Berge's Cartoon Blog: Saturday Pot Pourri

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Saturday Pot Pourri

I'm keeping this week's Saturday History Tour short and sweet and in search of any unifying theme today, so let's just get started.

Last week, I happened to see celebrity news about some actor or musician or social influencer or whoever he was posting photos of himself and his son because it was Father And Son Day. I had never heard of the celebrity or the Day before, so naturally, I looked up Father And Son Day.

It turns out that Father And Son Day was founded seven years ago by cancer survivors Jack Dyson and Daniel Marks to raise awareness of and funds for cancer research. I'm still a little confused about when the day is, but it certainly seems that it's for a worthy cause.

"Father and Son Week" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., by Nov. 4, 1921

So imagine my surprise a day or so later to run across this 100-year-old cartoon about Father And Son Week!

Whenever this year's F&S Day might have been, Dorman Smith's F&S Week was definitely in the fall (note the tree). So, really, you can celebrate it whenever you want and for a day or a week or a fortnight if you want. Heck, celebrate it throughout Daylight Savings Time.

Nobody's going to argue with you about it.

And wasn't it nice to start out today's post with something nobody needs to argue about for a change?

"The Storm Centers" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, by Nov. 11, 1921

On the other hand, Magnus Kettner presents us with a cartoon that I find deceptively sweet, hiding an inner core of rural antipathy toward their urban compatriots — a hostility that has festered into today's Red-Blue divide.

Not that there was anything new about that in 1921; you can trace the attitude all the way back to Aesop's city mouse and country mouse.

But I have one more bone to pick with Mr. Kettner: one of the major news stories of November, 1921 was a big strike by coal miners, few of whom lived in "the city." You just don't find many coal miners living in New York City, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but rather in small towns like Hazard, Kentucky; Welch, West Virginia; or Diamondville, Wyoming.

"Pruning the Wrong End" by John Baer, by Nov. 2, 1921

Cartoonist and former Congressman John Baer was part of a self-named Nonpartisan movement that attempted to forge links between rural farmers and urban and small-town laborers. The 1920's would be tough on the Nonpartisan movement, and its non-partisan angle slowly closed. Labor interests became increasingly aligned with the Democratic Party, and farmers have, a century later, become a reliably Republican voting bloc.

If there's nothing new about ginning up animus between country and city mice, there's nothing new about the top 1% pitting the bottom 99% against each other's interests, either.

"Slow, But So Is Congress" by Art Young, by Nov. 3, 1921

You know what else is not new? It's Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas blocking popular legislation because all they see is the price tag.

If you asked the average man or woman on the street or in the field in 1921, you would have found overwhelming support for the idea that the United States owed a debt to its Great War veterans who lost health or limb making the world safe for democracy. Art Young here wonderfully satirizes how long it was taking for legislation to give these veterans "bonus" payments to get anywhere, even given that the Republican Party had control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Lastly, this Veterans' Day marks the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia receiving its first occupant; so, without further comment, I close with a few examples of the nation's editorial cartoonists marking the event.