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President Roosevelt rebukes Edgar Williams for the criticisms of his administration, particularly William’s ignorance in blaming the recent economic fluctuations on Roosevelt’s policy of enforcing laws against the wealthy and corporations.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-16
President Roosevelt rebukes David Scull, a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, for his ignorance in blaming the recent economic fluctuations on Roosevelt’s “action in enforcing the law against wealthy wrong-doers.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-16
Senator Lodge sends President Roosevelt a newspaper copy of his speech to send to Secretary of War William H. Taft and commends Roosevelt for his speech. He also sends a letter he wrote to a friend, concerning recent stock market fluctuations, on which he wants Roosevelt’s opinion. Lodge hopes Roosevelt will look into the matter of the submarine boats.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-21
Senator Lodge acknowledges E. T. Colburn and his friend’s concerns over the decline in the stock market. However, this decline results from many causes affecting not only the United States but the world. Therefore, Lodge argues that blaming President Roosevelt’s administration and investigations of corporations is unreasonable and unjust.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-19
Andrew Carnegie tells President Roosevelt not to miss the editorial in today’s New York Times. Carnegie notes that the markets have recovered, and now he hopes for “hum drum” rest. Carnegie also remarks on the need for railroad regulation and the good work of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and that the “railway men” will favor it eventually. Carnegie hopes that Roosevelt will dictate a letter to be read at the upcoming National Arbitration and Peace Congress, and insists, twice, that Roosevelt should “take a holiday.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-04-07
Brooks Adams writes to President Roosevelt to express his concern and offer advice in regards to Roosevelt’s attempt to “force through a new policy” that is opposed by titans of industry, finance, and the press. Adams also details how opponents support making Joseph Benson Foraker president by capitalizing on the Brownsville Affair. Adams’s primary advice for Roosevelt is to fight relentlessly at every opportunity to eventually force a popular vote on the issue.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-06
Francis C. Travers argues that claims of President Roosevelt’s Annual Message having a negative effect on the stock market are false. Travers wants Roosevelt to go ahead with his plans for the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-08
Armed with a big stick, President Roosevelt plays poker with “Bear” and “Bull” on a table labeled “Wall Street,” saying “It’s a square deal, boys!”
Maurice Ketten, who had a long and modest but distinguished career as a cartoonist of social subjects, life’s dilemmas, and daily panel serials of suburban and domestic situations, did not draw political cartoons for long, and this attempt might explain the course set for him by his editors at the New York Evening World.
A large teddy bear hits the “New York Stock Exchange” with a big stick, sending several men flying out as well as “securities” and “stocks.”
This clipping in the White House scrapbook represents a measure of journalistic schizophrenia. The headline reports brokers “wild with joy” after the first collapses of the 1907 Wall Street Panic. Harold Tucker Webster’s cartoon, however, shows the bear — then, as now, the nickname for retreating market values — destroying the Stock Exchange.
President Roosevelt holding a gun faces a grizzly bear. In the background stands a wounded bull while in the foreground a teddy bear, also with a gun, reads a book entitled, “Hunting the Grizzly–T.R.”
Clifford Kennedy Berryman drew the simplest of political cartoons about relatively screaming headlines — a momentous national event, well addressed in a drawing that relied on the double meanings of cartoon iconography.
President Roosevelt throws a “message” that explodes underneath a “Standard Oil” company octopus that holds a “never touched me!” paper. The explosion sends several bears and two lambs flying. “Stocks” bulls look over “The Street” wall to see what is happening. Commissioner of Corporations at the Department of Commerce and Labor James Rudolph Garfield also watches around a corner of the wall.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-07
Nelson W.Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller appear as dark-skinned men wearing skirts labeled “Gold Dust.” Aldrich stands on top of a replica of a building labeled “Stock Exchange” and holds up a replica of the U.S. Capitol building. Rockefeller stands on the ground next to him, holding up an oil can labeled “Standard Oil” and a wallet stuffed with money. Uncle Sam stands to the left, in the foreground, stroking his beard, with a concerned look on his face. Caption: (You might as well, Uncle. They’ll do it, anyway.)
The seemingly curious depiction of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller as little native boys is explained by the background of the cartoon. This was a parody of the popular, now obscure, brand of cleansing powder, Gold Dust Cleanser. Cartoonist J. S. Pughe clearly thought that calling the Senator and the tycoon “twins” was dispositive — and the implication presented by the word “gold.” The composition of the drawing is taken straight from a Gold Dust magazine advertisement drawn by E. W. Kemble, an occasional Puck cartoonist.
Vignettes show the activities of stock exchanges and gambling on sporting events on ocean liners once they are equipped for wireless transmission.
“Coming events cast their shadows before…” or perhaps their sounds and static. There were many experiments with the electronic transmission of sound going back to Thomas Edison’s early inventions; and many versions of wireless telegraphy and communications by radio waves between hilltops and even over the Atlantic Ocean before Guglielmo Marconi perfected wireless communication. In between and subsequently there were many scientists and many experiments to perfect communication, and entertainment “over the air.”
