Saturday Hash

Uncaptioned, by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1920

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas during a presidential transition can be a slow news period as far as political cartoonists are concerned. The incoming president is busy filling his cabinet with people the cartoonist hasn't learned to draw yet, and the outgoing president is not desperately trying to stage a coup to overturn the popular vote. Well, not normally.

1920 was a pretty normal year as presidential transitions go, so editorial cartoonists had plenty of opportunity to address topics of general interest. Some of them, as illustrated by Clifford Berryman's complaint against unregulated gun sales above, are if you'll pardon the yuletide expression, evergreen.

"Big Flap Jack Contest" by Frederick Opper for International Feature Service Inc., ca. Dec. 3, 1920

Fred Opper's complaint about high prices never gets old, either, although it would be hard to find a mainstream cartoonist today blaming "grocery profiteers" and "rent gougers." What went up, however, must have come cheap; those "pick pocket prices" are the same ones my generation's grandparents used to remember fondly in the '60's and '70's.

"Out" by Bob Satterfield for NEA, ca. Dec. 1, 1920

Bob Satterfield commends a drive to oust criminals, indecent dancing, and vice from the nation's dance halls.

"Tormentors" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 3, 1920

Nelson Harding begs to differ. Besides opposing dirty dancing, "fanatical reformers" were pushing to extend prohibition to tobacco and any number of other vices. There was even a push by something called the Lord's Day Alliance to nationalize "blue laws," making any commercial activity, interstate travel, or newspaper publication on Sundays a federal offense. That particular proposal died for lack of any member of Congress wishing to be associated with it.

"Broken Idols" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, ca. Dec. 3, 1920

Speaking of vices: I've somehow made it through the last two years without posting anything about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, but Magnus Kettner gives me an opportunity to get around to it at long last. A grand jury handed down indictments against eight baseball players and five gamblers in October. A committee headed by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis convened in December to begin setting rules to clean up professional baseball.

"An Ounce of Prevention" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, Dec. 11, 1920

"Ding" Darling offered some advice on avoiding strikes of the non-baseball variety.

"Ireland, 1920" by David Low in London Star, ca. Dec., 1920

Meanwhile, overseas, 100 Irish "Black and Tan" guerillas killed 17 police cadets in an ambush near Macroom, and British police uncovered a plot to attack the House of Parliament and 10 Downing Street. In retaliation, the British arrested the Irish Vice President (President De Valera being in the U.S. at the time) and three politicians who were members of both Parliament and Dail Eireann.

John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Dec. 4, 1920

Armenia's armed conflict against Turkey was not going well. Tsarist Russia had fashioned itself as the protector of the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities in the Caucasus; Soviet Russia's support of the Armenian cause, however, was limited to diplomatic protest. The same was true of western powers, each of whom would rather that someone else step in.

"A Peaceful Change" by Bob Satterfield for NEA, ca. Dec. 2, 1920

Mexican President Venustiano Carranza was killed during a coup led by General Álvaro Obregón in April, 1920 (most historians believe he was assassinated, but some argue that he committed suicide). On December 1, the provisional government of Adolfo de la Huerta turned power over to Obregón. This marked the end of ten years of civil war, and the beginning of a quarter century of military generals heading the Mexican government.

"Can They Untangle It?" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Dec. 2, 1920

In 1920, the California revisited a 1913 "Alien Land Law" severely restricting non-citizens' rights to own agricultural property in the state. The law's primary targets were Japanese immigrants, and the 1920 law sought to close loopholes left open by the original law. Japan regarded California's actions as a violation of the spirit of a 1911 friendship treaty between Japan and the U.S. 

In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California's laws were not a violation of 14th Amendment rights of equal protection. Eventually, the California Supreme Court decided in 1952 that the 14th Amendment did indeed invalidate the Alien Land Laws.