The World According to the Daily Worker

Today's Graphical History Tours journeys 100 Aprils into the past, with an eye to some of the leftmost cartoonists in print in the U.S.

Daily Worker was published in Chicago from 1924 to 1958, giving voice to the communists and leftist socialists of the American labor movement. Editorial cartoons and illustrations appeared throughout the newspaper, particularly in the Saturday feature section edited in 1926 by Robert Minor.

Xenophobia is nothing new in U.S. history. Congress was considering a series of bills requiring that all foreign-born workers annually register their fingerprints with the government, report to authorities any time they moved or traveled from one locality to another, and carry a certificate of identification to be shown on demand.

"Thumbs Down" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 10, 1926

Looking down from the sidelines in Maurice Becker's cartoon are: Fake Labor Leader, Militarist, the Courts, Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Mellon, the KKK, Election Crook, Kept Press, and Rotarian. "Fake Labor Leader" may have been a Daily Worker reference to the American Federation of Labor, which it frequently criticized for not being radical enough; but the AFL was publicly opposed to the alien registry legislation.

Labor unions such as the Machinist Locals 84 and 337 protested that "the majority of workers in the basic industries of this country are of foreign birth, and the proposed bills are clearly aimed at the working class as a whole. ... The intent of the proposed bills is clearly to intimidate the foreign-born workers; to prevent them from joining unions; to prevent them from participating in strikes, and to compel them to accept a status of subjection, forced to do scab labor during times of conflict with employers."

Unions for the Pullmans, painters, decorators, seamstresses, steamfitters, and more from Boston to San Francisco organized "Councils for Protection of the Foreign-Born" to advocate against the proposed legislation.

"The Boycott" by Rollin Kirby (?) in New York Evening World, ca. Apr. 14, 1926

The Daily Worker didn't credit the cartoonist, whom I presume was Rollin Kirby. It also seems to me that the caption doesn't fit the cartoon. I couldn't find anything in the Daily Worker reporting boycotts related to the alien registry bills; I also haven't found this cartoon printed elsewhere. 

I did find that the U.S. had deported 55,110 resident aliens between September, 1925 and April, 1926.

"Reviving a Dead One" by William Gropper in Daily World, Apr. 9, 1926

The Democrat-sponsored alien registry bills did not make it to President Coolidge's desk, or to the drawing boards of certain mainstream cartoonists I expected would have opinions about them. Many mainstream cartoonists were more interested in proposals to create exceptions to Prohibition — one of many distractions, according to the communist press, "to get the workers' mind off the real issues."

"Sidetracked" by Fred B. Watson in Baltimore Afro-American, Mar. 20, 1926

The Daily Worker included this Fred Watson cartoon in its April 22 edition with an unnecessarily longer title. The cartoon answers my question of two months ago whether Watson opposed U.S. participation in the World Court, and the Worker's cut line explains that the communist leadership at the newspaper viewed the World Court as a tool of J.P. Morgan and Wall Street bankers.

The Black vote, where it could make its way into the polling place, had been reliably Republican since the end of the Civil War. Although the Anti-Lynching Bill was authored and promoted by a Republican, the repeated inaction on the bill when Republicans held all the reins of power was a sign that the party took Black loyalty for granted.

"America Protects Germany from Sin" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, Apr. 28, 1926

I had serious qualms about including this cartoon because of objections to the Daily Worker editor's decision to mess with it. For some reason, the editor saw fit to remove whatever dialogue Gropper had President Coolidge saying (and possibly also text or symbolism that might have been on the paper in Mr. Businessman's hand), substituting instead the editor's own text as a cut line.

Unless an editor is providing translation of a foreign-language cartoon, that's simply not cool. 

But I did want to include a caricature of Calvin Coolidge besides that barely recognizable one by Maurice Becker above. 

And speaking of Gropper caricatures:

"Mussolini Thumbs the Stub of His Nose" by William Gropper in Daily World, Apr. 24, 1926

On April 7, Violet Gibson, the 50-year-old daughter of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, attempted to assassinate Benito Mussolini. Her bullet nicked il Duce's nose; her gun jammed as she tried a second shot.