Uncle Sam uses a magnifying glass to see in his left hand a diminutive man labeled “Rumor Monger” yelling “Panic, National Disaster, Failures, [and] Ruin” into a megaphone labeled “Wall Str.” Caption: Uncle Sam — Well! Will this nuisance ever learn that the country governs Wall Street; not Wall Street, the country.
Even Puck, whose cartoons can be seen as a weekly diary of current events and prevailing opinions, occasionally in the early Roosevelt years reflected unease on Wall Street, insecurity about labor peace, and such public feelings. However — and far more frequently, as in this cartoon — cartoonists and commentators like Joseph Keppler Junior depicted the second American “Era of Good Feelings” and the solid prosperity of the Roosevelt years.
In a business office, the president of an oil company talks to a resident of the local community. He is explaining to “Mr. Haysede” why his company has to issue more stock. Caption: Mr. Haysede — I see by your advertisements that you’re going to issue some more stock. What’s that for? / Oil President — What for? Why, my good fellow, we’ve earned so much money in the past six months that we’re obliged to have more stock to pay dividends on it order to get rid of it.
Gallaway’s cartoon makes a political, or economic, point masquerading as a simple joke. “Hayseeds” and “rubes” were stereotypical uneducated rural types frequently fleeced by manipulative swindlers from the city. In this cartoon, Gallaway engaged in hyperbole, because in 1903 it was not only gullible farmers who were skeptical about stock watering; the middle class, small businessmen, and, increasingly, the federal government under President Theodore Roosevelt who questioned Wall Street’s manipulation of share values.
A bear and a bull appear as gladiators in an arena. The bear has one foot on the bull and is about to plunge a sword labeled “Raids” into the bull. Sheep at the edge of the wall appear to be signaling death to the bull.
Icons and symbols are the mother’s milk of political cartooning. Parties, movements, and countries have had animals and figures representing them, and many origin stories are interesting; some are lost in obscurity.
J. Pierpont Morgan, as a strong man at a circus, attempts to inflate a balloon labeled “Steel Stock” with a pump labeled “Enormous Earnings.” In the background is a crowd of people, some holding papers labeled “Steel Stock.” Caption: A strong man, a strong pump; but no sigh of a rise.
Sometimes the stock manipulation and monopolist’s control of values backfired. The machinations of J. P. Morgan after his acquisition of smaller steel companies if he might have failed to acquire United States Steel from Andrew Carnegie, and then his top-heavy position in the steel market after Carnegie did sell to Morgan, was the subject of editorial and political commentary at the time that he over-extended his resources. If so, Morgan’s challenges soon were overcome, and not as serious as Pughe’s cartoon suggests.
J. P. Morgan, caricatured as a little boy and labeled “Trust Promoter,” blows a bubble labeled “Inflated Values” using “Trust Water” through a pipe labeled “Stock Exchange.”
As J. P. Morgan expanded his financial empire around this time by purchasing companies and combining them (“trusts”) or arranging vertical organization of whole industries (controlling every step of operations from, say, mining to refining to manufacturing to shipping on land and sea). As he also increasingly controlled or influenced banks, lending, and monetary instruments, he became able to inflate or “water” (weaken) stock prices according to his needs of the moment. Cartoonist Pughe, despite failing to hit the mark with a spot-on caricature of Morgan, depicted this situation — a growing crisis in the economy and financial system, in fact — perfectly. Morgan’s methods helped him acquire U. S. Steel from Andrew Carnegie, attracted the intervention of the government in the Northern Securities case, and in part precipitated the Panic of 1907. Ironically, it was Morgan who was recruited to rescue the economy from that brief crisis; the cartoon’s implication was to be realized — the bubble burst — five years later.
A large group of citizens read the latest news of a stock boom and rush off to the stockbroker to purchase the hot commodity. In the background, the corporate monopolist [“Trust Magnate”] is seen paying off the newspaper editor with shares of the stock. Caption: The promoter waters the stock, the newspaper booms it (for a consideration) and the silly public buys it – after which the water is squeezed out.
Cartoonist Pughe’s critique of a dirty collaboration between corporate money was true enough: many newspapers were considered frank mouthpieces for industries or even individual companies. The practice was widespread, however; magazines also operated in similar fashion. A decade later, Harper’s Weekly was subsidized by Standard Oil; and Puck itself, late in its life, was funded by the Democratic Party; and in related fashion, or intent, newspaper publishers and editors sometimes were given ambassadorships as “plums.”
J. P. Morgan as a stock-market bull blows bubbles labeled “Inflated Values” as many deluded investors reach for them.
The immediate inspirations for this cartoon Keppler were J. P. Morgan’s organization and capitalization (some said over-capitalization) of the United States Steel Corporation at the time of this drawing, and the brief but unsettling panic on Wall Street caused by the machinations of Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and other financiers during the formation of the new company.