Setting the Stage for 1924

Our Graphical History Tour now arrives at the presidential election year of 1924.

"Let Me Carry Your Grip" by William Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan. 1, 1924

I wasn't going to use this cartoon since Mike Peterson had; but the scan he used had a blank spot where William McAdoo's mouth and chin are, leading one of his readers to mistake McAdoo (just above 3:00 in Morris's cartoon) for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some might have considered Roosevelt, the Vice Presidential candidate on the Democrats' 1920 ticket, presidential timber in 1924, but this was a mere three years after he was tainted by the Newport Sex Scandal from his tenure as Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy. A Senate investigation into the affair at the naval base concluded that Roosevelt was "morally responsible" for a pattern there of homosexual activity, entrapment, and intimidation, and thus unfit for public office.

Roosevelt, moreover, had been paralyzed from the waist down since the summer of 1921. Although he continued active behind the scenes in Democratic and New York politics, he withdrew from public life until making the nomination speech for Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic Convention.

McAdoo, on the other hand, was the early leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. McAdoo had the backing of rural interests, prohibitionists, the Ku Klux Klan, and his father-in-law, Woodrow Wilson. His rivals included anti-prohibitionist Al Smith, and Alabama Senator Oscar Underwood, who was prohibitionist like McAdoo but publicly opposed to the Klan.

William Jennings Bryan, just past 12:00 in Morris's cartoon, was a favorite of cartoonists to enter the race, but even he recognized that he was better off cheering and jeering from the gallery.

The eventual nominee, James Cox, is the fellow wearing glasses just below McAdoo in Morris's cartoon.

"Hiram Isn't Waiting..." by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 5, 1924

Contrary to the left half of Morris's cartoon, Calvin Coolidge's decision to run for election on his own effectively cleared the field of Republican hopefuls, save for Senator Hiram Johnson of California (just below 9:00 in Morris's cartoon). Johnson, representing the party's Progressives and isolationists, was by all accounts a long-shot candidate.

"He Would Hitch His Wagon to a Star" by Elmer Bushnell for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Jan. 10, 1924

Elmer Bushnell's cartoon about Johnson encountering difficulty with the Republican Party in Bushnell's home state could easily have been syndicated with the word "Ohio" left out. I include it here because it is the one cartoon I've run across that spells out in those bundles the issues Johnson ran on: Mexico, foreign policy, the veterans' bonus, income tax reduction, farm policy, and staying out of the World Court and League of Nations.

"It's Just Possible..." by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan. 10, 1924

I found only one cartoonist willing to take Johnson's candidacy seriously, even among cartoonists in his home state.

"The Flivver That Flivvered" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Dec. 29, 1923

Meanwhile, Henry Ford, after a year of toying with the idea of running for the presidential nomination of one party or another, decided in December that Coolidge was a shoo-in to win in November.

"Trying to Pull Some Leap Year Stuff" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune, Jan. 2, 1924

Sam Armstrong continues his theme from last Saturday's post of marital blisslessness with a harridan bride bearing a striking resemblance to Wisconsin's Republican Senator Bob LaFollette (who might be at 11:00 in Morris's cartoon above). Recognizing as Ford did Coolidge's inevitable nomination on the Republican ticket, LaFollette's presidential ambitions lay as a third-party candidate.

"Just the Usual Presidential Year Log Rolling" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Jan. 4, 1924

After nearly ten months with the House of Representatives shut down, Congress was finally back in session. Gale's cartoon complains that their work was impeded by investigations of: Prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League, the Ku Klux Klan (more on that next week), the Bureau of Efficiency, the Shipping Board, the Internal Revenue Service, Alien Property Custodian, recognition of Russia, and Governor General Leonard Wood's administration of the U.S. territory in the Philippines. He unfairly includes "investigations" of tax reduction and veterans' bonuses, the very sort of issues Congress was necessarily responsible for.

"Smoked Out" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard News Service, Jan. 16, 1924

Curiously absent from Gage's cartoon is the Senate investigation headed by Thomas J. Walsh (D-MT) into the Teapot Dome Scandal. Walsh publicly called for former Interior Secretary Albert Fall to testify in front of Walsh's Public Lands & Surveys Committee, which Fall had so far resisted.

"Something Must Have Crawled Under There and Died" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Jan. 5, 1924

Since Gale brought up the Wood administration in the Philippines, here's another Talburt cartoon on that topic. To summarize the issues again from last November, Wood had repeatedly vetoed actions of the Filipino legislature, and his unwelcome meddling in the local police department had provoked his cabinet to resign en masse.

"Isn't That Pretty Strong Medicine..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Jan. 4, 1924

Having recognized the Mexican government of Álvaro Obregón Salido only months earlier, the Coolidge administration announced at the end of December that the U.S. would sell arms to Obregón in support of his fight against rebels led by Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor. While I have found a few cartoons supportive of selling weaponry to the Mexican government, most found the business of arms sales unseemly — including this friend of the Republican administration, "Ding" Darling.

That is Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes behind the pharmacist's counter, and in this next cartoon.

"Hardly Fair to Russia" by Orville P. Williams for Star Co., Jan. 9, 1924

O.P. Williams's cartoon on Coolidge administration's conditions for recognizing Russia's Communist government is definitely an outlier. Aside from those drawing for Socialist journals, every other cartoonist I've seen in this period was either skeptical of or against extending recognition to the Bolsheviks.

In any event, Russia failed to satisfy Hughes's conditions, and the U.S. would not extend recognition to the Soviet government in Moscow until 1933.