Thanksgiving Leftovers

This week's installment of Stuffingback Saturday takes another rummage through the ancient vaults in search of the answer to the question: "What Thanksgiving gags did editorial cartoonists draw before we all drew about political fights dividing the family at the dinner table?"

"Cousin Ed's Folks from Town" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, November 1916

I usually try to keep these cartoons as close to their centennial as possible, but my source for these first three, Cartoons Magazine, tended to run holiday-themed cartoons (for any holiday) from earlier years. The December, 1919 edition, for example, included the above Burt Thomas cartoon, which is clearly dated 1916. That's quite understandable, with Thanksgiving coming after the December edition's deadline; who would still be interested in Thanksgiving cartoons when the January edition came out?

In 1919, their dilemma was that a lot of cartoons drawn for Thanksgiving 1918 expressed thanks that the boys would be coming home soon from the War that had ended two weeks earlier. Thus, it's hard for me to tell what year the other cartoons in that issue were from.

"The Good Old Days" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, Nov. 1919?

Here's a cartoon by Ted Brown from the December, 1920 edition; there's a chance that Cartoons Magazine might have saved it from 1919 when complaints about the cost of living were in vogue. (So this is the thanks the First Americans get for inviting the pilgrim colonists to the First Thanksgiving!)

"Breaking into the Big League" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Republic, Nov. 1918 or earlier

I don't know what things were like in the Chapin household, but I hope the young lady in this cartoon soon figured out that there are many reasons why it's a bad idea to keep a birdcage over the stove.

"Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feelin'" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, Nov. 27, 1919

In the Briggs household, the kids had to wait until the adults were done eating before they were permitted to come to the table. And if this were not at least a fairly common practice, don't you think Briggs's readers would have shamed him en masse after this cartoon was nationally syndicated?

No, I suppose that if your apartment wasn't large enough to accommodate a separate children's table, you had to make do by teaching the children The Virtue Of Patience. We know now that the grown-ups in 1919 who feasted while their children's stomachs growled in the next room would, just as those kids became adults, bequeath them the Great Depression.

But would those kids snark "OK, Homer" at them? I think not.

"What Are You Thankful For" by William Hanny in St. Joseph News-Press, Nov. 27, 1919

Editorial cartoonists looking to tie the holiday in with serious issues could, like William Hanny, bemoan the strikes by workers demanding a greater share of corporate profits now that the War was over. Few cartoonists displayed sympathy for striking coal miners, steel workers and trainmen, since most homes were heated by coal, and the private automobile was only just beginning to rival train travel.

What the deal is with "The Common Pee-ple," I have no idea. Perhaps Hanny's original idea involved likening the strikes to a urinary tract infection.

"The Long and Short of It" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 25, 1919

As I mentioned before, the high cost of living was a frequent theme of 1919 editorial cartoons. Nelson Harding offers plenty of drumstick for the holiday — emphasis on the stick.

"The Vacant Chairs" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 27, 1919 

John McCutcheon's Uncle Sam celebrated the holiday with Extravagance, Unrest and the High Cost of Living, but at least half of the invited guests were AWOL. Why Uncle Sam invited any of them in the first place is anyone's guess.

Well, I suppose it was only charitable of him to invite Hunger and Hard Times to dinner.

But since I can't leave you with the impression that Thanksgiving in 1919 was all grousing and peevishness, let us close with a cartoonist who, like Clare Briggs above, perceived his era through quaintly rose-colored spectacles:

"The Thrill that Comes Once in a Lifetime" by Harold T. Webster in New York Tribune, November 27, 1919

After all, the era would have wanted to be remembered that way.