Soups

President Roosevelt serves soup from the “U.S. Treasury” pot with a patch labeled “deficit” and says “D-e-e-lighted.” A man labeled “Wall St.” with wispy hair shaped like a dollar sign coming out of his head holds a bowl up to Roosevelt.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Usually when cartoonists and their papers were hostile toward President Roosevelt– as the otherwise-forgotten N. Eingen of the Woman’s National Daily were — they depicted him as the supplicant or vassal of Wall Street. Corporate moguls, trust masters, and robber barons routinely were portrayed as masters, and politicians the servants.

President Roosevelt, West Virginia Senator Stephen B. Elkins, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Iowa Representative William Peters Hepburn, and Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich all stir a “R.R. rates bill” soup in a pot shaped like the United States Capitol building.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-02-19

William II, Emperor of Germany, prepares a goulash by adding a plate full of noted figures from the past, such as “Kant, Goethe, Shakspere [sic], Moses, Homer, William the Great, [and] Hammurabi” to a large pot labeled “Progressive Revelation.” The spirit of Robert Ingersoll stands next to the pot, asking why he has been excluded from the mix. Caption: Bob Ingersoll — What’s the matter with me?

comments and context

Comments and Context

Keppler’s cartoon, which actually pokes fun at the pretensions of the prominent American atheist Robert Ingersoll, despite his death a few years earlier, actually misses the point of a swirling international controversy, at least in intellectual circles, although the public at large in several countries were participants. The German Oriental Society was established to mirror the venerable American group centered at Yale. Kaiser Wilhelm II was an early and enthusiastic supporter, especially in his nation’s efforts to engage in Egyptology and Assyriology. He attended the first two lectures by the anthropologist Friederich Delitzsch, whose unfolding thesis placed Old Testament history and Mosaic law as subsequent, and inferior to, that of Babylon and Hammurabi. His lecture series was titled, Bibel und Babel (Bible and Babylon). The Kaiser, who was an accomplished scholar and fervent Christian, wrote a long letter in both German and English, defending the traditional view of historical revelation as being of two sorts — God working through men, science, the arts, and statecraft; and God working through the Church and Divine inspiration; he called the former (as many scholars since the Enlightenment did) “Progressive Revelation.” The letter achieved wide distribution around the world, and led to a longer debate between the kaiser and scholars. Keppler, who like cartoonist father, frequently took the side of sceptics and liberal theologians, dismisses the Kaiser’s references to the figures he tossed into his goulash. In fact Wilhelm cited them all, but approvingly.

Typed transcript of an article from the Bismarck Tribune which originally appeared in the Bad Lands Cow Boy. The Marquis de Morès has completed contracts with the French government to supply soldiers with a “newly invented soup.” The Marquis will soon be traveling to Europe in order to make contracts with western range companies for slaughtering their cattle.

Collection

Dickinson State University

Creation Date

1886-10-10

President Roosevelt looks over a fence covering his mouth and nose, as Postmaster General Henry C. Payne stirs a pot of soup labeled “Post Office Department” with a stick labeled “Investigation.” Steaming out of the pot are “Foul Oders,” “Postoffice Scandal,” “Corruption,” “Dishonesty,” and “Fraud.” Caption: “Say, Payne, don’t stir that pot any more than necessary. I’m afraid the odor might undermine my political health.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This amateurish cartoon in the Nashville News — which would in 1906 become a paper in the growing Scripps-McRae chain — nevertheless carried water for the Democrat refrain that perennial Post Office corruption was inherited by President Roosevelt’s new administration, which it was; and that Roosevelt would try to conceal it, which he did not. In fact Post Office reforms were vigorously carried out, earning the praise of Democrats and such Democrat journals as Puck; and were touted as triumphs of his presidency when he ran for reelection in 1904.