Weimar Weihnachten

It has been a while since we've checked in on what German editorial cartoonists were up to a century ago, so let's see how they celebrated a not so particularly Fröhliche Weihnachten in 1921.

But first, another trigger warning! If you were offended by the words I put in Pat Buchanan's mouth in last Saturday's retrospective, prepare for some unpleasant images here. German cartoonists were no better or worse than their white American counterparts in their depictions of other races and religions. One can argue, I suppose, whose cartoons were more or less responsible for more or less horrific consequences.

"Der Deutschen Treue Weihnachtsbaum" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 25, 1921

We start here with a cover cartoon lamenting the territories Germany lost in the Versailles peace agreement.

I don't believe you should attach any other significance to the six-pointed star, by the way, except that it was the traditional topper for any respectable Weihnachtsbaum. When cartoonists wanted to convey anti-Semitic or racist messages, there was no need to be circumspect about it.

For example:

"Der Verdächtige Christkind" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 11, 1921

Senegalese troops had played a significant role in the Allies' defeat of German troops in the Second Battle of the Marne; von Hindenburg's account in his 1920 memoir, Mein Leben, wrote, "Where there were no tanks our enemy sent black waves against us. Waves of black Africans! Woe to us when these waves reached our lines and massacred or worse, tortured our defenseless men!"

Continued deployment during the armistice of troops from France's African colonies led to the postwar "Black Horror on the Rhine" rumors, kept alive by the nationalist press and cartoonists. Germans concocted stories of Moroccan and Senegalese troops, sent into the Rhineland in 1920 in response to the Reichwehr occupation of the demilitarized zone there, raping German women and girls at a rate of hundreds per day — baseless stories sensationally repeated abroad by horrified Whites, both right-wing and liberal, in Britain, Canada, Sweden, Italy, and the U.S.

Now, "Es" in the last sentence of the cartoon caption is usually translated to English as "It," and the Christkind, who traditionally brings gifts to children in Germany and Austria, is supposed to be a boy angel — but then, angels in art can sometimes look fairly androgynous. This one certainly does; it's probably the skirt. I've translated the pronoun "Es" as "She," reasoning that Lindloff here clearly wants his readers to read his cartoon in light of those "Schwarze Schmach" rape allegations.

"Der Heilige Spekulatius" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 18, 1921

As you would expect, there were plenty of anti-Semitic cartoons about Jews, such as this one of a banker chasing after St. Nicholas. St. Spekulatius's halo, in this case, is a U.S. dollar; the trim of his gown is decorated with pigs.

Arthur Johnson is making a play on words: spekulatius is a traditional yuletide cookie, often depicting St. Nicholas riding a donkey or horse. The word derives from the Latin "speculator," meaning overseer (and from which we get the word "bishop"), but which also has the meaning of an investor who makes his income betting on the success or failure of others.

Cartoons against speculators in this period were not confined to the German press by any means. Plenty of American cartoonists also criticized profiteers of commodities, rents, and so forth; but while American cartoonists of the 1920's could be equally racist, most of their profiteers were drawn in a more generic, if corpulent, way.

"Die Putschschachtel" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 1, 1922

In Ernst Schilling's yuletide cartoon, the forced demilitarization of Germany after the Great War has resulted in firing squads, attempted coups, and destruction. Nothing working any more, and Krampus seems to be mighty happy about it all.

But even in the doom and gloom of this interwar German Christmas, a few cartoonists managed to view events with a bit of humor that we might even recognize today.

"Das Letzte Paar" by Richard Rost in Jugend, Munich, Dec., 1921

And you thought we had supply chain issues today! 

"Die Botschaft von Washington" by Th. Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, Dec. 21, 1921

Thomas Theodor Heine employs Christmas imagery in this cartoon about U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and the multilateral naval arms limitation treaty being hammered out in Washington D.C. I suspect that Heine saw a resemblance between Mr. Hughes and the traditional German image of Kris Kringle.

And as long as I've brought up the Washington Naval Conference, I'll close with a cartoon that isn't on a particularly Christmasy theme — unless the lectionary at your church next week includes Isaiah 2:4 or Joel 3:10. Whatever. I really like this image.

"Abrüstung" by Erich Wilke in Jugend, Munich, December, 1921

Friede auf Erden und guten Willen für alle!

And if the Christkind shows up at a school in your town this season, it's none of your business which bathroom they use.

