Spooky Toons

Welcome to a special Halloween edition of Spookback Saturday! My cartoon this week was about an actual Halloween costume, but usually, we cartoonists mine this holiday for metaphors we can apply to whatever political story is in the headlines.

And I'm no exception. The charge that one's political opponent was attempting to scare seniors on the issue of social security was ready-made for a Halloween cartoon -- this one featuring the candidates for Wisconsin's 1st congressional seat in 1996 (Republican Mark Neumann and Democrat Lydia Spottswood).

Halloween and elections are made for each other. You can illustrate a charge that Candidate A is a Republican or Democrat in name only, for example, by having a donkey trick-or-treating in an elephant mask or vice versa. Just having kids dressed as political candidates and declaring that to be the scariest costume ever is overdone, I think -- I've seen way too many of such cartoons this season -- so the challenge is to find some way to turn that idea on its head.

I tried doing that in 2006 by portraying right-wingers attempting to be the very opposite of scary as they bemoaned Republicans' dismal chances in off-year elections. Fortunately, they did not succeed in convincing Democrats to stay home on Election Day that year.

Jumping ahead to 2013, these two persistent trick-or-treaters weren't being scary; but they were going to be disappointed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the issue of marriage equality.

Another use for Halloween imagery is when there is some issue that "just won't die," as in this 1986 cartoon for the NorthCountry Journal about a dam on the Kickapoo River, started in the 1960's; the Army Corps of Engineers ended up leaving the gates open, however, yielding to environmental concerns. A Democrat running for Wisconsin State Assembly in 1986 wanted the project completed.

This cartoon actually ran in the November issue, so I had to frame it from the vantage point of being after Halloween.

A big problem with Halloween is that it is so prone to cliché. Do you think taxes, prices, or the rent is too damn high? Vampire cartoon! Do you think somebody doesn't realize how hopeless they are? Great Pumpkin cartoon! Do you think Tea Partisans are mindlessly reckless and bent on destruction? Zombie (or Frankenstein) cartoon! Do you hate Hillary Clinton? Witch cartoon!

I can't be sure whether this 1900 R. C. Bowman cartoon was drawn for Halloween, but it illustrates how old these spooky ideas are. There is very little new material without having to dig very deep (oh, about six feet) to find anything original on which to hang a cartoon.

The most famous Halloween editorial cartoon of all time was drawn in 1936 by J. "Ding" Darling, showing Harry Hopkins, James Farley and Franklin Roosevelt running off with a family's outhouse, labeled "Private Rights," with an alarmed John Q. Public peering out from inside. Darling hadn't actually meant the cartoon for publication, and his editor at the Des Moines Register thought it was in bad taste; but the wife of his syndicate publisher reportedly told the New York Herald Tribune editors, "If you don't publish it, I'll put it on the woman's page!"

If you're going to swipe an old cartoon idea from someone else, at least give them the credit for it.

R.C. Bowman Hurls Everything He's Got

Continuing the series of Rowland Claude Bowman editorial cartoons about William Jennings Bryan's 1900 run for the presidency, here are three cartoons in which Bowman throws everything but the kitchen sink at the Democratic-Populist nominee.

They've got him up a tree.

The tags on the dogs read: "How about the Paris treaty?" "What do you think of the disenfranchisement of our colored citizens?" and "What do you think of Clark of Mont.?"

As I mentioned last week, Bryan sent a message to Democratic senators in February, 1898 to go ahead and ratify the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War, supposedly so that he could run against American imperialism later; thus that issue is a legitimate criticism of Mr. Bryan.

The Democratic Party at this point depended heavily on support from southern states where the black vote was actively suppressed, so its national candidates had a strong disincentive against criticizing Jim Crow laws, whatever their personal opinion might have been. From today's vantage point, I'd say that this was a fair criticism of Bryan as well.

Somewhat less germane is the question of Montana Senator Andrew Williams Clark, a copper magnate and one of the richest men in America, who bought his senate seat, was forced to resign, and then got himself re-appointed to the seat when the governor was out of town. I don't see any connection between the copper millionaire and Bryan's bimetalism policy, or, really, between Clark and Bryan on any level other than party affiliation. Perhaps that's why that particular dog is further away from the tree. (Here are Bowman's cartoons about Senator Clark. And if you've been wondering whatever became of his daughter Huguette's estate, here's the 2014 story from NPR.)

He leaves his happy home to ta-ah-ah-ah-alk.

