It's Not Easy Being Red

Today's Graphical History Tour takes up a couple of the threads that your humble scribe left carelessly strewn about last month.

We're now up to the month of April, 1923, where our forebears in the West discovered that reports of Vladimir Lenin's death were slightly exaggerated.

"Lenine's Obituary Score" by Cyrus Hungerford in Pittsburgh Sun, ca. April 9, 1923

Cy Hungerford notes how many times Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was reported to have been killed over the previous couple of decades. 

By April of 1923, Villa was living in comfortable retirement in a 25,000-acre government-donated hacienda near Hidalgo del Parral. (His retirement was soon and abruptly to come to an end, but that's another story for another day.)

"Whatski Are You Gonna do About Itsski" by Wm. K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star Telegram,
April 6, 1923

I'm still not quite ready to declare what exactly were the rumblings of Bolshevism Carey Orr was detecting in Wisconsin a couple weeks ago. Certainly, one would have thought the trial in Michigan of communist William Z. Foster for violating the state's syndicalism law ought to have been the rumbling to catch Orr's attention.

Orr, however, had ceded the Chicago Tribune front page editorial cartoon space back to veteran John McCutcheon when the latter returned from vacation at the beginning of April, so Orr didn't get a chance to clarify which of Illinois's northern neighbors was more in danger of communist vipers bursting through the soil.

William Foster's trial, in which Michigan Assistant Attorney General O.L. Smith produced a Communist Party manifesto proclaiming that "The real Communist avails himself of every weapon to strike a blow at Capitalism, but with the firm conviction that the final onslaught will be made, not with ballots but with bullets."

Foster's defense attorney, Frank P. Walsh, argued that the manifesto had been brought forth and approved thanks to a U.S. Secret Service agent who had infiltrated the Communist Party. The trial ended in a hung jury.

"Et Tu, Brute" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. April 9, 1923

The American Communist Party cultivated ties with the American labor movement, but was pointedly repudiated by the American Federation of Labor. The AFL, headed by Samuel Gompers, was at this point urging President Harding to reject a proposed "open shop" plank in the Republican Party's 1924 campaign platform, and any hint of communism within its ranks would certainly hurt the AFL's cause.

"Outraged Humanity" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. April 10, 1923

Also making news from Russia were its show trials of clergy and religious leaders, accused of hoarding wealth in violation of state mandates to turn over all church property.

I apologize that Bushnell's cartoon here is difficult to read; I'll keep trying to find a better reprint to scan. In the meantime: the toga-clad woman is labeled "Civilization"; I really can't tell what the creature labeled "Bolshevism" is supposed to be. I presume that the "Program of Religious Persecution" object is a torch, since the "Christianity" cross is on fire.

"Futility" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. April 21, 1923

Here's Dorman Smith's optimistic take on Russian religious persecution. He would eventually be proven right, I suppose, if not in his own lifetime.