Overworked Uncle Sam

I ran across this cartoon by Charles Lewis "Bart" Bartholomew for the April 9, 1898 Minneapolis Journal the other day:

Overworked.

Uncle Sam to the cartoonists of the country–Don't you think, boys, you could give me a day off? I begin to feel as if I had been worked overtime by you fellows of late.

Despite some early cartoons lampooning the eagerness to go to war of Randolph Hearst and company, Bart was by this time regularly drawing jingoistic cartoons lauding America's taking up arms to aid "Starving Cuba" and questioning the intentions of Spanish diplomatic attempts to head off the war. So Bart – standing with his back to us next to his signature gopher, or chipmunk, or whatever that animal is supposed to be – was drawing Uncle Sam (or crowing bald eagles) nearly every day.

The tall cartoonist just to Bart's right must be the Minneapolis Tribune's Rowland Claude Bowman, who usually included in his cartoons that dog between his legs.

Other cartoonists in the cartoon are identified with their respective newspapers. From left to right: The Chicago Record, ?, New York Journal (standing), New York Herald (seated), Examiner San Francisco (standing), Chicago Inter Ocean (crouching), and World. Sorry, I just can't read that second fellow.

I can postulate names for the New Yorkers in this cartoon. Homer Davenport was cartoonist for the New York Journal. William A. Rogers was cartoonist for the New York Herald. The cartoonists for the (New York) World included Richard Outcault (in a self-caricature on page 71 of Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop's American Political Cartoons, Outcault has dark shaggy hair, glasses, and an upturned moustache) and Walt McDougall.

Another R.C. Bowman Cartoon on the Interwebs

One of the most viewed of my blog entries has consistently been this one, where I posted cartoons by turn-of-the-century editorial cartoonist for the Minneapolis Tribune R. C. Bowman about the Philippines. At the time those cartoons were drawn, 1900, the Philippines were an American colony, seized from Spain in the Spanish-American War.

Tracking back through the searches people were undertaking to find that blog post, I've found that a number of sites have posted the cartoon at left. Most of those sites probably found the cartoon at this Wikipedia page about the history of the Philippines.  While someone callously removed the cartoonist's signature, and it is therefore unattributed except to the Minneapolis Tribune, I'm fairly confident that this is yet another example of R.C. Bowman's work.

The American pretext for war with Spain centered on Cuba rather than the Philippines, but with the American declaration of war on April 25, 1898, Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt ordered Admiral Dewey's fleet to attack the Spanish ships at the Philippines. U.S. forces had begun arriving in Cuba four months earlier; the McKinley administration had been agitating for Cuban independence since November, 1897. I would guess that this cartoon had to have been drawn between January 25 and April 25, 1898.

I have to wonder what McKinley means to do within the context of the cartoon. Surely he doesn't mean to push the Philippines over the edge into the Spanish abyss. Nor does it make sense that McKinley is holding the Philippines back from jumping into it.

Indeed, the character most in danger of falling off the cliff would appear to be Mr. Globe there, whose heels are right on the edge, and whose head is so disproportionately huge relative to the rest of his body that the first little sneeze is likely to sending him toppling backwards.

I suppose another interpretation of the cartoon would be that it was drawn after Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris in December, but General Aguinaldo had already proclaimed Filipino independence on June 12. The McKinley administration opposed Aguinaldo's provisional government, but had no clear intention for the Philippines otherwise. Even if this cartoon were drawn in 1899, I still doubt that anyone in America or the Philippines seriously entertained the notion of returning the Philippines to Spanish rule.

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Here's one additional bit of Filipino and presidential trivia: the first American governor of the Philippines, appointed in 1899, was none other than future American president William Howard Taft.