Saturday Pot Pourri

I'm keeping this week's Saturday History Tour short and sweet and in search of any unifying theme today, so let's just get started.

Last week, I happened to see celebrity news about some actor or musician or social influencer or whoever he was posting photos of himself and his son because it was Father And Son Day. I had never heard of the celebrity or the Day before, so naturally, I looked up Father And Son Day. 

It turns out that Father And Son Day was founded seven years ago by cancer survivors Jack Dyson and Daniel Marks to raise awareness of and funds for cancer research. I'm still a little confused about when the day is, but it certainly seems that it's for a worthy cause.

"Father and Son Week" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., by Nov. 4, 1921

So imagine my surprise a day or so later to run across this 100-year-old cartoon about Father And Son Week!

Whenever this year's F&S Day might have been, Dorman Smith's F&S Week was definitely in the fall (note the tree). So, really, you can celebrate it whenever you want and for a day or a week or a fortnight if you want. Heck, celebrate it throughout Daylight Savings Time.

Nobody's going to argue with you about it.

And wasn't it nice to start out today's post with something nobody needs to argue about for a change?

"The Storm Centers" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, by Nov. 11, 1921

On the other hand, Magnus Kettner presents us with a cartoon that I find deceptively sweet, hiding an inner core of rural antipathy toward their urban compatriots — a hostility that has festered into today's Red-Blue divide.

Not that there was anything new about that in 1921; you can trace the attitude all the way back to Aesop's city mouse and country mouse.

But I have one more bone to pick with Mr. Kettner: one of the major news stories of November, 1921 was a big strike by coal miners, few of whom lived in "the city." You just don't find many coal miners living in New York City, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but rather in small towns like Hazard, Kentucky; Welch, West Virginia; or Diamondville, Wyoming.

"Pruning the Wrong End" by John Baer, by Nov. 2, 1921

Cartoonist and former Congressman John Baer was part of a self-named Nonpartisan movement that attempted to forge links between rural farmers and urban and small-town laborers. The 1920's would be tough on the Nonpartisan movement, and its non-partisan angle slowly closed. Labor interests became increasingly aligned with the Democratic Party, and farmers have, a century later, become a reliably Republican voting bloc.

If there's nothing new about ginning up animus between country and city mice, there's nothing new about the top 1% pitting the bottom 99% against each other's interests, either.

"Slow, But So Is Congress" by Art Young, by Nov. 3, 1921

You know what else is not new? It's Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas blocking popular legislation because all they see is the price tag. 

If you asked the average man or woman on the street or in the field in 1921, you would have found overwhelming support for the idea that the United States owed a debt to its Great War veterans who lost health or limb making the world safe for democracy. Art Young here wonderfully satirizes how long it was taking for legislation to give these veterans "bonus" payments to get anywhere, even given that the Republican Party had control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Lastly, this Veterans' Day marks the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia receiving its first occupant; so, without further comment, I close with a few examples of the nation's editorial cartoonists marking the event.

"Armistice Day" by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Assn., by Nov. 11, 1921

by Clifford Berryman in Washington DC Evening Star, Nov. 11, 1921

"The Unknown Mother" by John Cassell in New York Evening World, Nov. 11, 1921

"Lord God of Hosts..." by Cleon Larson, "a Salt Lake school boy," in Deseret News, Nov. 11, 1921

"My Boy" by Charles Dana Gibson in Life Magazine, Nov. 10, 1921

Saturday Sports Report

I was preparing this review of century-old cartoons a few weeks ago, only to shelve it when Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg. I figured that such a momentous event was of more immediate import; these 100-year-old cartoons could stand to wait a few weeks longer.

"The Pep and Vigor of Their Grandparents" by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, ca. Aug./Sept. 1921

When I had originally planned to publish this post, the U.S. Open was about to start, which is a big thing in our house. I had always assumed that tennis had remained a genteel sport until, oh, I don't know, John McEnroe showed up; but Gaar Williams here shows that genteelity on the court went out of fashion along with the bustle. I can't tell, however, whether the players in the lower panel had yet adopted the habit of loudly grunting, groaning, and shrieking with every shot.

"What We May Come to..." by Herbert S. Thomas in London Opinion, by Sept. 1921

Shrieking aside, if Bert Thomas's cartoon from London Opinion is to be believed, Messrs. MacEnroe, Connors, Borg, et al. had some catching up to do before they achieved the athleticism of their female forebears. 

