Dry Humor

The bartender in my syndicated cartoon this week would be out of a job if the politicians of a century ago had anything to say about it.

Which they did. 100 years and a month ago, Congress passed the Food Production Stimulation Act, ostensibly to further the war effort, even though the armistice had been declared ten days earlier.

"And I Thought It Was Only a 'Dud'" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, November, 1918,
recaptioned by Cartoons Magazine, Chicago, February, 1919

After some provisions authorizing the Secretary of Agriculture to act on combating diseases and pests among livestock and produce and to stockpile seeds, the Act prohibited the production of alcoholic beverages of all kinds after May 1 and their import, export, and sale after June 30 "until the conclusion of the present war and thereafter until the termination of demobilization, the date of which shall be determined and proclaimed by the President of the United States." Exception was made only for wine for "sacramental, medicinal, or other than beverage purposes."

"The Latest Autocrat" by R.A. Evans in Baltimore American, November, 1918

The Prohibition movement cobbled together a peculiar coalition of progressives, puritans, suffragists, nativists and racists: Women's Christian Temperance Union president Frances Willard told the New York Voice in 1890 that "'Better whiskey and more of it' is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs." Irish, Russian, Italian, and especially during the war, German immigrants were popularly depicted as habitual drunkards wasting valuable resources and contributing to the downfall of American society.  Prohibitionists promised that banning alcohol would save families from the scourge of abusive fathers, boost industrial production, and fill the pews on Sunday morning.

"Didn't Even Get an Armistice" by Sydney J. Greene in New York Evening Telegram, November 23, 1918

Not everybody was on board, but the prohibition movement had bipartisan support in Congress and around the country. 

"The Last Hope Is Gone" by William Hanny in St. Joseph (MO) News-Press, November 23, 1918

The 1910's and 20's were fertile ground for amending the U.S. Constitution, and prohibition would not be limited to this single bill,  or subject to some future president declaring peace to have broken out. Fifteen states — including nine in which liquor was legal — had already voted to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution by the time the Congress voted for it in December. Ratification would need approval by 21 more state legislatures; 46 voted aye by February. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island voted against it.

✍

"Scuttling the Good Ship Victory" by Frank A. Nankivell in New York Journal, November 23, 1918

Moving on to another subject entirely, Congress instigated a postwar investigation into subversive activities at home during the conflict. As far as the editors of the New York Journal were concerned, the chief focus of the investigation was William Randolph Hearst's media empire, headquartered at the New York American. The Journal's editorial page cartoonist, Australian-born Frank A. Nankivell, drew cartoons exclusively attacking Mr. Hearst for the last six weeks of 1918.

On December 3, the Journal splashed three supposedly damning telegrams by Hearst unearthed by the congressional investigation. In one from March 3, 1917, Hearst dictates a cartoon he wanted his New York cartoonist, Winsor McCay, to draw.

According to the Journal, McCay did indeed draw that cartoon to his publisher's specifications. If I am ever able to find that cartoon, I'll be sure to come back and repost it here. Suffice it to say that other cartoonists in Hearst's media empire cranked out "yellow peril" cartoons in the months before U.S. entry into the Great War (see Chicago Examiner cartoonist Harry Murphy's cartoon in this post), with or without Hearst's active direction.

"So Simple—It Sells Papers" by Frank A. Nankivell in New York Journal, December 13, 1918

Surely Journal president Ogden Reid couldn't have been dictating Mr. Nankivell's cartoons!

ß