Trusts, Industrial

The Republican elephant collapses under the weight of Republican and/or Roosevelt policies, including a large crown labeled “Imperialism,” a “Big Stick,” a basket labeled “Odellism,” a mail pouch labeled “Postal Scandals,” a box of “Gloves & Gaunts,” a large cannon labeled “Militarism,” a question mark labeled “Philippines,” a disk labeled “Extravagance,” a thick wad of papers labeled “High Protection” bound together by “Dingley Schedules,” and finally a bloated man labeled “Trusts.”

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Keppler’s cartoon, published on the eve of the 1904 presidential election, is a lesson in iconography and couching political points in graphic arguments of logic. The piles of bad policies and negative issues, however, were not onerous to the elephant — the Republican Party of 1904. Indeed, Roosevelt’s foreign policy, the domestic economy, and even his position on trusts (scarcely as beneficent as Keppler’s caricatured smile would indicate) were wildly welcomed by most Republicans. Indeed, if Uncle Sam, rather than the Republican Party, had been depicted in this cartoon, he might not have felt such a load either.

George B. Cortelyou turns a vice to squeeze money for Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign from a bloated man labeled “The Trusts.”

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This Puck cover cartoon by Joseph Keppler Junior ran a week before the 1904 presidential election. Its simplicity is typical of this underrated cartoonist: Campaign chairman George B. Cortelyou squeezes campaign contributions on the eve of the election, and from the hated trusts, while a beaming President Roosevelt, predictably clad in Rough Rider uniform, looks on approvingly.

The wreck of an airship labeled “High Finance” appears at the leading edge of storm clouds labeled “Investigation [and] Merger Decision Law.” The crash has ruined the blades that lifted or propelled the airship, labeled “Over Capitalization, Manipulation, Ship Building Trust, Steel Trust, [and] Northern Securities,” and has brought down six men (“Morgan, Schwab, M’Cook, Harriman, Schiff, [and] Hill”) with the wreckage and two men (“Dresser [and] Nixon”) in a swamp labeled “Ship Trust Receivership.” A lightning bolt labeled “Publicity” flashes from the clouds.

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There is a specific context of this cartoon.

President Roosevelt stops Attorney General Philander C. Knox from cutting down a tree labeled “The Trusts” with an ax labeled “Anti-Trust Laws.” A chip of wood labeled “Merger Decision” lies on the ground at the base of the tree.

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Foreshadowing a theme of the upcoming presidential contest — as Puck shifted back toward its Democratic roots — President Roosevelt, the “Trust Buster,” is depicted in this cartoon as suddenly deciding to “go easy” on trust prosecution. Only months earlier, the Roosevelt administration won the Northern Securities anti-trust case in the Supreme Court (the “merger decision” chip on the ground), but, as the Democrats developed a campaign theme, the Republicans did not want to offend big business and its possible campaign contributions.

A large, bloated man, wearing an apron labeled “The Trusts,” stands next to a large cauldron labeled “Tariff Reduction.” Standing in front of him is a diminutive, emaciated man labeled “The Philippines” holding a cup labeled “25%.”

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Keppler’s cover cartoon delineates a contrast between a bloated trust figure (did cartoonists ever depict the trusts otherwise?) and an emaciated supplicant, representing the new United States territory of the Philippine Islands — evoking the scene in Dickens’s novel where Oliver Twist begs for more food.

Uncle Sam offers a bouquet of flowers labeled “Reciprocity” to a woman labeled “Canada.” Uncle Sam is being held back by a businessman labeled “Trusts” whose feet are planted against a rock labeled “High Protection” and is pulling on Sam’s coattails, while the woman is being held back by a military officer labeled “Toryism” pulling on her fur wrap.

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Canadian reciprocity — a phrase routinely invoked as more palatable than “free trade”; almost a euphemism in arguments against high protective tariffs — was a common theme of some politicians and many business through the years. A shared boundary between the United States and Canada was one logical reason, and traditional amity between two similar peoples was another.

Charles M. Schwab, as Napoleon, sits on a rock in the middle of the ocean, looking back at the setting sun labeled “Business Reputation.” He is holding in his right hand papers labeled “Investigation Ship Building Scandal,” and other papers labeled “Steel Trust” are in his coat pocket.

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The depiction of Charles M. Schwab as an exiled Napoleon represents a troubled period in the career of an otherwise colorful success story of an American business icon. The steel executive who had worked for Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan became a steel-industry entrepreneur with the acquisition of Bethlehem Steel.

An elephant labeled G.O.P. holds a double-barrel shotgun in its trunk, pointed toward itself. The barrels are labeled “Trust Issue Tariff Reform” and “1904.”

