1924 Challengers

Our Graphical History Tour returns again to the presidential contest of 1924, where we find Harold Talburt all fired up about Progressive nominee Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin.

"One Good Way to Save the Rug" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 5, 1924

I could be wrong here, but my gut feeling is that a board with a nail in it is not the best tool for beating a rug, and one of them new-fangled vacuum cleaners would be more efficient and less damaging to boot. 

Before Kirby, Hoover, and Electrolux rendered them obsolete, there was a weapon called a carpet beater, consisting of metal loops flowering off the end of a wooden handle. Years later, one Henry E. Rutzebeck of Sunland, California reminisced about the old-fangled device to the Los Angeles Times:

“I remember beating the rug until my arms and shoulders were limp and my spirit demoralized,” he writes. “My mother would come out, give the object of my frustration one well-placed whack and, in a cloud of smoking dust, instruct: ‘Beat more!’ ”

He adds: “Today’s mass-produced rugs would never survive the ritual beatings such as we were trained to administer in the early ’20s.”

"Asking Too Much of the Girl" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, Sept. 13, 1924

Beating of the carpets was presumably well overdue in this Collier's magazine cartoon by "Ding" Darling. I presume it is Congress with so much "unfinished business," beset by "blocs" and an overflowing "waste" can. 

For better or worse, the 68th Congress had not been as completely unproductive as Darling portrays: it passed an onerous, racist immigration bill, but also acknowledged Native Americans as U.S. citizens. It also passed bills adjusting veterans' compensation and addressing water pollution. It was a modest output to be sure, but a model of efficiency and productivity compared to the Republican 118th Congress of today. Besides, the 68th Congress still had a lengthy lame duck session between Election Day and March 4, 1925 to hunker down and really get to work.

LaFollette's invitation to "The November Bride" to "live here with the folks until we can figure out something" will merit some further thought.

"We'd Like to Know" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 25, 1924

William Hanny takes issue with a specific proposal of LaFollette's for congressional review of Supreme Court decisions. Given the conservative bent of the Court for most of its history, its resistance to most if not all Progressive legislation would have been extremely likely.

"Farmers Take Your Choice" probably by T.E. Powers for Star Co., ca. Sept. 26, 1924

I don't see a signature on this cartoon, but it looks to me like the work of T.E. Powers. A typical cartoon of his would have three loosely related panels like this one, so I wouldn't be surprised if the editors of the Oklahoma Leader selected the one panel they liked, or would fit on the page, and it didn't happen to be the panel with Powers's signature in it.

LaFollette stands proudly with his running mate, Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who had led a special Senate committee investigating the Harding Administration's Teapot Dome scandal. (That's also Wheeler playing guitar in William Hanny's cartoon.) The Democratic presidential nominee John Davis, starting off on his campaign tour of western states, is joined by vice presidential nominee Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska and Bryan's elder brother William Jennings Bryan.

"The Sailing Power of the Tail" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Sept. 25, 1924

The elder Bryan, his party's standard bearer in 1896, 1900, and 1908, remained a Democratic power broker and a favorite of cartoonists. Adding the younger Bryan to the ticket was intended to neutralize the Prairie Populist's strong opposition to Davis.

"Carrying All Before It" by Robert Satterfield for Autocaster, ca. Sept. 19, 1924

It has been very difficult to find any cartoons confident in the Democratic ticket's chances in November, so Bob Satterfield lands here pretty much by default.

He seizes on new criminal charges against Harding administration officials connected to the Teapot Dome scandal as the basis for his optimism, but Coolidge had effectively disassociated himself from his predecessor's "Ohio Gang."

"Moral" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Sept. 23, 1924

What concerned some Coolidge supporters such as Doc Kuhn was that the three-way race would end up with no candidate winning a majority in the electoral college, leaving the election up to Congress. And perhaps this was the possibility Darling was getting at in his Collier's cartoon.

Republicans held a majority in both the House (which, according to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, would elect the President) and Senate (which would elect the Vice President); but that includes several members aligned with the Progressive movement — not to mention Senators LaFollette and Wheeler themselves.

The precedent set 100 years earlier, when no candidate won an electoral college majority in the four-way race of 1824, suggests that there would have been plenty of wheeling and dealing in what is called a "contingent election." That earlier congress had managed to elect a president in one day.

On the other hand, in 1924, this was the Congress that had taken nine ballots to elect a Speaker of the House.

Again, a hasty decision compared to today's GOP QauQus.