Police stopped the crowd from killing her then and there. She probably would have been executed like Mussolini's other three failed assassins but for the British government interceding on her behalf. Gibson was allegedly mentally unstable (she had attempted suicide in Rome the previous year), so Italy deported her to England, where she spent the rest of her days in a mental asylum.

But speaking of womenfolk and guns...

"The Lady Might Get Hurt" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, April 1, 1926

The Daily Worker was highly skeptical of international agreements, such as the Locarno Pact, that did not originate in Moscow.

Have we another example of the Daily Worker editor editing a cartoon? Why would Gropper attach a label to the gun if not to identify what it is supposed to represent? Could this cartoon have been drawn about a completely different topic?

"No Team Work" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 3, 1926

No such question about Maurice Becker's cartoon here. It does reminds me a lot of the Arthur Racey cartoon that led last week's Graphical History Tour. It is possible, I suppose, that Becker could have seen the March issue of Macleans; I think, however, that this was simply a case of two cartoonists reaching for a common image to illustrate a similar situation.

What does puzzle me is why Becker thought it necessary to label which country in the rowboat was which. I mean, shouldn't a reader just assume that the characters are a bunch of different national leaders? How does knowing who's who matter?

"The Spirit of Locarno" by Viktor "Deni" Denisov in Pravda, ca. Apr. 13, 1926

Soviet cartoonist Deni uses caricature to indicate the nationality of some of the League members in this cartoon: the gentleman sprawled on the floor at left resembles Germany's Hans Luther, and the mustachioed fellow at top right looks like French Prime Minister Aristide Briand. Below Briand are a probable Briton and a likely Japanese, but it hardly matters to whom each butt belongs.

"Glorious Garbage" by "Hay Bales" in Daily World, Apr. 24, 1926

I explain these cartoons because they're 100 years old and make references that have grown obscure over time. The editors of Daily Worker explained this cartoon because they didn't trust readers to catch the subtle clues left by the cartoonist that the skull labeled "The League" is dead and that "Geneva Garbage Co." is a trash can.

At least they left the rather clever "Loco Peace Pact" nickname to stand on its own.

"With Rubber a Dollar a Pound" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 17, 1926

Every once in a while, U.S. presidents would look into the possibility of granting demands for independence by the Philippines, a U.S. possession taken as spoils of the Spanish-American War at the close of the 19th Century. The Coolidge administration had recently appointed Col. Carmi A. Thompson, commander in chief of the United Spanish War Veterans, to conduct just such an investigation.

Members of Congress raised their objection to Philippine independence on a number of grounds, one being the high price of rubber from the British East India Company. U.S. firms were working to establish rubber plantations in the Philippines to rival the British monopoly.

Philippine independence would come only after World War II. 

"The Imperialist Policy in China," uncredited, in Daily Worker, Apr. 17, 1926

China's future was up in the air after the death of Premier Sun Yat Sen in March, 1925. Various warlords sought to establish their own local fiefdoms. Against the warlords, the Chinese Communist Party and  Nationalist government cooperated in the First United Front, with Soviet backing, until the Canton Coup on March 20, 1926.

The communist captain of the S.S. Zhongshan, with a Soviet naval adviser on board, moved to support a leftist uprising in Guangzhou. Chiang Kai-Shek, then the commander of the National Revolutionary Army, declared martial law in Guangzhou and arrested communists in China's armed services and their Soviet advisers.

"The Helper of Imperialist Thieves" by O.R. "Zim" Zimmerman in Daily Worker, Apr. 10, 1926

The Daily Worker promoted a rather different narrative to the purge of communists from China's National Revolutionary Army; Christian missionaries were hardly a factor in the Canton Coup.

Only from an atheist communist would you expect a Jesus Christ drawn as a Jewish stereotype 100 years ago. (Robert Minor drew the Christ with an even longer hooked nose than in this Zimmerman toon — see page 48 here.) It would be a welcome departure from the auburn-haired northern European Jesus found elsewhere but for the undercurrent of antisemitism tapped into by these cartoons.

"My Gawd, How the Money Rolls In" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, Apr. 5, 1926

And thus with yet one more William Gropper cartoon, we must leave 1926 behind for another week or two, returning to the present day secure in the knowledge that we have come so far since those bad old days.