In this cartoon, you have: Bryan's 16-to-1 silver-to-gold monetary policy; an empty dinner pail to contrast with President McKinley's campaign slogan of "the full dinner pail"; the Tammany tiger (the traditional representation of the New York Democratic party machine) with its tail stuck in New York Mayor Robert Van Wyck's Ice Trust scandal; and the barrel representing Montana Senator Clark. The closed front porch may be a reference to President McKinley's campaign style in 1896, when the Republican campaigned from his front porch in Ohio while Bryan spoke to crowds around the country from the back of a train.

The Ice Trust Scandal cost Mayor Van Wyck his job, but had nothing to do with Bryan. Mr. Bowman drew several cartoons linking the Ice Trust scandal to Bryan anyway.

To top off this cartoon, Bowman sticks a dictator's crown on Bryan's head -- a complaint usually lodged by the vanquished against the victor rather than the other way around. Cartoonist Charles Green Bush of the New York World, for example, drew a crown on McKinley's head as a way of criticizing the creation of an American Empire. Bryan was soundly defeated in each of his three runs for the presidency, so he never got a chance to be a dictator, if he ever entertained the notion in the first place.

If a dictator's crown on anti-imperialist Bryan's noggin seems a bit overboard, consider this next one:

The political "boxer"

The cartoon here is comparing Bryan's platform to the Boxer Rebellion in China, the bloody revolt that year by nationalist Chinese aiming to expel Westerners and Christian converts from their country. This cartoon is so over the top -- its Bryan isn't merely going to extinguish the smokestacks of prosperity, he's going to behead "The American Working Man" and his entire family.

Remind you of anybody?

R.C. Bowman on W.J. Bryan

Welcome to Stretchback Saturday, and another installment of the cartoons of Roland C. Bowman for the Minneapolis Tribune in 1900. As always, the cartoons are embiggenable when enclicked.

Since we're gearing up for 2016 these days, here's a look back at the 1900 presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, then 40 years old, won the Populist presidential nomination unanimously; and after the early withdrawal of Admiral George Dewey from the race, Bryan faced no real opposition for the Democratic nomination, either.

Chairman Jones: "This nigh horse isn't fast enough to trot in this team. Guess I'll have to trade him."

In my first batch of Bowman cartoons on this blog, I had included two cartoons featuring former Duluth, Minnesota Congressman Charles Towne from Bowman's "Meanderings of Willie and Little Steve" series. (To recap: Towne was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1894, lost reelection as an Independent in 1896 and 1898, and was appointed Senator as a Democrat for eight weeks in 1900-01; then he moved to New York and served one term in Congress as a Democrat.)

In the cartoon above Towne is the "nigh horse" about to be traded away by national Democratic Chairman James Jones. Towne was the Populist Party's overwhelming choice for its Vice Presidential nomination in 1900, but when the Democrats nominated former Vice President Adlai Stevenson instead, Towne declined the Populist nomination.

Poor, poor donkey

Bryan's advocacy of Free Silver was the overarching theme in his 1896 campaign; but by 1900, the discovery of gold in the Yukon and South Africa had completely changed the economic equation. "16 to 1" refers to the exchange rate of silver to gold proposed by the Free Silver advocates, opposed by Republicans and "Gold Democrats" such as former President Grover Cleveland.

The Democrats' 1900 convention in Kansas City reiterated much of the platform adopted at its 1896 convention in Chicago when it had first nominated Bryan for the presidency. The earlier convention had been the site of Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech.

Stefan Lorant posits that Bryan knew all along that his 1900 campaign was doomed to fail; but his enthusiastic campaigning never wavered as personally toured the country, delivering stirring and passionate speeches to enthusiastic crowds from the back of trains. This was in stark contrast to traditional presidential campaigns, and especially to incumbent President William McKinley, who stayed at home and let others campaign for him.

While Bryan was undoubtedly the more dynamic figure, McKinley benefited greatly from the robust national recovery during his first term from the Panic of 1893, as well as from the U.S. victory over Spain in the "splendid little war" of 1898.

The Ghost: "Tell me, William, what Demo-Pop was it who helped ratify me."

Bryan: "Why! O goodness!! The--the--tut-tut ba-ba-ba--it--was--me."

The Ghost: "Then you are SOME to blame, aren't you?"

Bryan: "Ya-ya-ya ye-ye-YES."

The Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish-American War turned Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines over to the United States. Bryan and the Democrats opposed the creation of an American Empire, and Senate ratification of the treaty in 1899 was in doubt. Republicans appeared to be a vote short when, in the last minutes before the final vote, Bryan persuaded a group of Democrats to vote for ratification -- allegedly so that he would have fodder for his anti-imperialist campaign the next year.