"Man, the Master" by Alfred G. "Zere" Ablitzere in New York Post, September 12, 1921

Turning to other popular summertime sports (we do still have a couple more days of summer, don't we?), there's baseball — of that storied American trilogy with motherhood and apple pie.

"Dad Rushes Out..." by Fontaine Fox in Providence Journal, Aug./Sept., 1921

Meanwhile, the grown-up Boys of Summer were closing in on the World Series; New York's Giants and Yankees were in hot pursuit, respectively, of the American League Pittsburgh Pirates and National League Cleveland Indians.

"The Baseball Stage" by Thornton Fisher in New York Evening World, August 30, 1921

Thornton Fisher's complaint about the National League centered on a number of rules changes, described by Evening World sports reporter Robert Boyd thusly:

"Rules makers introducing drastic measures, the livelier ball and reducing the size of the parks to increase the revenue of the club by avaricious magnates, has changed the game. Where close games and a touch of the dramatic atmosphere once prevailed, wild batting orgies now predominate. Loose fielding, pitching that once would have turned the rawest 'busher' to shame, has now robbed the great national institution of much of its former grandeur."

"In the Sportlight" by Daniel "Bud" Counihan in New York Evening World, September 30, 1921

A month later, the New York ball clubs were riding high, having just drubbed the Indians and the Philadelphia Athletix.

Sports page cartoonist Bud Counihan would later go on to pen the comic strip version of Betty Boop. (An earlier strip of his, "The Big Little Family" showed up in this here blog back in May.) 

"Outdoor Sports" by Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan in New York Journal, ca. Sept. 16, 1921

And finally, let's check out the action on the links, where we find "Tad" Dorgan, taking his New York Journal comic panel "Indoor Sports" outside from its usual office milieu.

Whether you know it or not, you are familiar with several phrases Dorgan contributed to American slang as cartoonist and as a sports reporter: he is responsible for dumbbell (meaning idiot), cat's pajamas/whiskers, for crying out loud, cheaters (meaning eyeglasses), hard-boiled (meaning tough and unsentimental), 23 skiddoo, dumb Dora, and —earworm alert!— "Yes, we have no bananas."

"He Got Madder and Madder..." by A.B. Frost in Life, September 29, 1921

Perhaps we had best leave these duffers alone. I'd hate to see how this guy handles a sand trap.

Keep the Labor in Labor Day!

100 Labor Days ago (yeah I know it's not Saturday, but it's a holiday, which is just as good a time for a history lesson) coal miners were on strike in West Virginia.

And then the government decided to bomb them.

Cartoon by Ryan Walker in New York Call, NYC, September 3, 1921

General Billy Mitchell told reporters, “We wouldn’t try to kill these people at first. We’d drop tear gas all over the place. If they refuse to disburse, then we’d open up with artillery and everything.”

"September Morn" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 1, 1921

Upon their arrival to West Virginia, the chance of aerial bombardment by the Air Service was quickly snuffed out. Fully loaded with bombs and machine guns when they left their home base of Langley, VA, the 88th Squadron’s planes were stripped of all weaponry before flying over Blair Mountain. [Commander of federal forces during the Battle of Blair Mountain, General Harry H.] Bandholdtz’s orders were clear. “You will under no circumstances drop any bombs or fire any machine guns or do anything to unnecessarily excite the invaders,” he wrote in a dispatch. While the 88th Squadron was used to assess the situation on Blair Mountain from above, there would be no demonstration of the Air Service’s armed abilities in West Virginia.

There were, however, a trio of private biplanes rented by Sheriff Chafin that were not under the strict orders of restraint from General Bandholtz. On September 2—the same day as the Squadron’s arrival in West Virginia—Chafin ordered his own small air force to drop gas and makeshift bombs on the miners’ positions on Blair Mountain. Though none of these aerial assaults struck their intended targets, Mitchell’s braggadocious comments to the Charleston press the week before led many to believe that the Army had conducted the bombing runs, a myth that remains today.

(Shades of Tulsa, Oklahoma over the Memorial Day holiday three months earlier!)

You might have thought that Americans would have recoiled in horror at the news of the Americans bombing Americans. But apparently the Chicago Tribune was all in favor of it.

