By rights, today's Graphical History Tour ought to take us into cartoons from October of 1926. But we still have a couple of international stories to take care of from that September.
We start with the federal election in Canada.
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| "Definitions" by Douglas H.N. Russell in Vancouver Daily Province, Sept. 11, 1926 |
We've been following the 1926 campaign, but Douglas Russell kindly reintroduces us to the major parties contesting for power in the above cartoon.
Arthur Meighen's Conservatives were nominally the incumbent party, but never had a coalition partner to achieve a working majority in Parliament in the three days they were in power. The coalition of William Mackenzie King's Liberals and Robert Forke's Progressives had lost their majority in November, 1925. Labour and other minor parties had more in common with the Liberals or Progressives than with the Conservatives.
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| "The Liberal Champion Still in the Lead" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, Sept. 10, 1926 |
Most of the partisan cartoons leading up to the vote predicted victory for their favored candidate and defeat for the other side. As election day neared, even the partisan cartoonists had to acknowledge that the vote could tip either way.
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| "Waiting for the Verdict" by George Shields in Evening Telegram, Toronto, Sept. 14, 1926 |
Sam Hunter was a committed Liberal, and George Shields was an unyielding Tory. Accordingly, whereas Shields depicts Meighen waiting confidently with John Bull at his shoulder (you surely recall that Canada was a part of the United Kingdom at this time), King sweats nervously, backed by his alleged patron, a scowling Uncle Sam.
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| "Class Selfishness Versus Canadian Progress" by Arthur Racey in Montreal Evening Star, Sept. 11, 1926 |
Arthur Racey was another dyed-in-the-wool Tory, but I find hardly any cartoons of his boosting Meighen. Instead, Racey put out an occasional cartoon critical of Progressive leader Robert Forke. This one attempts to say too much, yet artlessly and without wit, as if it were one of those godawful imitation editorial cartoons extruded by ai.
Where were we? Oh, yes…
The Progressives, with their constituency in the sparsely populated, agrarian plains provinces, ran a consistently distant third to the Liberals and Conservatives, but were indispensable to any Liberal government.
Forke had resigned as leader of the Progressives at the end of June, running instead as a Liberal-Progressive. A number of Albertan Progressives in Parliament also quit the party, switching to the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) Party.
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| "The Come-Back" by George Shields in Evening Telegram, Toronto, Sept. 17, 1926 |
Election Day was September 14. When votes in all the ridings were tallied, Meighen's Conservatives lost 24 seats. Concentrating their efforts on ridings where they stood the best chance of winning, King's Liberals gained 16 seats, despite earning fewer votes overall than the Tories.
Meanwhile, although the leaderless Progressives lost 11 seats, Forke and his Liberal-Progressives picked up eight and the UFA gained nine. Their gains were enough for the Liberals to forge a governmental majority, and King returned as Prime Minister, to the disappointment consternation of the Telegram and its cartoonist.
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Moving right along: Coming in too late to be in our August visit there, Fred Seibel came up with one more paternalistic metaphor to explain why the Philippines should remain a colony of the United States.
A proposal by rubber industry magnates to grant independence to the largely Catholic north of the archipelago while retaining the more Moslem southern islands as an American fiefdom ultimately went nowhere.
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| "A Noble Ambition" by Fred Seibel in Richmond Times Dispatch, Sept. 12, 1926 |
Fred Seibel drew this complimentary cartoon about Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, a fellow Virginian who was elected to the British Parliament upon the death of her husband, Waldorf Astor.
Lady Astor was an outspoken suffragist and advocate for education reform, temperance, and recruiting women into civil service. On the other hand, she was an anti-Catholic Nazi sympathizer, so her career did not survive World War II. For the time being, however, she was quite popular in her riding and back in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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| "Everything Bows to His Dominating Will" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 21, 1926 |
Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini survived a second assassination attempt in September.
Anarchist Gino Lucetti had been hiding out in Marseille after shooting Fascist Alessandro Perfetti during an argument the year before, and getting shot himself . Crossing the border back into Italy under an assumed name, Lucetti threw a bomb at Mussolini's car in front of the Porta Pia in Rome on the very day Lucetti's trial for the Perfetti shooting was to start.
Mussolini was unscathed, although eight bystanders sustained minor injuries, and Lucetti was quickly captured. Mussolini's response to the incident included a veiled warning to France: "We must put an end to the gentle tolerance of parties capable of such matters. It would be well for responsible governments to take note of this, because otherwise their friendship with the Italian people may be fatally compromised, and we are ready to apply suitable methods for this purpose."
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| "Hands Across the Mediterranean" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Sept. 13, 1926 |
Mussolini forged alliances with his fellow fascist dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera. De Rivera had overthrown Spain's elected republic in 1923, receiving the support of King Alfonso XIII after the fact.
Morris's cartoon portrays not only the friendship of the two dictators, but also the relationship between them and their respective royals, the diminutive figures peering out between de Rivera's and Mussolini's legs.
But let's close the book on that September with some cheery news:
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| "Germany's Admission to the League" by Arthur Racey in Montreal Evening Star, Sept. 16, 1926 |
Germany and France have promised never to go to war again! Hoorah!
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