There are plenty more Bryan cartoons in this book -- check back here again soon for the rest of the campaign.

R.C. Bowman on the German Vote

It has been ages since I've posted any cartoons from The Minneapolos Tribune Cartoon Book for 1901: Being a Collection of Over One Hundred Cartoons by R.C. Bowman. So let's take a look at an ethnic voting bloc that you hardly ever  hear about any more:

How Teddy lost the German-American Vote While in Milwaukee.

Clearly, Mr. Bowman was being facetious with this caption; as noted before, he was solidly in favor of the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket in 1900 and would hardly have crowed about a setback to its prospects. Here, the Milwaukee G.O.P., wearing wooden clogs and pants with a pretzel motif, is trumpeting "We're with you, Teddy, man for man" and "Hoo-rah for hoo-rah and high wages!"

Given the party's determination to torpedo wages here in Wisconsin these days, there have clearly been some drastic changes in the state G.O.P. in the last 115 years.

Milwaukee was known as the "German Athens" for its large population of German immigrants, who ranged from farmers to brewery entrepreneurs to outspoken socialists. Generally speaking, German-American voters in 1900 tended to oppose both Bryan's "repudiation" policy (allowing holders of government bonds to "repudiate" the terms of the bond and to demand payment in coin for a bond purchased with paper) and overseas expansion under McKinley as a result of the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War.

The German American Vote: "Well, wouldn't that jar you? Some old geeser up there takes me for a sucker."

R.C. Bowman here remains confident that the German-American vote will go Republican, rather than be tempted by William Jennings Bryan's proposed 16-to-1 exchange rate of silver coinage to gold, or his campaign against American imperialism. The lure in the cartoon is labeled "16 to 1," and the worm is labeled "Imperialism bait."

Aside from Milwaukee, major German-American communities included Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Baltimore and the Northern Kentucky area along the Ohio River. By 1900, the populations of the cities of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken, and Cincinnati were all more than 40% German American; and the percentages in Omaha, Nebraska and Dubuque and Davenport, Iowa were even larger. Of the states in which these communities lie, only Kentucky and Missouri -- the ones in the "Solid South" -- went Democratic in the 1900 presidential election.

Carl Schurz: "Mister, don't you want to buy a dog? He's tame as a kitten (if you keep the muzzle on)."

Uncle Sam: "Carley, you may not know it, but you're an awfully funny feller."

German-born American Carl Schurz was a revolutionary who had moved to Wisconsin after the failure of Europe's 1848 liberal revolutions. By 1900, he had been Lincoln's ambassador to Spain, a brigadier general in the Civil War, chief editor of the Detroit Post, Senator from Missouri, and Rutherford B. Hayes's Secretary of the Interior. He was also a frequent cartoon target of Thomas Nast. A liberal Republican "Mugwump," he supported Democrat Grover Cleveland over Republican James Blaine in 1884; and while he did not support Bryan in 1896, he was won over by the Democrat in 1900 for his anti-imperialist policies.

The muzzle in this cartoon is labeled "Republican legislation"; Schurz was not a fan of the economic policies of William Jennings Bryan, who peers out from behind a log in this next cartoon.

"Too old a chick to be caught by chaff."

Those wooden shoes are back as a signifier of German-Americans in this cartoon. Today, they would only be associated with the Dutch, if anyone. I have no idea whether there was some association of pigeons, grouse, plovers, or whatever kind of bird that's supposed to be with German-Americans, but I guess Germans may have tended to walk around Minneapolis wearing poofy hard-billed caps and oversize bow ties.

At least the bird isn't wearing pretzelhosen.

What the Deuce, Holmes!

Well, now I don't know what to make of what I'm finding and not finding in Google's postings from The Strand Magazine.

That series of articles by Thomas E. Curtis on American cartoonists to which I linked in the March, 1903 issue last night?



 The same series appears begins in the March, 1902 issue as well: 
Note the difference in that introductory note about previous articles in the series; furthermore, three paragraphs have been added in the later edition prior to the introduction of Frank Opper, whose cartoons appear on these pages.

Obviously, these are from different strands of The Strand Magazine -- the British edition and the American edition, perhaps. So it is entirely possible that the nine pages of The Strand Magazine in the possession of Gus Frederick are indeed from the November, 1902 issue, even if Google's posting of the very same magazine doesn't include those pages.

