A strenuous job on the Cuban ranch
President Roosevelt appears as a cowboy, on horseback, with Cuban President Tomás Estrada Palma, on foot, driving cattle labeled “High Protectionist, Senatorial Pledge Breaker, [and] Beet Sugar Senator” into the “Reciprocity Corral.”
Comments and Context
The specific context of this cartoon, and the reference to “reciprocity,” is the question of America’s policy regarding sugar, Cuba’s chief export commodity. There were expectations after the Spanish-American War among Cuba’s leaders and provisional government, Cuban sugar growers, the American sugar trust, American sugar-beet growers, and various senators representing conflicting interests. Those expectations and hopes were settled by the Platt Amendment and decisions of President Roosevelt that granted free trade of Cuban cane sugar (no or low import duties imposed by the United States — virtual reciprocity, not that Cuba needed beet sugar) offset by Cuban guarantees of other American commodities and foreign-trade concessions. Cuban President Tomás Palma, once an advocate of annexation, backed this compromise. It sometimes is difficult to remember that Puck was a Democratic journal when reviewing such noble depictions and caricatures as in this cartoon of Roosevelt. Alternatively, of course, history remembers the public’s approval and the popularity of Roosevelt at the time. Noted, also, another phrase of Roosevelt’s that entered the language: the cartoon’s caption “A Strenuous Job.”
