United States

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.

Leaders in the areas of business and finance, as military officers labeled “Morgan, Dresser, Perkins, Schwab, Frick, Nixon, [and] Gates,” ride on horseback through the snow of a bitter winter and financial downturn in the shipping industry. To the far right are foot soldiers carrying the flag of the “Army of Stock Holders.”

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Cartoonist Pughe made an oblique acknowledgment to “a well known painting” after his own signature, yet he might have credited the French academician Messonier’s Retreat From Moscow. Instead of Napoleon, we see the disconsolate and leonine face of J. P. Morgan. Excepting the faces of the business titan and his lieutenants, this Puck cartoon virtually is a line-for-line recreation of the painting so famous at the time.

Thomas Lipton checks the pulse of an animated feminine America’s Cup labeled “America 1851.” Caption: Dr. Lipton – Your condition, of course, is not alarming; but a trip abroad would do you a world of good.

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In 1903, Sir Thomas Lipton dreamed yet again of capturing the America’s Cup. The 1902 competition, in New York Harbor, had attracted major attention — three constituent races; the United States’s entry of bold new design; J. P. Morgan’s recent interest as an owner and fan… and Lipton’s British entry defeated, not even finishing.

A Frenchman stands outside the U.S. Treasury building, holding in one hand a newspaper that states “Colombia Rejects Canal Treaty” and in the other hand a paper labeled “40,000,000 for France if Treaty is Ratified.” It appears that he was about to cash in a promissory note for $40 million, only to discover at the last moment that it is worthless.

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The disappointed Frenchman in Pughe’s cartoon reflected the angrier (if possible) reaction of President Roosevelt, Secretary of State John Hay, Senator John Spooner (R-WI), and other American proponents of a canal through the Panamanian region of Colombia. A treaty, with all business and financial arrangements, had been negotiated, only to be rejected by the Colombian senate.

Thomas Johnstone Lipton beats a hand-drum labeled “American Progress,” trying to wake John Bull who is sound asleep in a chair. Caption: “There is no more loyal Britisher than myself; but I can’t close my eyes to one thing, and that is we are a decaying nation, commercially, as compared to your country, and the United States is the greatest country on the face of the earth to-day.”–Speech of Sir Thomas Lipton.

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The jovial entrepreneur Sir Thomas Lipton was a Scots-Irish celebrity famous for his lines of teas, his chains of grocery stores, and his love of yachting. He regularly entered his yachts in the America’s Cup contests — never winning — but even in defeat his admiration of and affection for the United States was evident to all.

A crowd of people wearing colonial dress gather around an old man who is firing off a cannon during the Fourth of July celebration, 1903.

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In the first years of the new century, Puck subtly devoted less space and editorial attention to partisan politics, and more to humorous images, decorative covers, and social topics. The magazine was a full decade away from sublimating politics in a major fashion, and that decision might have been motivated by the disinclination to offend roughly have of its potential readership… but in any event the humorous and decorative artwork, and non-political themes, were asserting themselves on Puck‘s covers especially.

An unruly infant labeled “Arbitration” cries, sitting in a high chair. Oscar S. Straus, as a nurse, is measuring out a spoonful of “Anti-Strike Tonic,” and a puzzled “Dr. Hanna” is standing behind the child. Caption: The child of the labor question worries its nurses.

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As Minister to the Ottoman Empire, Oscar S. Straus was influential in persuading Turkish leaders to, in turn, persuade rebel Muslims in the Philippines not to actively join the native rebels then resisting United States occupation subsequent to the Spanish-American War. With that diplomatic success to his credit, he was appointed to be a member of the International Court of Arbitration at Hague upon the death of former President Benjamin Harrison. Marcus Alonzo Hanna, Chairman of the Republic Party, spokesman for the party’s business interests, and nemesis of American organized labor (due in part to scabrous cartoon caricatures), tries unsuccessfully with Straus in this cartoon to delete strike provisions from arbitration treaties. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Straus Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first Jew to be a cabinet secretary. Subsequently, President William Howard Taft returned him ministerial duties in Turkey. Straus’s brother Isadore perished on the Titanic; Isadore another brother Nathan owned Macy’s and Abraham & Straus department stores; Nathan, Jr., became owner of Puck Magazine in 1914, and before World War II was a friend of Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank. A great-nephew, R. Peter Straus, owned New York radio station WMCA and the publishing house Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, whose son, R. Peter, Jr., married the mother of Monica Lewinsky.