Whence Mr. Globehead?

Gary Docken and I were chatting about yesterday's blog entry, and Gary said he was surprised to see a cartoon with a character whose head was a globe appearing in a cartoon before World War I.

I have to admit that I have no idea where Mr. Globehead first appeared in a cartoon. Many of our editorial cartoon conventions can be traced directly to Thomas Nast (1840-1902): the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and even the popular image of Santa Claus. Lady Liberty was an instant cartoon symbol as soon as her statue arrived in New York. Uncle Sam overtook Brother Jonathan as the popular representation of the United States after the Civil War. John Bull for England, Marianne for France, and the bear for Russia date back to the 18th Century.

My first assumption was that using Mr. Globehead to represent world opinion couldn't date before the advent of instant communication -- the telegraph and telephone -- in the late 19th Century. The European powers had already laid imperial claims to Asia, Africa, Australia and all the islands in between, so there might also have been cartoons in which one nation's rival's ambitions could be portrayed as threatening the world.

I have a fairly good collection of books of American editorial cartoons, but no exhaustive examples of Honoré Daumier or the many cartoonists for Punch. For that matter, Mr. Globehead could have appeared on posters advertising circuses, naval recruitment or heaven knows what else. He might have appeared as far back as 1492.

For that matter, the Man in the Moon has been staring down at us since long before Earthlings had eyes to look back at it, so the idea of putting a face on a big round ball is not a particularly novel concept.

The only other example of Mr. Globehead before WWI that I've been able to find is this at right by Frederick Opper (1857-1937). He's satirizing Joseph Pulitzer, then publisher of the New York World. Here the globe clearly is a reference to the name of Pulitzer's newspaper as well as to the planet; and while there is no body attached to it, there is a face.

I don't have a date of publication for this cartoon; one on-line source guesses that this cartoon might date from around 1900. Pulitzer had served in the U.S. Congress for 13 months, resigning his seat in April 1886 citing pressures of his publishing duties. This might possibly have inspired Opper's cartoon, except that he didn't start drawing for Hearst's New York Journal until 1899. In 1886, he was handling a wide array of artist's duties for the humor magazine Puck. Drawn & Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons by Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop says that this cartoon appeared in the New York Journal.

÷

Continuing with items brought up in yesterday's blog entry, I came across this quotation from President William McKinley about the Philippines which helps inform R.C. Bowman's cartoon:

"When we received the cable from Admiral Dewey telling of the taking of the Philippines, I looked up their location on the globe. I could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles!"

My source, Volume 12 of the American Heritage New Illustrated History of the United States (1963) fails to mention the source of the quotation. (There is a bibliography, but no footnotes to connect specific citations to their respective sources.)

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.

÷

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.

R.C. Bowman Cartoons about Great Britain -- 1900

More from the pages of The Minneapolis Tribune Cartoon Book for 1901: Being a Collection of Over One Hundred Cartoons by R.C. Bowman: I've already shown some other cartoons about Great Britain, mostly relating to the Boxer Rebellion in China. Here are three more.

W-h-e-w!!!

The reference in this cartoon is to Paul Kruger, also known as Oom ("Uncle") Paul, President of the South African Republic (Transvaal) up until September of 1900. This is in the middle of the Boer War with Great Britain. For the purposes of this cartoon, it is useful to know that Kruger had a bushy "chinstrap" beard and was as associated with pipe smoking as Franklin Roosevelt would later be with smoking with a cigarette holder. The cartoon symbol for England, John Bull, was also often depicted with a pipe.

As the British advanced on Pretoria, Kruger fled the capital; in October, he went into exile, first to Mozambique and then to Europe. He spent considerable time in Marseilles and Paris, and no doubt this cartoon dates from his French sojourn. The Anglo-French rivalry, of course, extends back to the Norman Conquest.

Kruger, a founder of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and a Flat Earther (really?!), is the guy they named the Krugerrand after. Also the "Oom Paul" style of pipe.


John Bull: "Heavy? Of course it's heavy. But think of the glory."

This cartoon mocks British surtaxes used to pay for the Boer Wars -- this was long before George W. Bush thought up the idea of pretending that war could be waged off budget. The sign on the left reads "Cost of the Boer War / Five Hundred Million Dollars." The fellow up on the right is labeled "Chamberlain," presumably British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.


John Bull: "Ah, why don't you keep over on your own side?"

Meanwhile, the United States was making significant inroads in world commerce, threatening England's dominance. While it could still be said that the sun never set on the British Empire, the sun was certainly rising on the American one.

