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Colorized postcard of a teddy bear wearing an outfit decorated with beads and patches and a feathered headdress. The bear is standing up and holding a bow and arrow. A note on the reverse asks the recipient of the postcard if her teddy bear looks like the one on the front.
Duane G. Jundt Theodore Roosevelt Collection
1909
The picture sent by T. St. John Gaffney, the Consul General at Munich, amuses President Roosevelt. While he grieves the loss of his friend Ambassador Hermann Speck von Sternburg, he mourns for Lillian May Speck von Sternburg’s situation. If he makes it into German East Africa, he will contact Gaffney’s son-in-law, Hans Heinrich von Wolf. Roosevelt agrees with Gaffney regarding the navy.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-09-09
President Roosevelt rolls up a “message to the Senate and House of Representatives” “guaranteed to make a noise when opened.” A teddy bear stares as Roosevelt rolls up two sticks of dynamite and an “alarm clock” as Maurice Latta heads toward the United States Capitol building.
As the weeks counted down to the Republican National Convention, the practical perception of President Roosevelt as a lame duck accelerated. However, he would be president for a full ten months after this cartoon’s publication, and no one should have expected a man like Roosevelt to slow down in activities, or controversies.
William Jennings Bryan reaches for President Roosevelt’s “radical policies” teddy bear.
An early Nelson Harding cartoon in the conservative Democratic newspaper The Brooklyn Eagle well states the situation — or at least the widespread perception of public, press, and politicians — that Theodore Roosevelt had adopted increasingly radical positions through his presidency. Many observers noted that policies that had been anathema to Roosevelt and many Republicans, including onetime Populist platforms, were now accepted, or at least advocated by the president.
President Roosevelt holds a “declination” knife in his right hand and a “3rd term” teddy bear in his left hand.
It is a tribute, if not a simple sign, of the literacy of average people at the turn of the century, that Macauley’s cartoon presumably was understood by readers. Entitled simply “Virginius,” the drawing appeared in the New York World, one of the nation’s largest-circulation newspapers, but a leading “yellow journal,” often sensationalist, and with a large number of immigrants among its readership.
President Roosevelt tries to pacify the “Taft boom” baby with a teddy bear as a messenger boy departs with a “wireless to Taft” that reads, “Bill, hurry home. He’s getting fretful. Rush. T.R.”
At times it seemed that the most enthusiastic backer of William H. Taft’s possible candidacy for the presidency, and even a run at the Republican nomination, was President Roosevelt — not Taft himself; not his dragooned corps of supporters. Taft’s wife Helen and his brother Charles were strong boosters, but Taft himself suffered from lassitude and in his heart would have preferred a seat on the Supreme Court. (Eventually he would serve as as President and Chief Justice, the only person thus far to do so.)
President Roosevelt holds a paper that reads, “The tariff cannot, with wisdom, be dealt with in the year preceding a presidential election.” A “standpatter” rejoices while a “tariff revisionist” says, “By heck!”
Clifford Kennedy Berryman’s cartoon (whose caption was clipped off by the custodian of the White House’s cartoon scrapbook) was a spot-on illustration of the situation regarding President Roosevelt and the nation’s trade barriers, its tariffs and import duties. It likewise correctly summarized the reaction of the high-protection and low-tariff and free-trade advocates.
President Roosevelt holds “federal patronage” behind his back and asks, “Which hand, gentlemen?” In the foreground a teddy bear plays with dice.
Clifford Kennedy Berryman, over his long career, often was complimented as a political cartoonist, but the rare sort who held no malice. In fact over his long career he held no real capacity for caricature. Rather he achieved realistic likenesses of political figures, either by mechanical or freehand means, and fixed those heads on smaller bodies and in situations. Often, because of this artifice, his characters wore inappropriate expressions or failed to make eye-contact. Such was the case in this cartoon.
President Roosevelt holds a “third term” teddy bear in his hand and thinks about George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant each holding up one hand with “no third term” papers beside them.
The great Eugene Zimmerman (“Zim”), Swiss immigrant who had drawn for Puck in the early 1880s and then was a mainstay on its Republican rival Judge into the 1920s, was noted at this time in his career for outrageous comic drawing, humor cartoons, and ethnic lampoons. Occasionally he drew political cartoons, and “?” is as serious a treatment as any cartoonist could have drawn about President Roosevelt’s dilemma regarding the 1908 election.
President Roosevelt travels in a riverboat that is headed toward tree branches in the river: “beef trust,” “tobacco trust,” “railroad trust,” “Harriman interests,” and “Standard Oil.” A teddy bear keeps him company in the barge.
Cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman used the title of Mark Twain’s famous book of recollections, Life On the Mississippi, for his depiction of President Roosevelt’s progress toward Louisiana, mid-way through an extended speaking tour in the Autumn of 1907.
President Roosevelt meets with his cabinet in a room filled with snakes: “Harriman interests,” “panic,” “tobacco trust,” “powder trust,” “beef trust,” “railroad trust,” “Standard Oil,” “immunity,” “Japanese war scare,” and “telegrapher’s strike.” The chairs for Secretary of State and Secretary of War are empty.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-27
Six teddy bears walk toward “The Clarion” where there is a sign: “President Roosevelt leaves Washington today.”
Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 hunt in the canebrakes of Mississippi and Louisiana resulted in no bagged bears… and one national legend, the inspiration for an enduring plush companion for generations of children, and a cartoonists’ mascot. Frustrated by the paucity of game on that expedition, and famously refusing to shoot the bear that Holt Collier — a legendary former slave who claimed to have shot three thousand black bears himself — tied to a tree for the president.
President Roosevelt walks into a clearing of animals with his rifle where a snake, bear, cougar, and rabbit holding signs that read “Immune. I’m a ‘practical’ varmint,” “Immune. Grandfather of the teddy-bear,” “Immune. Testified against fakirs,” and “Immune. A friend of John Burroughs.”
W. A. Rogers, a nationally celebrated cartoonist of thirty years’ work, was not above falling back on tired themes. Theodore Roosevelt’s passion for hunting, the apparent contradiction of his fervent conservation work with that passion, and the comic possibilities inherent in anthropomorphic creatures made cartoons like this virtually inevitable, and frequent.
President Roosevelt fills out papers on his desk, his suitcase with tags reading, “Oyster Bay” and “Washington.” Uncle Sam says to Roosevelt, “Bid me ‘howdy’ before you go.” Presidential secretary William Loeb has a bag over his shoulder and reads a paper, “R.R. Time Table: Next train (presidential) leaves Oct.” A teddy bear reads “23 Jingles”: “In again, out again, presidential train!” In the background is the Washington Monument.
President Roosevelt, as pictured in this drawing by Clifford Kennedy Berryman, was set to embark on one of the longest trips of his presidency. As depicted in this cartoon, published on September 25, 1907, Roosevelt’s plans would take him to Ohio (for the funeral of President William McKinley’s widow), Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Tennessee, to deliver speeches. Then he planned speeches and a two-week bear hunt in the canebrakes of Louisiana, followed by speeches and appearances in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia, before returning to Washington.
President Roosevelt walks into a clearing of animals with his rifle where a snake, bear, cougar, and rabbit holding signs that read “Immune. I’m a ‘practical’ varmint,” “Immune. Grandfather of the teddy-bear,” “Immune. Testified against fakirs,” and “Immune. A friend of John Burroughs.” Caption: Prepared.
President Roosevelt went on an extended bear hunt near Stamboul, Louisiana, between October 6 and October 19, a rather long vacation away from the public in the middle of an extended speaking tour. It was in a part of the country, the canebrakes stretching between Mississippi and Louisiana, where a bear hunt early in his presidency, where the incident leading to the legend of the teddy bear arose.
President Roosevelt observes two men, holding a pitchfork with a “Nobel Peace Medal” attached to it, and gestures that he wants no part of their argument. A “telegrapher” and “telegraph company” are arguing over downed lines. Meanwhile, a teddy bear watches from a haystack, “Me for the haystack!”
The point of Clifford Kennedy Berryman’s cartoon is one that is often missed by history and historians: President Roosevelt intervened in labor/management disputes, but was not constrained to do so in every instance. When private businesses and employees, or unions, had disagreements that did not represent situations where fundamental fairness was threatened, the president felt no compunction to interfere.
President Roosevelt holds a sack and has a sign tied around his neck, “Specials today: Inheritance Tax, Income Tax, Federal Control of Mineral Lands.” In the foreground a Teddy bear rips out pages of a “Democratic Recipe Book” while William Jennings Bryan says, “I always said he was a Democrat.” The cow beside Bryan says, “My book!”
The Evening Star, consistently a Republican-leaning newspaper through its history (which mostly was in control of the Noyes family) made noise when it thought the party strayed from orthodoxy. Such was the case with this Clifford Kennedy Berryman cartoon of 1907, when many politicians and commentators noticed that President Roosevelt was adopting, or publicly considering, some radical policies.
President Roosevelt with a teddy bear nearby awakes from slumber and sees the ghosts of Edward Henry Harriman, J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Huttleston Rogers, and John D. Rockefeller.
The young Clifford Kennedy Berryman employed lines from the Eugene Field poem “Seein’ Things,” in this cartoon. His references for the boogymen scaring President Roosevelt in bed were unfortunately photos of the smiling robber barons John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Edward Henry Harriman, and Henry Huttleston Rogers. They are out of perspective, and too genial, to be appropriate in the drawing.
President Roosevelt tells the children planting trees on Arbor Day as he holds his big stick, “Some day we will have another crop of big sticks.” In the background a teddy bear plants a tree.
President Roosevelt watches from the White House as New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, Leslie M. Shaw, Secretary of State Elihu Root, former Secretary of the Treasury Philander C. Knox, watch Secretary of State William H. Taft and Senator Joseph Benson Foraker roll two eggs — “Taft boom” and “Foraker boom”on the White House lawn.
As Easter approached in 1907, cartoonists like Clifford Kennedy Berryman of the Washington Evening Star found another opportunity to sail to deadline with a ready-made premise for the topic of the day — who would succeed President Roosevelt? Boys + White House + rivalry = easy variation-on-theme.