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Likely without knowing it, Puck and cartoonist J. S. Pughe exactly pictured the conscious policy of President Theodore Roosevelt. For a generation, the political parties had tinkered with the tariff and import duties. Seeking to please various segments of industry, or farming interests, or interest groups with their own agendas, the tariff had become a bugaboo that often turned and “bit” the parties passing new laws and rates.

A well-dressed, contented, obese capitalist labeled “Trusts,” wearing skates labeled “Protective Tariff,” skates near an area of thin ice labeled “Congress” and marked with a sign that says “Danger.” He seems to see no reason to be cautious.

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Through previous decades, cartoonists’ symbols for trusts and monopolies ranged from vultures to money-bags with faces to highwaymen. By 1903, partly through the popularization of an icon resembling an enormous, overweight, ostentatious boor as conceived by the former Puck cartoonist F. Opper, in New York Journal cartoons, the figure in Pughe’s cartoon is instantly recognizable. As the concept of his cartoon suggests, Congress, dominated by Republicans at this time, was beginning to be more favorable to regulating trusts.

An angry Uncle Sam holds up a lantern labeled “Congressional Legislation” to illuminate a rotund man wearing a crown labeled “Trusts” and a robe decorated with dollar signs. The man has a ring with many keys hanging from a cord around his waist, and he is sitting on a stack of books that are labeled “Day Book, Ledger, Entry Book, Stock Book, [and] Cash Book.” He has his right hand on an open book. All the books are locked with padlocks. Caption: Uncle Sam — You’re a powerful big man, and you have your uses. But if you’re honest why do you hide in the dark? – Open up those books!

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Pughe’s cartoon is on a theme that often had been visited by cartoonists and editorial writers for decades in criticism of the trusts and monopolies: publicity. Reformers knew that the glare of public scrutiny would accelerate the demise, or at least the more onerous practices, of rapacious business combinations. The seeds planted by critics bore fruit in the century’s first decade from new unlikely sources — the presidency, under Theodore Roosevelt, and the “Muckrakers” (by coincidence, Roosevelt’s term) who, in print of both fiction and exposes, eviscerated the corruption and venality of monopolists. 

Yale professor and university president Arthur Twining Hadley looks through a huge magnifying glass trained on a laborer labeled “Trust Employee.” However, what Hadley sees through the lens is a “Trust Slave” linked by a ball and chain to “Trusts.” On the ground, at Hadley’s feet, is a piece of paper stating “Dangers of trusts and imperialism. Prof. Hadley.”

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Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Investors are drowning in rough seas labeled “Wall Street” and “Speculation,” and a top hat labeled “Ingenuous Investor” is caught in a whirlpool labeled “Iron and Steel Trust.”

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The story behind this cartoon was one of longer and more serious complication than a short-lived panic, actually the first Wall Street “panic,” as opposed to actual economic depressions. It was a case of wealthy financiers struggling, and small companies and individual investors getting crushed as they wrestled. James J. Hill, the railroad magnate, partnered with J. P. Morgan for regional rail monopoly in the United States northwest, but were countered by financier Jacob Schiff and Edward H. Harriman, who by circumstance of acquisitions was a railroad baron himself, controlling the Union Pacific. Harriman attempted a stock raid, weakening the position of smaller railroads, leading to sell-offs, failures, and a general Wall Street panic, the first of its kind. When the dust settled, Hill, Morgan, and Harriman agreed to combine and form the Northern Securities Company. The ugly effects of the 1901 panic, as much as “bigness” of the Northern Securities Company itself, is what led to the Roosevelt Administration’s anti-trust suit the following year, a fact infrequently noted by history.

An oversized, bloated human figure with the head of a pig, wearing a sash labeled “Steel Trust,” holds steel rails in both hands. He stands on the grounds of a steel factory labeled “U.S.” John Bull stands on the left, on a patch of ground labeled “England,” paying a reduced rate for the rails. Uncle Sam, standing on the right, pays an exorbitant rate due to a “Protective Tariff 43.58%.” Caption: The poor foreigner couldn’t get his rails for twenty-four dollars if we didn’t elect to pay thirty-five.

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The background of this cartoon is less about the mathematical results of tariffs and rates, though they were always matters of Byzantine debate between free-traders and defenders of “infant industries” and protective tariffs, and more about the headline of the day: J. P. Morgan’s purchase of Carnegie Steel Company. Its capitalization was touted at $1 billion when U. S. Steel was introduced to Wall Street. Merged with his own Federal Steel, Morgan introduced the business model of “vertical integration,” control of production from raw materials through transport and manufacture to ultimate marketing and shipments. Andrew Carnegie’s reluctant sale price was $480 million, which Morgan instantly accepted. Later, Carnegie told Morgan he always regretted not asking for $10 million more. Morgan immediately replied that would have paid it. Puck traditionally was a proponent of free tree and low tariffs, and generally was anti-monopoly from its earliest days. In the 1888 presidential election, it even published a campaign booklet, The Tariff ‘Question.’ 

Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna, wearing a sign “Please help the poor,” and J.P. Morgan, carrying a model ship labeled “Leyland S.S. Lines,” stand at the end of a pier with the “Ship Yard” behind them. They hold out their hats, one labeled “For a shipping subsidy,” to Uncle Sam standing in front of the U.S. Treasury. An enormous ocean-going steamship, flying a banner “American built ships,” floats offshore in the distance. Caption: Uncle Sam. — You are already building up a monopoly without help; – why should I pay you a subsidy?

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Dalrymple’s cartoon states well the widespread opposition to shipbuilding subsidies. Political rivalries, even within his own Republican Party, resulted in frustrations for Senator Hanna, who lobbied for Cleveland manufacturers. A rising tide of anti-monopoly sentiment likewise frustrated J. P. Morgan in his goal to dominate another business sector. The “McKinley Prosperity,” including bumper crops producing materials the world desired, encouraged efforts to increase American maritime trade and ships to convey goods to the world, and return with raw and manufactured goods. Public sentiment recognized that shipbuilders were doing quite well without government handouts. Morgan, always on the lookout for handouts if he could secure them, eventually, with complicated commercial and legal machinations, allied his interests with English firms and received subsidies from the British government. Included in his efforts was the cooperation of Bruce Ismay, later a survivor and vilified figure in the Titanic disaster, and the purchase of the White Star Line, which built the Titanic.

President William McKinley, former Senator George F. Edmunds, and McKinley’s advisor Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna are on board a grounded ship labeled “Shipping Subsidy Bill” in rough seas labeled “Press Attacks.” The ship rests on rocks labeled “Opposition.”

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The 1901 Ship Subsidy Bill never was passed. There was a complicated set of objections and opponents to a bill that, in its day, ought to have sailed through the United States Senate. It was Republican-backed, favored by Steel and other trusts, and it was a time of expanding trade and military interests. McKinley and Hanna were from Ohio, where Cleveland was a ship-building center. Edmunds since his retirement from the Senate had represented ship-building interests, particularly in Philadelphia. But some farmers, many Democrats, and other interests were opposed to massive federal subsidies to corporations building ships. J. P. Morgan was behind a syndicate that pushed for government handouts; when they did not come from the United States, he decided to buy Great Britain’s White Star Line, work with Bruce Ismay, and threaten to buy the Cunard Line. Overcoming many obstacles of tradition and finance, Morgan managed, in the end, to create new trusts and international corporations, navigate the ownership aspects (and definitions) of United States-British vessels, and secure subsidies from London. The delicate negotiations had an effect of accelerating the American public’s enmity toward trusts, and provided a backdrop to subsequent events like the sinking of Titanic.

Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna grabs Uncle Sam by the coat collar and gestures toward a building labeled “Ship Builders’ Trust.” Ex-Senator George F. Edmunds hides behind its door. Protruding from Hanna’s coat pocket are papers labeled “Hanna Payne Subsidy Bill,” formerly introduced by Senator George F. Edmunds.

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Shipbuilding subsidies in the time-period of this cartoon bridged several controversial and shifting issues in American politics. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War there were increasing demands to upgrade and increase the United States’ naval arsenal. Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent. There were serious debates in the Senate over whether it was more cost-effective and efficient to purchase warships from British or Norwegian shipbuilders. Patriotism and “protectionism” were parts of the debates. Protected monopolies (trusts) colored the motives of naval-expansionists. Marcus Hanna is depicted in this cartoon as a confidence man looking to swindle Uncle Sam. The presence of Edmunds provides a fuller background to the issues addressed. The Vermont Senator was a lion of the Senate stretching back to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson (1868); and his reform record moved young Theodore Roosevelt to work for his Presidential nomination in the 1884 Republican convention. Edmunds retired in 1891 and became a lawyer and advocate of railroad and shipbuilding interests. Even as Puck Magazine’s interests favored a larger navy, the presence of monopolists in the debate was odious.

A man on a rocking horse labeled “Wall Street” pushes a large cannon ball labeled “Roosevelt Boom 1904” towards the Capitol, flattening trusts along its way as others flee from its path. Caption: For mercenary reasons Wall Street opposes Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-11

President Roosevelt is shown tied up in a leash labeled “Republican Financial Policy” attached to a lamb with a collar labeled “Trusts.” He is dressed to go hunting, as a bear and bull on Wall Street are behind him. Caption: The President Goes A-Hunting.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-11-12

Cartoon shows President Roosevelt hunting two large bears labeled Trusts and Cuban Tariff. A dead bear labeled Coal Strike is off to the side, the Cuban Tariff bear is running away and the Trusts bear is standing in front of Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-11-15

Cartoon depicts President Roosevelt trying to hold onto a giant bear labeled Trusts while holding a sword by his teeth labeled Reciprocity.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-11-16