R.C. Bowman's 1900 Cartoons: Sen. William A. Clark

Before the passage of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Senators represented -- and were elected by -- not the people of their state, but their state legislatures. Not surprisingly, there arose such cases as that of Senator William A. Clark of Montana, who bribed state legislators to elect him in 1898.

Out there in Montana.
(The musical staff quotes "get your money's worth" from what I assume was a popular song.)

Clark came to Montana in the gold rush of the 1860s, eventually establishing himself as a banker and in turn, a mine owner by virtue of foreclosing on mining properties. He also owned a newspaper, the Butte Miner, which he used to advance his political ambitions. He presided over Montana's 1884 and 1889 constitutional conventions, and advocated Helena for the state's capital over its rival, Anaconda. (He was one of the two richest Americans when he died in 1925; Clark County, Nevada, home of Las Vegas, is named for him.)

The New Chore Boy
When Clark's bribes came to light in 1899, the U.S. Senate refused to seat him. But in 1900, he won election again.

And the cat came back.
Clark served one term (1901-1907) in the U.S. Senate. He was the subject of a scathing Mark Twain essay, "Senator Clark of Montana" (1907; see Mark Twain in Eruption, ed Bernard DeVoto, 1940):

"He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time."

To bring this story into the present day, 104-year-old Huguette Clark is his daughter. You may have heard of the legal dispute over the financial affairs of the reclusive Miss Clark, who has not been photographed since the 1930's. Her palacial estate near Santa Barbara, California, has sat empty since 1963, and her properties in Connecticut and New York City are likewise unoccupied. The fact that nobody seems to have seen her except her accountant and her attorney in decades is a major point in the legal tangle.

R.C. Bowman's 1900 Cartoons for Mpls. Tribune, part VII

Here are some cartoons on a variety of world issues by R.C. Bowman, cartoonist for the Minneapolis Tribune in 1900.

Uncle Sam to the Senator: "Ho there! Take that bill in hand, will you? That other fellow seems to be too reckless."
There were two competing ideas on where to build a canal through Central America at this point in history. A rival to the Panama Canal route would have gone through Nicaragua from Bahia de Punta Gorda in the east, to Lake Nicaragua and out to the Pacific.

John Bull: "Heavy? Of course it's heavy. But think of the glory."
Great Britain was in the middle of the Boer War in South Africa at this time.

Looking for his Thanksgiving dinner."
The United States sent warships to occupy Izmir (Smyrna) in order to collect indemnities against Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) for "outrages committed against missionaries." Here's a New York Times article. Keep in mind, this turkey pun was a bit younger back then.

The World: "You know, uncle, it's getting so I do almost all my trading here, now!"
Uncle Sam: "I'm glad to hear it; and to be candid, I'd sooner have your trade than that of any other planet I know of."

R.C. Bowman Cartoons from 1900: The Philippines

Here's Part VI of a series, resurrecting cartoons from The Minneapolis Tribune Cartoon Book for 1901: Being a Collection of Over One Hundred Cartoons by R.C. Bowman.

Interrupting the Class

The United States took over the Philippines from Spain as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898; a year later, Filipinos began fighting for independence. The fighting continued until President Aguinaldo surrendered in 1902. R.C. Bowman drew a connection here between the Philippine Revolution and the Boxer Rebellion in China.

The Filipino: "That's worse than a government without the consent of the governed."

The above cartoon references the post-Reconstruction moves to forcibly disenfranchise Black citizens; the issue in 1900 particularly concerned North Carolina. Newt Gingrich's talking points memo instructing all Republicans to use "Democrat" even as an adjective wouldn't come out until 90+ years later, so R.C. Bowman refers to the state Democratic Party with the label "North Carolina Democracy."

Keeping it alive

This is the one cartoon of Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo in this book (although it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the few photos I've seen of him). The rebellion's feet are soaking in the sentiment, common in the U.S. Democratic Party, that the U.S. had no business being an imperial power. It was less a peacenik stand than one favoring a limited federal government, and a disinclination to accept non-whites (non-Protestants as well) in any way that might make them citizens of the United States. The Tea Party would have felt right at home in the Democratic Party in those days.

The Philippines: "What yer got?"
Cuba: "Pie."
Philippines: "Where'd yer get it?"
Cuba "Mah Uncle Sam gin it to me; en maybe ef you was halfway decent, he' git you some."

Yes, there's a racist condescension in this cartoon, but what else would you expect?