"Show 'Em They Are Not Above the Law" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1921

As luck would have it, no miners were killed in the bombing, although three airmen died in a storm-related crash while returning to Maryland. Which may be why this remains the only time that the U.S. proposed bombing striking American workers into submission.

Now, go on and enjoy your holiday.

Tulsa Revisited

As I wrote in my post two Saturdays ago, I am sure that there were more editorial cartoons to be found about the 1921 Tulsa Pogrom than the two I had managed to locate at the time. Sure enough, cartooning blogger Mike Peterson has come up with a third:

"This Happened in America" by James in St. Louis Star, ca. June 2, 1921

It occurs to me that this incident may have created some cracks in the political alliance Black American leaders had had with the Republican Party since the Civil War.

The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s on an anti-slavery platform, and the election of its first successful presidential candidate resulted in southern secession and the Civil War. Radical Republicans instituted Reconstruction after the war, only to lift it in 1876 in order to finagle Rutherford Hayes into the White House. Reactionary Democrats then took back control of southern governments, and the "Solid South" became a major force in Democratic Party politics for generations.

With a few exceptions, post-Reconstruction Republican politicians had little to say about Black Americans' civil rights. Then Tulsa launched the genocidal attack on its Black citizens.

Less than a week later, President Warren Harding mentioned the Tulsa Holocaust at the graduation ceremony at Lincoln University Theological Seminary, a Black institution in Pennsylvania. As I noted in my earlier post, Harding lamented the violence, but promised to do nothing about it. 

"Much is said about the problem of the races. There is nothing that the government can do which is akin to educational work in value. One of the great difficulties of popular government is that citizenship expects government to do what it ought to do for itself. No government can wave a magic wand. The colored race, to come into its own, must do the great work itself. The government can only offer the opportunity."

Imagine yourself sitting there as a member of the graduating class of 1921, and this is all that the President of the United States has to say about the worst peacetime slaughter of men, women and children in the nation's history — only six days after the fact. That Republican president, with Republicans in complete control of both houses of Congress, did absolutely nothing to investigate, prosecute, remedy, or redress the situation.

Those graduating seminarians knew that no good would come from the local officials in Tulsa, or Democrat-majority state government in Oklahoma. That was to be expected. But the Republican response, presaging 21st Century thoughts and prayers alone, had to be a grave disappointment.

That graduating class were community leaders in their 30's when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt became president, turning 40 when Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practice Committee, and nearing 50 when Harry Truman's President's Committee on Civil Rights prompted the Dixiecrats to bolt the party.  Dwight Eisenhower may have been the GOP's last chance to win back the Black vote; Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon were more interested in currying favor with racist southern Whites. 

✍

I haven't been able to come up with background on "James," the cartoonist at the top of today's post. I had already seen some of his other work reprinted in Independent Magazine and consistently credited to St. Louis Star, but Googling such a common name isn't very helpful. James must have replaced Archibald Chapin, who left the Star effective May 1, 1921 to draw for Country Gentleman in Philadelphia. In 1925, the St. Louis Star Times hired Daniel Bishop as its editorial cartoonist, so unless the Star Times could afford two editorial cartoonists, James's career there may have been quite short.

______

Update: The St. Louis Star cartoonist was Roy Harrison James, born 1889 in Zalma, Missouri; cartoonist at the Star from 1920 to 1929. From St. Louis, he moved to Malibu, California to write comedy. It is possible that he died in 1949, but I haven't located an obituary.

Noises Off

Last Saturday's centennial retrospective reported on the month-by-month demise of Cartoons Magazine as it was taken over by light fiction magazine Wayside Tales. Today we take a look at the sort of editorial cartoons that your great-grandparents would no longer find in Cartoons Magazine.

"Der Seiltänzer" by "L" in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 1, 1921

And not just because of the salty language. Nor because of the German language; even during the Great War, Cartoons Magazine occasionally printed German cartoons. (I wonder how they would have translated "Eiffelturmspiße.")

"Warren Gamaliel Harding" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 1, 1921

Perhaps because Germany had no delusions that "normalcy" was returning, German satirical publications continued to thrive while American ones withered away. Just the same, German-American cartoonist Arthur Johnson had high hopes for the new U.S. administration as President Harding made good on his campaign promise to keep out of the League of Nations. Johnson depicts the League as a monstrous hybrid of the British lion and French rooster in this cover illustration for Kladderadatsch.

