Dairyland Bolshevism?

Every once in a while when I'm cyberleafing through old newspapers in search of a topic for these Saturday posts, I run across a cartoon that makes me stop and wonder what could possibly have been in the cartoonist's mind.

"A Movement that Will Bear Watching" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1923

Usually, such cartoons don't fit in with whatever I've decided to devote a post to, but I was so puzzled by this Carey Orr cartoon that I had to investigate further. The cartoon shows Uncle Sam, ready with a large club, rolling up his sleeve and watching a rising mound of earth from which emanates the words "Activities in Wisconsin." Meanwhile, a snake labeled "Bolshevism" is burrowing into the soil of Russia.

Being from Wisconsin myself, I wondered what rumblings of Bolshevism were threatening to erupt in my home state 100 years ago, so I scoured the pages of Carey Orr's employer to find what had the Chicago Tribune so worried about America's Dairyland.

The Wisconsin-related issue that was the topic of a number of Tribune editorials in March of 1923 was opposition by the Attorneys General of Wisconsin and Michigan to a Tribune-supported proposal to divert Lake Michigan water upstream to make the Chicago River navigable and connecting it to the Illinois River. One such editorial in the March 21 edition was headlined "Wisconsin and Michigan in Error." 

But tying that issue to any supposed Red Menace seems extremely far-fetched. Besides, Orr's cartoon makes no mention of Michigan.

Milwaukee had elected its second Socialist mayor, Daniel Hoan, in 1916; he was popular enough that he remained in office until 1940. Whatever Mayor Hoan was up to in 1923, I haven't found much coverage of it in the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune did report that Non-partisan League founder Arthur Townley, a former socialist, was barnstorming Wisconsin trying to gin up support for the Farmer-Labor Party. Townley didn't find many takers on his tour; unfortunately, his National Leader had ceased publication at the end of 1922 due to a lack of paid subscriptions, so we don't have Townley's first-person account of his Wisconsin trip.

"It's Getting So Nowadays You Can't Depend Much on Labels" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1923

Wisconsin's Progressive Republican Senator Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette was a frequent target of the Tribune's and its cartoonists' ire. LaFollette, shown here in the darkened back room pouring "Russian Red" into "Progressivism" bottles, spoke approvingly of Russian communism — until late 1923 when he went to Russia and saw it in practice first hand.

"My, My, What Won't the Archeologists Discover Yet" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, March 12, 1923

But if Senator LaFollette were Orr's concern in the cartoon at the top of today's post, why not include Iowa? That was the home state of another Progressive Republican Senator, Smith W. Brookhart, shown in our second cartoon at the counter offering progressivism tonic to a dubious John Q. Public, and here in "Ding" Darling's cartoon joining LaFollette's campaign against Standard Oil's cartel and the Sugar Trust. (Ding is riffing on the recent discovery-cum-raiding of Tutankhamen's tomb.)

And why not include Minnesota, home to another of the backroom apothecaries in Orr's cartoon, Farmer-Labor Senator Henrik Shipstead? The fellow farthest in the back is North Dakota Republican Senator Edwin F. Ladd, so why the heck single out Wisconsin when these Pink Progressives were all over the upper Midwest?

"Outbursts of Everett True" by Armundo D. Condo for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., March 27, 1923

Checking my hometown paper, I found banner headlines about an effort in Madison to meddle in Racine's mayoral election by declaring that the winner of the primary would be the winner of the general election. As written, the bill would have also applied to Kenosha and Superior. The Racine Journal-News seemed to believe that the bill was intended to favor Racine's incumbent mayor. If this preposterous and abortive plan was covered in the Tribune, I missed it, but the timing of the March primary suggested a possible motive for Orr's cartoon.

Wisconsin primaries were held on Tuesday, March 20 ― a few days before the Tribune ran cartoon that prompted today's post. Elsewhere around the state, a Labor candidate made it to the general election for mayor of Ashland; three Socialist candidates topped the results for Milwaukee's school board.

On the other hand, neither of Madison's newspapers noticed any surge of socialism as they reported election returns. One would have expected alarums from the Wisconsin State Journal and crowing from the Capital Times. Instead, I found coverage of a bill passed by the Assembly and State Senate to zero out state funding for the National Guard. Maybe that was what had Carey Orr hot under the collar?

Ah, well. I guess we may never know.

Incidentally, the Racine Journal-News's favored mayoral candidate led over the incumbent in Racine's primary. I haven't found the newspaper calling either of them a Bolshevik.