Pilgrims Digress

I hope you've saved a little room for some more Thanksgiving feast, because I've got some 100-year-old leftovers to serve up today!

"If the Pilgrims Had Started Thanksgiving Day in 1923" by Harold M. Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 29, 1923

Back in 1923, the U.S. celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month, of which there were five that year. Merchants pushing for a longer Christmas Shopping Season™ persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving up to the third Thursday of November in 1938, which, however, didn't please many non-merchants. In 1941, FDR pushed it back to the fourth Thursday in November, where it has been ever since.

"We're Thankful" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 29, 1923

Tom Foley's gripe about the price of coal was the equivalent of today's complaints about the cost of gas. Coal was an absolute necessity for the heating of nearly every home, and miners' strikes after World War I kept reducing its supply. Gasoline, on the other hand, was cheap and plentiful, and most families could get along just fine with only one car or none at all.

I do like Foley's version of a John Held cartoon character in the third panel. I wonder what their girlfriends thought of the fellows' looks.

Thanksgiving offered cartoonists an opportunity to observe that on the whole, citizens of the United States were better off than many people elsewhere.

"I'd Like to Share with the People Over There" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca, Nov. 29, 1923

Morris didn't specify what "people over there" he had in mind for this cartoon, because they could have been practically anyone anywhere. Hyperinflation in Germany and food shortages in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere were well known in the U.S. The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan should also have been fresh in readers' memories.

Whatever Morris's specific intent was, it allows us to pivot to editorial cartoonists who decided to tie the holiday in with contemporary politics.

"Thanksgiving 1923" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Nov. 29, 1923

The table in 1923 may not have had the overstuffed turkeys Butterball & Co. offer us today, but I still think that there should have been enough white meat back then to satisfy the appetites of three diners. After all, one has got to make room for all that stuffing, sweet potatoes, veggies, corn bread, cranberry sauce, and pie, too.

Maybe I'm missing some interpretation Berryman assumed his readers would make. (I'm pretty sure there's nothing race-related in this cartoon, though.)

"The Pilgrim Fathers Were Not the Only Ones..." by Wm. A Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, Nov. 28, 1923

The new president, Calvin Coolidge, was the overwhelming favorite for the 1924 Republican Party presidential nomination, yet that didn't mean that he was completely unchallenged. Ceperley's cartoon has Cal threatened by Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA), Congress, and "Blocs" (see Berryman's cartoon above) hiding behind a tree. The 68th Congress had yet to be convene, as the party's Progressive wing was trying to wrest power from the Old Guard in the House of Representatives. 

(Side note: There was a mailing label slapped on top of the Ceperley cartoon in the archives where I found it. I have scribbled in some lines where the label was. I find mailing labels covering part of front page cartoons somewhat often; why couldn't someone have stuck the labels on the newspapers' flags, huh?)

"Won't Talk Turkey" by Dennis McCarthy in Fort Worth Record, Nov. 29, 1923

Dennis McCarthy's cartoon serves as a reminder that WKRP's Arthur Carlson wasn't entirely wrong in thinking that turkeys could fly. They can.

Just not very far.

"Thanksgiving Birds" by Thomas E. Powers for Star Company, ca. Nov. 29, 1923

T.E. Powers offered a three-for-one holiday cartoon. Stinnes in the top panel was German industrialist and newspaper publisher Hugo Stinnes, then also a member of the Reichstag. The middle panel refered to a general income tax cut some U.S. politicians were proposing as an alternative to bonus payments for World War I veterans. And the bottom panel was echoing Dennis McCarthy's warning against Europeans coming after Uncle Sam's turkey.

"A Thanksgiving Controversy" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha World-Herald, Nov. 29, 1923

Other cartoonists stuck to the tried and true themes of the holiday, such as Guy Spencer reminding his readers that Benjamin Franklin thought the turkey should be the United States' national bird rather than the bald eagle.

Spencer had been drawing editorial cartoons for two decades by this point, so I find it odd that he didn't leave the eagle's head white — the principal distinction between the American symbol and that of Prussia, Austria, Russia, Poland, et al. Bald eagles are not strangers to Nebraska, and had been a staple of editorial cartoons for decades. 

So was this supposed to be a juvenile? A brown eagle? Heck, before reading the dialogue, I thought it was a crow.

A Thanksgiving controversy indeed!

"Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Nov. 28, 1923

The farmer's axe may have come as a surprise to Guy Spencer's tom turkey; Elmer Bushnell's bird lived in mortal dread of it.

"Theory Versus Practice" by Maurice Ketten (Prosper Fiorini) in New York World, Nov. 29, 1923

Meanwhile on the consumer end of things, our great-grandparents fretted about such things as overeating on the holidays. Even if, as we were earlier reminded, children were starving in Europe. 

"Out Our Way" by J.R. Williams for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 30, 1923

Children here in America — at least in its cartoons — were sure to get something at the dinner table.

The Willet family in "Out Our Way" wasn't particularly large, so they must have had an awful lot of guests for dinner in 1923 if all that was left for young Willis Willet at the end of the table was the neck.

Either that, or he had been a bad boy that Thanksgiving, pestering Dad for the white meat.

"Out Our Way" was based on J.R. Williams's memories of growing up in small-town America; perhaps it was the future cartoonist who was expected to be thankful for the most difficult-to-eat cut of the Thanksgiving turkey. 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

"Ye Olde Thanksgiving" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 29, 1923

But it's a sure-fire hit for the holidays.