Labor Day Toons

It's Labor Day weekend, so today's Graphical History Tour checks out what editorial cartoons were on the newsstands 100 Labor Days ago:

"Labor Day" by Fred O. Seibel in Richmond [VA] Times Dispatch, Sept. 6, 1926

Per Fred Seibel, it was a day for the working man to hang up his workday duds and step out in his best suit, pressed pants, and bow tie. Even his little dingbat (named either Jim Crow or Moses, depending whom you ask) gets all duded up for the holiday.

You might spy somebody sporting that kind of fashion sense this Labor Day, but I think novelty t-shirts and Bermuda shorts are as spiffy as most working guys get for their day off.

"His Day — Their Future" by Joe Tung (?) in Cleveland Press, Sept. 6, 1926

I had a little difficulty making out the signature on "His Day — Their Future." Joe Tung does not seem to be a regular cartoonist for the Cleveland Press editorial page.

These 1926 cartoons all overlook the women in the workforce. They were limited to certain professions: seamstresses, teachers, secretaries, nurses, and sales counter service, to name a few. In this cartoon, I suppose this lady is a housewife, but I doubt that the cartoonist or his editors thought of that as the sort of "labor" the holiday was about.

 The $700 million worth of labor-owned stocks in 1926 promised this idyllic cartoon family a bright future —for about three years.

"His Day of Rest" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Sept. 6, 1926

Now, I realize that Gloria Steinem would not be born for another eight years, but did it not occur to anyone to suggest to William Morris that having twice as many Father's Days in a year as Mother's Days was grossly unequal?

"The Support of the Nation" by Orville P. Williams in New York Evening Graphic, ca. Sept. 6, 1926

Orville Williams enlists Uncle Sam in his tribute to the American Working Man.

"Straight Ahead" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 6, 1926

While Gustavo Bronstrup channels Thomas the Tank Engine decades ahead of his time. 

"A Goodly Share" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Tribune, Sept. 6, 1926

Quite a few of the Labor Day cartoons in the Roaring '20's credited the Working Man for the nation's prosperity, and promised him a slice of the pie — or, in LeCocq's case, the watermelon — for his efforts.

"Labor Day" by Bill Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 6, 1926 

Bill Donahey makes much the same point, with the same setting, but without needing to label the food or the blanket. Or even to bring Uncle Sam along.

"Labor Day" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6, 1926

I have not been able to find anything about that four-armed labor symbol in John McCutcheon's depiction of a Labor Day parade. Assuming McCutcheon didn't create the tetraskelion himself, whatever labor organization it may have represented most certainly replaced it once the swastika became inextricably linked to Nazi Germany.

In Google AI's opinion of this specific cartoon, "this political cartoon parodies the growing militarism, aggressive rhetoric, and intimidation tactics of the early Nazi movement in Weimar-era Germany by converting the geometric arms of the swastika into literal flexing muscles and punch-ready fists." 

I believe Google AI is way, way off, as evidenced by the gentleman in the foreground of the cartoon saying, "I can remember back before the days of unions, when I used to work for a dollar and a quarter a day. Now American labor is the envy of the world." Nothing at all points to a parody of the Nazi movement in Weimar-era Germany, and you can tell Google AI I said so.

Detail from "A Week in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily Worker, Chicago, Sept. 4, 1926

Turning to the opposite end of the political spectrum: a Hay Bales cartoon in the Daily Worker, the only one of today's papers that did not publish on Labor Day, notes an explosion in a mine owned by the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation the previous week. Of the 48 miners trapped by the collapse of the mine walls, only four survived.

It was just one of at least three fatal mining accidents in the United States that September. Sixteen men perished in an explosion near Tahona, Oklahoma one day after the Pennsylvania tragedy. Three miners were killed in a mine collapse outside Ironwood, Michigan three weeks later; 43 others survived after having been trapped for six days.

"Seven Years Old—and Growing Stronger" by O. "Zim" Zimmerman in Daily Worker, Chicago, Sept. 1, 1926 

The Daily Worker celebrated the seventh anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Communist Labor Party and Communist Party of America, which merged in 1920 to form the United Communist Party of America. Continued factionalism, plus federal prosecution of the party's criminal agitators, led to the creation in December of 1921 of the Workers Party of America as a parallel, legal communist organization (later the "Workers (Communist) Party.")

"Right—For Once" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 6, 1926

Grover Page's mainstream response to Zimmerman twists the words of Leon Trotsky, who had been shoved out of power by Communist Party General Secretary Josef Stalin but was still more familiar in the West than Stalin had yet become. 

There is a hasty, slapdash feeling to Page's cartoon — scribbled at the last moment on a paper napkin, perhaps? — but it's a wry, witty observation on the relationship of Americans and our cars.

With that, have a happy Labor Day weekend!