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Newspaper clipping of cartoon showing Theodore Roosevelt with a feather duster approaching Senator Thomas Collier Platt, covered with cobwebs. Cartoon refers to speculation that Roosevelt would vie for Platt’s Senate position when he left the presidency.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1909
President Roosevelt’s head is on a spider’s body that sits near the center of a web with the United States Capitol building. Off to the left in the Washington Monument and a democratic donkey fly that says, “You haven’t got me yet!” The “G. O. P.” elephant fly is close to the center and says, “I give up!!” Caption: Washington is laid out like a cart wheel, or it is a spider’s web?
James Calvert Smith’s political cartoon was drawn in the era when the only web associated with political commentary was a spider’s web like he pictured in this cartoon. It is possible that the Democrat’s point of view as more cynical than history would confirm, even in the next few years.
A man with a slip of paper in his pocket that states “Senator-Elect from–” is stepping off a barrel labeled with a “$,” and climbing through an open window to a building labeled “U.S. Senate.” The door and the steps are covered with cobwebs from lack of use, and the steps are labeled “Patriotism, Statesmanship, Understanding, [and] Character.” Title quote is taken from the King James Version of the Bible, John 10:1.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1898-02-09
Print shows General Nelson A. Miles, oversized, sitting at a desk, holding in his left hand a book titled “How to Become President [by] Gen. Miles.” Around him are many newspaper reporters and photographers, representing such newspapers as “The Yellow Yawp, Daily Whoop, The Scare, The Blow, Morning Bluff, Daily Slush [and] Staats Klatsch [with a reporter that looks like Oswald Ottendorfer].” On the wall in the background is a telephone labeled “To the Administration” that is covered with cobwebs.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1899-03-15
Former Governor of Massachusetts, William L. Douglas, appears as a courtier, gesturing toward a woman labeled “Democratic Victory” on a bed “Asleep Since 1892,” and asking Oscar W. Underwood, Woodrow Wilson, Champ Clark, and Judson Harmon which has “a better chance of waking her.” Douglas holds a shield with the message “Record: Tariff reform Democrat. Elected Governor of Massachusetts by 35,995 when Roosevelt carried that state against Parker by 92,076.” A lady-in-waiting, the Democratic donkey, has fallen asleep at the foot of the bed. The room is filled with cobwebs labeled “Defeat in 1896, Defeat in 1900, Defeat in 1904, [and] Defeat in 1908,” and is becoming overgrown with tree roots.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1912-06-19
Travelers rush past the cobwebbed ramp to a ship that claims to take five days to New York and board a ship that only takes four and a half days to New York.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1912-05-01
Nelson W. Aldrich appears as a large spider on a cobweb labeled “Senate Committee Room” spread between the U.S. Capitol and a “Standard Oil” tower, on which several flies labeled “Anti-Trust Bill, Free Alcohol Bill, House Bill, Philippine Tariff Bill, [and] Legislation Needed” have landed.
Nelson W. Aldrich was not the most senior member of the United States Senate, but by wily tactics, ability, and connections he clearly was the most powerful in the Republican-dominated Upper House during the administration of President Roosevelt. From his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee he managed to affect virtually every piece of legislation that passed (or did not) through the Senate.
That power, regarded by many politicians as sinister, is reflected in this cartoon by J. S. Pughe. “Where bills went to die” was a lament of Democrats and insurgent (reformist) Republicans. Yet Aldrich was a different kind of Reactionary, or “Stand-Patter,” or Old Guard stalwart, as borne out by his record subsequent to the time of this cartoon. For instance, he co-sponsored the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1910, which reinforced high duties and was soundly rejected by some commercial interests, in the end, as well as voters: subservience to trusts that backfired on his party. After the Panic of 1907, he helped create a commission that studied, long-term, currency reform.
Uncle Sam, as a sleeping Swiss guard of the “Public Funds,” is being overtaken by trees and cobwebs. Two dogs are also asleep at his feet. A building on the right labeled “Public Funds” is being overgrown by a tree labeled “Corruption” with spreading limbs labeled “National, State, [and] City.” A snake labeled “Lobbyism” hangs from the branches, and rats flee with coins from its coffers. Two spiders labeled “Graft” and “Bossism” ply the webs, a tree on the left is labeled “Ring Rule,” and an alligator labeled “Greed” prowls the foreground among tree roots labeled “Dead Conscience.” In the background, a vulture labeled “Monopoly” keeps an eye on a candlelight vigil by a person labeled “Dead Letter Laws” for a female figure labeled “Honesty.” The candle glows with “Hope.”
This cartoon illustrates the magazine’s evolution from humor-tinged reform advocacies to a more urgent, more radical agenda. In its past, the magazine would have addressed these social and governmental ills, but without the apocalyptic tone of this cartoon.
Conditions in society were changing, of course; and Puck’s own role in influencing public opinion, especially in the Era of the Muckrakers, affected public attitudes. Powerful cartoons like this summarized the issues before the public.
William Jennings Bryan is a large spider labeled “Free Silver” with three flies labeled “White, Schurz, [and] Godkin” caught in his web labeled “16 to 1,” “Anti-expansion,” “Chicago Platform,” and “Bryanism.”
The radical economic policies and agrarian roots of William Jennings Bryan kept many Eastern, aristocratic liberals from making alliance with his Populist-based campaigns. The old-line liberal reformers Horace White, Carl Schurz, and Edwin Godkin — all on the staffs of the New York Post and The Nation magazine — were tempted to support Bryan in his presidential candidacy of 1900 on the issues of Expansionism and anti-Imperialist views. The cartoon’s layout and labels indicate that cartoonist Pughe saw Imperialism as an issue that would lead to their doom.
President Roosevelt thanks C. A. H. McCauley for the “curious sea spider web” and the “mat and pickle forks” that will come.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-10-19