"Der Amerikanische Rettungsring" by Erich Wilke in Kladderadatsch, May 8, 1921

Only a week later, Johnson's fellow cartoonist at Kladderadatsch, Erich Wilke, presented a considerably less heroic depiction of the new president, throwing Deutscher Michel a worthless life preserver. That's a much more recognizable Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes in the back of the lifeboat.

"Off with the Old..." by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. May 24, 1921

It hadn't taken long for U.S. cartoonists to begin showing some sympathy for Germany's post-war plight. Notwithstanding the high anxiety about German-American saboteurs during the war, Americans tended not to harbor the same degree of animosity toward the German people as did the British and French. American vitriol was focused more on Kaiser Wilhelm and family than on their subjects.

"If France Insists on Having Beefsteak..." by Elmer Bushnell for NEA, ca. May 6, 1921

French demands on occupying the Ruhr valley threatened to rekindle the war, and found little support from this side of the Atlantic. For now, however, Germany was unwilling to call France's bluff.

"The Shock-Proof Public" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1921

Instead, Germany fought to suppress an uprising of ethnic Poles in Silesia, a mineral-rich and ethnically mixed region that had been part of Germany before the war. A League of Nations-sponsored plebiscite to determine which country the region should belong to narrowly favored Germany, so Poles took up arms in May as the League members dithered. 

"If He Could Only Catch His Tail..." by Elmer Bushnell for NEA, ca. May 23, 1921

Italian, French, and British forces would be drawn into the Silesian conflict, even as rebellion against Britain heated up again in Ireland. As violence in Ireland escalated that May, the IRA killed 15 policemen and burned Custom House, headquarters of the Local Government Board for Ireland.

"The Apt Pupil" by Harold "Hal" Coffman for Int'l Feature Service, ca. May 20, 1921

Hearst cartoonists in particular railed against allowing Britannia and Japan to rule the waves.

"Speaking of Disarmament" by Bill Satterfield for NEA, ca. June 2, 1921

The figure pushing "disarmament polish" on President Harding is Senator William Borah (R-ID), a progressive who proved a thorn in the side of presidents of both political parties.

"Alla Camera Nuova" by Gabriele "Rata Longa" Galantara in l'Asino, Rome, May 22, 1921

As long as we're looking abroad, I don't want to lose sight of political events in Italy between the wars. This month 100 years ago saw Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti call for parliamentary elections. Concerned over gains in popular support for Italian socialists, Giolitti brought fascists and nationalists into his governing coalition. He thought that this would instill a degree of reason and responsibility into the far right. 

Apparently that never quite works.

"The Supply and the Demand" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. May 17, 1921

Mainstream U.S. cartoonists eschewed socialism, and seized every opportunity to predict the downfall of Lenin's Bolshevik government in Russia. But every now and then (primarily in the Hearst fold), someone would notice that the U.S. market might do well to sign the Soviets on as paying customers.

"I Can't Hear You" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, ca. May 30, 1921

By and large, however, Carey Orr had an accurate sense of how Americans felt about foreign affairs in 1921.

________________

Nachtrag:  I ran across the word Eiffelturmspiße in a book on aerodynamics after posting this. The translation there was "Eiffel Tower spike," which makes a whole lot more sense than what every goddamned on-line translation site gave me.

Alas, Poor Cartoons Magazine

I must acknowledge Google Books' archive of Cartoons Magazine as having been an invaluable resource in putting together my series of essays featuring editorial cartoons of events 100 years ago. But sadly, that resource is approaching the end of the line.

Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 8 #1, July, 1915; cover based on a Rollin Kirby cartoon

Not Google or Google Books (at least not just yet — nothing on the internet is as permanent as we were once led to believe, especially the "information wants to be free!" part). 

What I mean is that Cartoons Magazine underwent significant changes in 1921, and not for the better as far as my purposes are concerned.

Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 1 #1, January, 1912

Cartoons Magazine was first published in 1912, by Henry Haven Windsor in Chicago, Illinois. The magazine featured a wide variety of mostly editorial cartoons at first, on all the major issues of the moment: U.S. government, elections, international affairs, wars, the economy, you name it. Most cartoonists represented in the magazine were from the U.S., but examples from Europe, Australia and Latin America appeared frequently; and occasionally some from Japan and the Philippines as well. At first, the cartoons stood without much explanatory text, but over time they came to be be accompanied by humorous essays on the topic — unless, as in the example of the sinking of the Lusitania, whimsy did not suit the subject.