The recent craze for playing ping pong is causing business partners to neglect their work, ladies’ clubs to turn away from their normal leisure pursuits, infants to be pitted against one another, elderly couples to put years of wedded bliss on the line, and domestic servants to refuse to give up the dining table, so they, like everyone else, can play ping pong. Included is a humorous verse by Edwin L. Sabin.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-05-28

A prim elderly woman admonishes a tramp lying on the ground next to a dirt road on the outskirts of a rural community. Caption: Mrs. Stern — Why don’t you brace up and be a man and take the place in society to which you are entitled? / Languid Lannigan (yawning) — Aw! Ping-pong is sich a bore don’t yer know!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-06-04

George F. Hoar, Carl Schurz, David B. Hill, and former Massachusetts Governor George S. Boutwell place their “Anti-Expansion Speech” at the feet of a huge American soldier holding a rifle and the American flag, while opposite them Filipinos place guns and swords at the soldier’s feet. Caption: The American Filipinos and the Native Filipinos will have to submit.

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Pughe’s cartoon is a diplomatic portrayal of a rather diplomatic cessation of hostilities and American military withdrawal from the Philippines, where insurrection had raged, with brutality on the “Filipino” and American sides almost from the moment of Spanish surrender in 1898. Senator George Frisbie Hoar (R-MA), the most prominent Congressional opponent of the “pacification” by American troops, had demanded investigation of American atrocities. In 1902 an American Marine was tried for the murder of 11 Filipinos; and an American general was convicted of ordering the death of all males over 10 years old on one of the Philippine islands (he was verbally reprimanded, returned to the United States, and discharged). On July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt ordered the full and complete pardon and amnesty to all Philippine citizens and rebels. This cartoon appeared between the surrender of the last rebel leader and the announcement of United States troop withdrawal.

David B. Hill stands on a platform, speaking to an unseen audience. He holds a paper that states “Jefferson! Jeffersonianism!! Jeffersonian Simplicity!!!” The ghost of Thomas Jefferson is tapping him on the elbow. Caption: “Hold on there, David! – Don’t make me ridiculous! Remember, I was always an Expansionist – and if I were alive to-day I should be doing just as McKinley and Roosevelt have done.”

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David Bennett Hill, the former governor and senator from New York State, was a Democrat whose career seemed defined by his concurrent rise to power, and perennial opposition to, fellow New York Democrat Grover Cleveland. While senator, he was a rare Eastern Democrat who favored bimetallism, one of the reasons that Cleveland came out of retirement in 1892, to thwart Hill’s presidential ambitions. Cleveland won the nomination and re-election and in 1896 supported, though somewhat tepidly, the Populist-Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Through all political apostasies, he found himself having to assert his party loyalties, stating more than once, “I am a Democrat,” which mantra became a feast for cartoonists. In this cartoon by Pughe, Hill’s hyperbolic identification with Jefferson slightly distorts history. Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase was regarded by the third president as an aberration or at least an evolution, not a revelation: he originally desired to acquire Louisiana itself and the port of New Orleans. France’s offer turned his head. Ironically, it was the remnants of the Federalist Party that opposed the deal, which almost doubled the land area of the United States. The cartoons maintains that Jefferson was a pragmatist, and Hill was not.

An angry capitalist labeled “Commercial Trust” confronts an angry laborer labeled “Labor Trust” holding a club labeled “Strike.” Between them is a diminutive man labeled “Consumer” on his knees, possibly praying for a favorable resolution. Caption: The consumer suffers when these two trusts fall out.

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There is a substantial back-story to this cartoon. Keppler’s drawing depicts a matter that likely was on the mind of every reader: the increasing labor strife in America. He posed the possible incidence of societal distress, and the cartoon sets the theoretical stage for intervention from an unprecedented source: the Chief Executive. For several years labor strife had been growing more common, and more violent. Both trusts and unions were consolidating their growth and power. In 1901, in New York City, the mishandling of its monopoly by the Ice Trust posed a real threat as a heat wave loomed. In May of 1902, a month before Keppler’s cartoon was printed, the miners in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite region struck for higher wages, shorter hours, and the right to organize under the United Mine Workers. The mine owners (J. P. Morgan at the top of the “chain”) were represented by a railroad manager, George Baer. The workers were represented by John Mitchell. President Roosevelt did intervene, against advice of his Attorney General and others, including Republican leaders who feared that the party would be associated with any sort of negative outcomes. In a labyrinthine series of councils, initiatives, negotiations (including with Morgan), proposals and threats, and even a serious injury to his his leg in a carriage accident, Roosevelt cudgeled and cajoled the parties — he was immensely frustrated with the owners who sat on a large supply of coal in reserve — a compromise was reached, and production resumed in October. A winter heating crisis was averted. Miners received a 10 per cent raise in hourly pay, their workdays were reduced from 10 to nine hours per day, and union recognition was not agreed to at the time. Roosevelt scored another personal victory, only a year after assuming office, and displaying skills of foresight and persuasion, and placed another cornerstone in the establishment of presidential power, not dictating but wisely intervening. 

