Upper class

During an intermission or after a “Comic Opera at Mrs. Van Varick-Shadd’s,” a large crowd of men and women wearing formal evening clothes look with chagrin at three women wearing short red dresses, who have secured the attentions of several young men. A painted scene in the background shows nude women cavorting at the seaside.

Comments and Context

One of Puck‘s social crusades, increasingly in the new century, was skewering the upper class — not for its excesses nor frivolity nor shallowness, but for its malignities: divorce, corruption, and scandal. Other publications like the cartoon weekly Life made similar criticism, but not as scathing, largely in Life‘s case because its editors and cartoonist Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson Girl and society drawings) were members of high society.

These new thematic preoccupations were birthed in roughly measure by the growing decadence among America’s rich, and the spirit of the times; after the turn of the century, American editors and writers, and some politicians, developed Social Consciences. It was a time of muckraking about business; Naturalism in literature and Expressionism in art — noticing the underbelly of American life; and political reform manifested by insurgency and progressivism.

A large crowd of men and women, all wearing formal evening clothes, and the women draped with stunningly sparkling jewels, are at a ball given by “Mrs. Gaster.” Caption: Central office at Mrs. Gaster’s Ball.

Comments and Context

Puck magazine and others, especially as the Muckraking Era dawned, criticized the excesses of the wealthy society denizens of the Conspicuous Consumption class. In fact the Gilded Age — the term having been applied by the eponymous, scathing novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873 — was dying. Its gaudy death throes were exemplified in ostentatious events like the ball depicted by cartoonist Albert Levering. The “400,” the exclusionary term coined by the social arbiter of the wealthy in the 1880s in his Social Register, was more commonly seen by the public as the Idle Rich, and worse, instead of model citizens.

One of the most famous parties of the era was given a dew weeks before Levering’s blistering portrayal was published. One of society’s most frivolous moguls was the 29-year-old heir of the Equitable Life Insurance fortune, James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959). Newspapers and magazines — and magazine cartoonists, as here — were agog at the obscene display of jewelry and trappings of privilege.

A high society auction is being conducted in a circus-like atmosphere where spouses are unloading their unwanted partners for various reasons to the highest bidder. On the left, a lecherous old man, wearing top hat and tails, is peering at a young woman and her daughter. The woman wears a leash which is held by her smug, well-dressed owner. On the right, in a small crowd, a man appears to be offering a bid. Other commodities are available for inspection in little stalls in the background. Caption: The matrimonial mart.

Comments and Context

For almost two decades, Puck had been a magazine of politics, commentary, humor, cartoons, and reform. But in the very first week of 1905, it transformed into a journal that embraced elements of radicalism; perhaps not revolution, but radical reform prescriptions for the American body politic, and with a sense of urgency.

Even indirectly, President Roosevelt was at the center of this shift. An appetite for social and industrial justice overtook other magazines, literature, newspapers, social agencies, and Congress, at least in the House of Representatives. Whether Roosevelt ignited such insurgency, or rode it like one of his new stallions, he associated himself with its impulses in a program known as the Square Deal.

A haughty, well-dressed woman sits in the middle of a ballroom, holding a paper that states “Society hence-forth will strive to attract brains, not mere vulgar wealth. –A leader of Alleged Society.” Around her are animal acts, gambling tables, men eating on horseback, people with small animals, and a monkey, wearing clothing, squatting on the floor eating off china. Caption: Puck — Madam, you can attract neither brains nor decency to society with this miserable outfit.

Comments and Context

The “400” was the term given to the cream of American society, unconsciously bestowed by Ward McAllister, the unofficial arbiter of social events in Manhattan and Newport in the 1880s, and coined because of the capacity at one ball’s location. For social aspirants it became a term of ambition; for a growing class of moralistic conservatives — for instance, Theodore Roosevelt, who considered the playgrounds of the rich to be vulgar — and to the socially conscious and the poor, the activities of the 400 was something to disdain.

And then there were the cartoonists. A specialty of Charles Dana Gibson (although he traveled in its circles) in Life Magazine; and Samuel Ehrhart and C. J. Taylor, principally, in Puck, the doings of the society swells were fodder for ridicule. The activities depicted here are perhaps only slight exaggerations.

In a series of vignettes, a rural family arrives in the city to stay at the “Walledoff,” a fashionable hotel [the unsophisticated rural man’s pronunciation of “Waldorf”]. The patriarch of the family repeatedly mistakes each encounter for something grander than its appearance.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1901-01-30

Two tramps dressed in cast-off and ill-fitting clothes discuss how to kill the “Trusts” through “Social Ostracism.” On the left is a well-dressed matronly woman wearing a robe labeled “The 400” and sitting on a throne. On the right is a man labeled “Trusts,” holding strings attached to businesses, as well as ships and railroads, in which the “Trusts” hold controlling interests. Caption: The Trusts have got to be ostracised, but who [is goin]g to do it? Society won[‘t and] Capital won’t, so there’s nobody to do it but us!

