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?

1900 Cartoons of R.C. Bowman, part V

Step right up, gentlemen; now's your chance to Pe(e)k-in.

Exactly how is that city pronounced, since it has variously been transliterated Peiping, Pekin, Peking, and now Beijing? All I know is that the current spelling has the least potential for puns.

Russia (the head waiter): "No shirt waists allowed here. I will have to invite you gentlemen to leave."

Really, I'm only including this cartoon because my own cartoon this week didn't come together the way I'd envisioned it. Something about this cartoon eludes me. Apparently shirt waists were a big social problem in 1900.

Getting scorched.

There's a very similar cartoon to this one in the book showing the British lion in South Africa getting his tail scorched because of whatever China is dumping into the ocean.

The United States received the Philippines from Spain as a result of the Spanish-American War two years earlier, and there was plenty of domestic debate over what to do with the islands. According to the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. should have had no interest in territory in the Eastern Hemisphere; there was also nativist sentiment against opening up citizenship to all those non-white non-English-speaking people. Coming soon: more cartoons about the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.

1900 Cartoons of R.C. Bowman, part 4

Russia: "Now, gentlemen, don't get excited. There's no hurry."

One thing I find particularly interesting about this series of cartoons is the pre-World War II depiction of Japan. The human in the front of the group above represents Japan, and is very different from the buck-toothed, coke-bottle-glasses wearing stereotype that my post-war generation grew up with.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall./ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

The Boxer Rebellion marks Japan's arrival as a world power. While Germany, Great Britain, Russia, France and the U.S. all sent troops to China, the largest contingent was from Japan -- even though the Japanese are represented by the smallest fellow in the above cartoons.

It turns out to be a hornet's nest.

R.C. Bowman's 1900 Cartoons: China

Part 3 of my continuing excerpts from The Minneapolis Tribune Cartoon Book for 1901: Being a Collection of Over One Hundred Cartoons by R.C. Bowman:

The Powers: "This horrible work was done in your shop, wasn't it?"
China: "Yes, but I didn't do it, therefore I'm not to blame."

The Boxer Rebellion had been underway for a couple years when Minneapolis Tribune cartoonist R.C. Bowman drew these cartoons. The Boxers (I Ho Ch'uan, Yìhétuán or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists") and Muslim "Kansu Braves" targeted foreign diplomats, capitalists and missionaries with savage intensity, because European imperial powers (England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary) had begun carving China up into their own spheres of influence -- much as they had done with the rest of Africa and southern Asia. The dowager empress, Cizi (Tz'u Hsi) overthrew the western-backed Guangxu Emperor and supported the Boxer rebels' goal of evicting the foreign powers from China.

Li Hung Chang claims to have the simon pure article (and incidentally, it's for sale).

In June 1900, the Boxers attacked foreign compounds in the cities of Tianjin and Beijing; the German envoy was killed (and skinned, and his heart eaten by the Muslim general) as the Europeans retreated into a fortified area near Beijing's Forbidden City. The Boxers set fire to the area, destroying much of the Hanlin Yuan, described as "the oldest and richest library in the world."

The Boxer: "Why don't you shoot?"

In July, 222 Chinese Eastern Orthodox Christians, 182 Protestant missionaries and 500 Chinese Protestants, including women and children were killed in the Taiyuan Massacre.
Li Hung Chang: "Uncle, let me take your flag to wipe out the blots."
Uncle Sam: "No!!!!"

Next: more cartoons about China's Boxer Rebellion.