The Republican elephant uses his trunk to support, overhead, an infant labeled “Infant Industries” in a cradle labeled “Protective Tariff.” The U.S. Capitol building is visible in the background.

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The meaning of this cartoon was the real situation and a growing dilemma in United States politics and the American economy. High-tariff and protectionist policies after the Civil War, and accelerating as industries thrived and prosperity asserted itself, became something of an anomaly. Industries largely thrived on their own as America achieved manufacturing and trade dominance in the world, monopolies frequently profited moguls as citizens sought lower retail prices, and the Republican Party’s identification with their vaunted “infant industries” needing protection had become burdensome.

William Jennings Bryan, as a pope wearing robes and a tiara labeled “16 to 1,” sits on a throne on a low pedestal labeled “Kansas City Platform.” Two Swiss guards stand next to him. The one on the left is labeled “Jones,” and the other on the right is labeled “Stone.” Caption: But Democrats have lost faith in his infallibility.

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As midterm elections loomed in 1902, William Jennings Bryan sought to assert his primacy in Democratic party councils. He had twice been beaten for the presidency, so his support — and support for his issues, for instance the bimetallic plank in the 1900 (Kansas City) platform — was vital. The vassals behind Bryan are two of his more loyal supporters: Senator James K. Jones of Arkansas was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and William J. Stone (at the time a year away from being elected to the United States Senate from Missouri) was a contributor to Bryan’s magazine The Commoner. In 15 years’ time Stone would be one of six senators to vote against declaring war on Germany.

In a country courtroom, a judge pronounces a verdict based on the testimony of a cowboy standing in front of the clerk’s desk. Caption: Rube Roundup — Yes, your Honor, I admit I shot the tenderfoot, but he asked me to play a game of “ping-pong” with him. / Lead Gulch Justice — Discriminatin’ sarcumstances. When he gets out o’ the hospittle I’ll see thet you get the justice of his commitment. Next case.

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As happens with society’s fads and fancies, something of momentary obsession attracts the attention — and, usually, the wit and sarcasm — of cartoonists. Puck in 1902 just did not seem able to embrace the fad of that new indoor game, ping pong.

Uncle Sam, holding a firecracker, tries to reassure a concerned-looking female figure with wings labeled “Peace” that all the noise she hears is for the celebration of the Fourth of July. Celebrating with Uncle Sam are several figures labeled “Alaska, New York, Texas, Mass., Hawaii, Porto Rico, North, South.” One disgruntled figure labeled “Philippine” is climbing over a wall. An African American is sitting near Uncle Sam. Some are lighting strings of firecrackers, “Texas” is shooting guns, and “Mass.” is firing a cannon in celebration. The “Philippine” climbs over a wall, the only disgruntled child in the group. The U.S. Capitol building is in the background and a dove with olive branch hovers over the figure of “Peace.” Caption: Uncle Sam–It’s all right! There’s no fighting! The noise you hear is just my family celebrating!

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Since the founding of the United States, its enlargement and expansion of territories was relatively gradual and organic. Texas, Alaska, and even the recent annexation of Hawaii were slow-paced compared to the “population explosion” depicted by Keppler in this cartoon. Puck Magazine consistently approved.

Two strong men labeled “Labor” and “Commerce” use a battering ram labeled “Tariff Reform” to knock down a door in a building flying a banner for “High Protection.” A frightened man, labeled “Protected Trust” and wearing a crown, is looking over the wall.

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The deeper meaning behind Keppler’s straightforward message is his choice of labels. “Tariff Reform” indicates that Puck, editorially, was not advocating for free trade as some Populists and Bryan followers in the Democratic party did. The same point is made in the specific phrase in the caption “…in the hands of the right men.”

A man labeled “Labor” sits on a huge firecracker labeled “Capital” which he is igniting with a torch labeled “Strikes” giving off fumes labeled “Discontent.” The fuse of the firecracker is labeled “Wages.” There are factory buildings in the background.

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Despite the factories in the background, Pughe’s cartoon likely was inspired by labor strife and occasional violence in the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania at this time. Union organizing, strikes, and labor clashes had been growing for several years, but the scale of the coal strike in 1902, and the prospect of a lack of coal during the upcoming winter months, put this issue on the public’s mind.

At center, a man looks out a garret window, daydreaming or musing on the life of the farmer. Vignettes around him offer humorous views of summer activities, including courtship, neighborly visiting, and swimming.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-07-16