Comments and Context

President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale University delivered a speech in Denver, in January 1900, in which he proposed that the solution to abuses by monopolies and trusts in the United States was not legislation but “ostracism.” The remedy widely was criticized. Hadley was paired with Populist / Democrat William Jennings Bryan, often in mocking terms, for the futility of their advocacies. Further, John D. Rockefeller, an iconic monopolist, recently had gifted Yale with four million-dollar bequests. Dalrymple contrasts — or compares — the social pariah of high-society types (“the 400”) whose social morals are imputed to be as low as the economic ethics of monopolists. Depicted in their dignity, they are impervious to the designs of tramps to “ostracize” them and Hadley’s prescription is held to ridicule.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Two upper class men are talking in the street in London, while a coach labeled “Picadilly Circus” is waiting in the background. Caption: Englishman–You have some pretty high buildings in Chicago, haven’t you? Chicagoan (in London)–Well, I should remark! Why, the tops of some of them are covered with snow the year around!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-01-31

Ambassador Reid writes President Roosevelt about a number of issues, both political and social. He adds more information about Lord Edward Marjoribanks Tweedmouth’s mental breakdown and discusses the man who will replace him. Reid also relays an indignant letter he got from Clarise S. Ramsay, an American who wrongly felt she should have been invited to a royal ball. Roosevelt’s plan to go on a safari in Africa after leaving office is, Reid thinks, a very good one, and Roosevelt should not need to worry about receiving proper treatment and courtesies from British officials there. On a personal note, Reid thanks Roosevelt for his kind wishes at the news of his daughter Jean’s engagement to John H. Ward. He discusses his future son-in-law and the couple’s plans following their marriage.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-06-04

The American upper class on the left and the European nobility on the right stand beneath their family trees, with such ancestors as, on the left, “Skin Trader, Money Lender, Slave Trader, Squatter, [and] Tavern Keeper,” and on the right, “Marauding Knight, Robber Baron, King’s Favorite, Plundering Viking, [and] Rapacious Seigneur.” Caption: Puck–What fools these mortals be!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-10-04

At center is a place for Republicans to go to commiserate while awaiting the next election. Such stalwart Republicans as George F. Edmunds, John Sherman, William M. Evarts, George F. Hoar, and Thomas B. Reed wait there. Surrounding vignettes show a prominent citizen being escorted by two “Bureau of Public Comfort” guards who keep the press at bay, a sewing station for women’s clothing after a round of bargain shopping, a room where anarchists can blow off some steam “without disturbing anybody,” an educational facility to help orient newcomers to the ways of the city, and a hypnotist who attempts to convince servants to work in the country. Caption: Some of the useful purposes it might serve.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-10-25

Members of the upper class are making efforts to cut back during the business panic of 1893. Vignettes show a clothing auction of dresses worn by socialites, former streetcar-horses finding a second life as polo ponies, club men drinking from the “growler,” and theatergoers abandoning the orchestra pit for upper-level boxes. Others depict the upper class opening up their yachts for “sailing parties of the plain people” and hopping freight cars in the absence of “local express trains.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-08-30

The father of an upwardly mobile family is forced to keep pace financially with his wife’s ambitions. The main vignette shows the father perspiring as he works harder, using a large pump labeled “Business” to pour more money into “Paterfamilias’ Pocket Book” to which a queue of tradesmen labeled “Caterer, Chef, Modiste, Carriage dealer, Milliner, Decorator, Furniture dealer, Florist, Jeweler, [and] Wine dealer” help themselves. The surrounding vignettes depict lavish parties, artwork on the walls, more frequent purchases of clothing for the children, his wife’s new understanding of the term “cottage,” and the increase in the size of the servant staff.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-08-21

In this vignette cartoon is a man who firmly believes in observing the Sabbath, as he tells his friends. In the surrounding vignettes, he insists that his Sunday newspaper be delivered earlier, that the gardener put out flowers on the tables and in all the rooms, that the bootblack shine his shoes faster, that his driver be available for the entire day, and that the barber add more chairs so he will not have to wait so long for a haircut on Sunday. Caption: He wants everybody to rest on Sunday, except those who serve him personally.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-05-22

At center, “America’s Real Order of the Descendants of Kings” shows an African American laborer, a woman domestic, and an Irish hod carrier. The surrounding vignettes depict family members discussing their ancestral heritage, or lack of it, as well as shysters offering to provide ancestors to those lacking proper pedigree.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1898-03-16

An Irish American woman labeled “Walking Delegate” displays the “By-Laws of the Help Lady’s Union” during a dinner party hosted by an elderly woman sitting at a table with her guests. Women domestics are seen removing their aprons, as a man in the background orders the “Walking Delegate” to leave.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-02-08

This vignette cartoon chronicles the social and financial fortunes of the “Smallclip” family following Mrs. Smallclip’s interview with reporters and artists for the society pages of the newspaper. The society report leads to a dinner with “old friends” at their “modest home,” resulting in another notice in the society news where they are referred to as “leaders of fashion.” This causes Mrs. Smallclip to refurnish their home “on a scale in keeping with her new social status,” which places a financial strain on Mr. Smallclip. Mr. Smallclip is beset with bills as the cost of Mrs. Smallclip’s ascending social status begins to overwhelm him. The final vignette shows the Smallclip family a year later in humble housing, Mr. Smallclip having failed to meet the financial obligations of society leadership.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-04-01

High society women with big hats, dogs, a doll, and a chimpanzee, are startled at the prospect that one of their own would desire to become a mother. A young woman holding an infant is sitting at center in a rocking chair.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-12-21

A high society couple walks their tiny dog, which exhibits the same behavior as its owners.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-07-06

A well-dressed man labeled “Plutocracy,” wearing a top hat, holds a parrot labeled “State Legislature” on his right hand. He is trying to get the parrot to repeat a phrase after him, and he promises it “some nice crackers” in return for correctly learning to repeat the phrase. Caption: “We don’t want an Income-Tax Amendment! Say it, Polly! We don’t want an Income-Tax Amendment! Say it, Polly! Amendment! Amendment! We don’t want it!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1909-08-18

A beautiful young woman, fashionably dressed with large hat, stands before a group of wealthy men and looks over her right shoulder. An insert escutcheon shows an automobile, lobster, and alcoholic drinks. Easter Puck.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-04-03