The typical issue would also be leavened with less topical gag cartoons and jokes, slice of life cartoons, and seasonal cartoons about holidays, the weather, sports, school days, and so forth. "What the Cartoonists Are Doing" became a regular feature, reporting such things as when a cartoonist was moving to another newspaper, getting married, presenting a public demonstration, joining the armed forces, retiring, or had gone to draw the pearly gates in person.

One of two pages of cartoons critical of a racist South Carolina governor in the January, 1913 issue, accompanied by no additional text

Other features that came and went were profiles of individual cartoonists, two-page cartoon spreads by a given cartoonist drawing about the city where he was working, feature stories about historical cartoons and cartoonists, and full-page cartoons drawn expressly for Cartoons Magazine.

Advertisements in the front and back pages promised lucrative careers to graduates of this or that cartooning school. Charles "Bart" Bartholomew backed his claims up with reports of the exploits of his school's alumni; and if hardly any of his graduates achieved any lasting fame, I'm sure that several made a comfortable career in those days when they had multiple employment opportunities in any given city.

One thing that hardly ever appeared in Cartoons Magazine was the work of William Randolph Hearst's stable of cartoonists. You would, for example, find plenty of the work of cartoonists for Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily News, Chicago Post, Chicago Inter-Ocean, or Chicago Journal, but nothing that appeared in Hearst's Chicago Examiner. I don't know whether that was by Mr. Windsor's editorial preference, or if Hearst's publishing empire did not make those cartoons available.

Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 19, #6, June, 1921

The June, 1921 issue of Cartoons Magazine, published in May of that year, would be the last under that title. For several months, its issues had featured short works of fiction or light essays toward the front of the magazine, always illustrated with cartoons drawn specifically for them. Political cartoons were still predominant, but it had been a while since an adaptation of one had appeared on the front cover.

Cartoons Magazine and Wayside Tales, Vol. 20, #1, July, 1921

With the July, 1921 issue, Cartoons Magazine merged with Wayside Tales. The editor's note explained the changes to come:

"To our readers: Beginning with this issue, CARTOONS MAGAZINE makes its appearance as CARTOONS MAGAZINE AND WAYSIDE TALES. The best cartoons of the month will appear as before, with the running whimsical comment which has distinguished our pages in the past. In addition to the cartoon feature, however, the magazine under its new title will offer entertainment in the form of popular fiction by the best writers of the day. Romance, adventure, humor, mystery — these themes will constitute the new menu which we will serve our readers. Each issue will contain one serial by a popular novelist, one complete novelette, and a number of short stories, as in the present issue. — The Editor."

The table of contents made it clear which half of the magazine title came first inside, in spite of its placement and font size on the front cover.

So for August, they fixed the cover.

Wayside Tales and Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 20, #2, August, 1921

Editorial changes went further than as described by the Editor's Note. Topical cartoons remained, but political cartoons completely disappeared. There was not one cartoon about the new administration, about Democrats or Republicans, about immigration, or about Yap, Germany, Ireland, Armenia, or Mexico. Probably the closest thing to controversial cartoons were the ones about Sunday Blue Laws that I brought you last week.

Wayside Tales and Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 20 #6, December, 1921

Of course, when I say that the cartoons weren't controversial, I mean that by the standards of the time. Their cartoons featuring Black Americans would be highly controversial by today's standards, and I don't feel any pressing need to post them on a blog under my name. Ditto and ibid. for a few cartoons featuring Native Americans (with, by the way, the cut line "Drawn for Wayside Tales").

Wayside Tales, Vol. 21, #1, January, 1922

With the January, 1922 edition, "Cartoons Magazine" disappeared from the title entirely. There were still drawings and cartoons inside, and a dozen advertisements aimed at aspiring ink-slingers; but the "80 Pages of Humor" had been whittled down month after month to only 40 pages. 

Editorially, all that was left of Cartoons Magazine in the February issue was ten pages of "Best of the Jests." The final edition of the magazine was the May, 1922 issue.

D'öh!

Homer Simpson in a 1921 Swedish cartoon:

"Adamson and the Bachelor's Button" in Söndags-Nisse, Stockholm, 1921