Mansplaining Women's History Month

'Tis spring, and a cartoonist's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of millinery.

"The Worried Weather Man" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 26, 1921

I had thoughts of putting forth a post in honor of Women's History Month sometime in March, yet events of 100 Marches ago seem to have given cartoonists but one inspiration on women's issues. It wasn't just Clifford Berryman's weather forecaster; here's a cartoon I almost led last Saturday's 100-year-old post with:

"St. Patrick's Day" by Magnus Kettner, March 17, 1921

On the other hand, there was a brand new First Lady to draw about, even if she was not yet a familiar face.

"A Voice from the Attic of a House in Marion" by Harold T. Webster, March 3, 1921

And guess what cartoonists did know about Florence Harding! Her hat!

"She Wants What She Wants When She Wants It" by Wm. Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, ca. March 28, 1921

So I turn to the funny pages, where, happily, the men drawing the cartoons had —mostly— run out of hat-related gags. I found there, however, a curious coincidence among several of the comic strips that had women in the title role.

"Polly and Her Pals" by Clifford Sterrett for Hearst newspapers, March 6, 1921

"Polly and Her Pals" was the popular creation of Cliff Sterrett, running from 1912 to 1958. Yet here at this fairly early date — the focus of the strip seems to be not Polly Perkins, but her father, Paw. 

Again and again, Polly exists only to set up Paw Perkins's predicament in the first panel — here, two weeks later, she's setting the poor old sap up yet again to humiliate himself musically on the local vaudeville stage...

— returning only in the third-to-last panel in which her mother reports that their ethnically something-or-other houseboy, Neewah, has bought up all the rotten eggs in town.

Excerpted from "Polly and Her Pals" by Clifford Sterrett, March 20, 1921

Sterrett could just as easily have had Polly herself running around town buying up those rotten eggs. Was she not as much fun to draw? Oh, sure, Paw couldn't have challenged her to put up her dukes in the penultimate panel; but then again, parental violence wasn't unheard of in 1921. Or she could have been the one to uncover and report Neewah's ovate buying spree. Anything to allow her some dialogue that week!

Heck, Polly was pretty good-looking (she didn't take after either of her parents). Oughtn't she to have been the one going out on stage to display the extent of her musical talents? Couldn't that have been equally funny?

"And Why Do You Weep" by Nate Collins in Cartoons Magazine, March, 1921

We turn now to the working girl.

"Miss Information" by Wood Cowan for George Matthew Adams Service, March 19, 1921

Women in the labor force was nothing new in 1921. For eons, women toiled on the farm, in the shirt factory, in the schoolroom, and doing whatever Cosette did in Madeleine's factory before having to turn to the World's Oldest Profession. Taking over the previously male occupation of office clerk, however, was novel, and contributed to the popularity of cartoons about secretaries.

Like Polly Perkins, the title character of "Miss Information" did little but set up the punch line for the boss or the office boy — which may explain why the strip was later retitled "In Our Office."

"Somebody's Stenog" by A.M. Hayward for Public Ledger Co., April 1, 1921

Some comic strip heroines, on the other hand, took center stage. Compare Cowan's Miss Information to her fellow office worker, Miss O'Flage, the title character of Alfred Hayward's "Somebody's Stenog." (A while back, I featured one of Hayward's other strips, "Colonel Corn.") O'Flage's starring role was helped in that Hayward stretched some story lines over several days at a time; here, she testifies in a lawsuit her employer has filed against a supplier.

"Somebody's Stenog" by A.M. Hayward for Public Ledger Co., April 9, 1921

Most of the time, neither O'Flage nor her co-worker Mary Doodle display much of a work ethic — O'Flage drives The Boss crazy skipping out of work for frivolous reasons — but he wouldn't have kept her around if she didn't get the job done.

Ask your grandparents about "carbon paper."

From working women, we turn now to Maggie Jiggs, arguably the most quintessentially 1920's cartoon female (after Betty Boop).

"Bringing Up Father" by George McManus, March 27, 1921

The Jiggses, he a bricklayer and she a laundress, won a million dollars and settled into the lifestyle of the nouveau riche and fabulous — the American dream of the Good Life and Easy Money. Her husband seemed to be more or less content with whatever his lot, but Maggie craved the status she felt should come along with riches. This set her up for repeated come-uppance, thus setting her apart from the comic strip heroines who blithely created chaos for the menfolk in their lives.

"A Well Dressed Wife" by Walter Wellman for Cartoons Magazine, March, 1921

It's a bit late for a spoiler alert or trigger warning, but I hope you didn't read this far hoping to find feminism and wokeness in 1921 comics. These cartoonists were, to a man, men, after all.