watson of Georgia, Representative John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, and Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman. All are preaching except Hearst, who righteously looks up to the heavens. In the background, the sun illuminates a stained glass window labeled “Our Thomas” and showing Thomas Jefferson. In a far corner of the church, Grover Cleveland is asleep. Caption: The Democratic Donkey (drowsily) — He-e-e Haw! What a lot of ways to be saved!
Comments and Context
If “politics makes strange bedfellows,” the calendar can make them even stranger. Puck Magazine, generally and justly considered a Democratic journal for most of its life, placed itself in agreement with many of the policies of the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, after the assassination of President William McKinley. That is, until the presidential election year of 1904.