Ringing in the 'Twenties

Every New Year is an occasion for editorial cartoonists to crank out a crapload of Old Father Time and New Year Baby cartoons, and 1920 was no exception. Sameoldsameoldback Saturday presents a sampling of a few outliers today, as well as the trite and true.

"The Baby Vamp" by Tom R. Wood in Los Angeles Daily Herald, January 1, 1920

Tom Wood takes the unusual approach of portraying Baby New Year as a female. He could have been making allusion to the fact that women would enjoy suffrage in federal elections for the first time that year, but I doubt it. I suspect that Wood was commenting instead on female fashions, and not entirely favorably. He would surely be shocked by the bobbed hair and flapper skirts in the decade to come.

"Happy Dry Year" by Sidney Joseph Greene in New York Evening Telegram,  January 1, 1920

The new year was not without opportunities for editorial cartoonists to make timely and original comment on the changeover of calendars. The year's first ruling from the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Volstead Act, codifying the Eighteenth Amendment — Prohibition — into federal law.

"This Year, Alas" by Ervine Metzl for Cartoons Magazine, January, 1920

Ervine Metzl drew the cartoon above to illustrate an article in Cartoons Magazine. Some of his poster work for the Chicago Transit Authority in the 1920's is apparently still in use today, and was featured as part of a Field Museum exhibit in 2004. His later work included designs for U.S. postage stamps.

"Passing the Buck" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 2, 1920

The Supreme Court may have settled the Prohibition question, but that left a host of other issues unresolved. You'd think that after two millennia, we'd have learned how to solve all our problems by December 31. Our great-grandparents hadn't figured it out a century ago, and neither have we.

"Get Busy and Crack These Nuts" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, January, 1920

William Morris offers Baby 1920 fewer unsolved problems than Nelson Harding: the higher cost of living, returning management of the railroads to private ownership, industrial unrest, and the continuing problem of Mexican rebels kidnapping Mexican and American citizens for ransom.

"What! You're Still Here" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, January 1, 1920

Clifford Berryman finds further unfinished business in the war, thirteen months after armistice was declared, with no likelihood of the U.S. Senate ratifying the peace agreement in a presidential election year.

"Giddap" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Association, January, 1920

Bob Satterfield appears to have more confidence in Baby 1920's ability to handle the problems left to him than many of his fellow cartoonists had.

"Zoo Logic" by Ben Ryan in New York Evening Telegram, January 1, 1920

On to lighter fare: New Year's Day would seem to be an auspicious day for a cartoonist to launch a new strip on the comics page. Ben Ryan would, however, have difficulty keeping his new year's resolution to "make you laugh every day this year." By the end of 1920, the New York Evening Telegram had dropped its comics page, keeping only a couple comic strips to break up other pages. "Zoo Logic" was not one of them.

"See Who's Here" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, January 1, 1920

C.F. Naughton opts for a simple graphic in lieu of his daily editorial cartoon. Nobody likes to stay late at their desk over New Year's.

"Here's Hoping" by Fred O. Seibel in Knickerbocker Press, Albany, NY, ca. January, 1920

Fred Seibel offers a preachy version of the tired observation that many New Year's resolutions expire before the eleven pipers piping show up.

"Henry Dubb No Longer" by Ryan Walker in New York Evening Call, January 1, 1920

Finally, on the topic of New Year's resolutions, Ryan Walker at the socialist Call imagines what resolutions the U.S. Postal Service (which would refuse to deliver the Call), the High Cost of Living, a Kept Editor, and "Grabitall" were making, and how the proletariat needed to respond. Walker neglected to consider resolutions by the New York Assembly, which would suspend five duly elected socialist representatives at the commencement of the legislative session in January, and would expel them in April on grounds of "disloyalty."

Last Call for Alcohol

Just a quick Synthale Saturday post today to mark the centennial this week of ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

"Across" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1919

It's as if the idea wasn't even the least bit controversial. States were falling over each other to enshrine Prohibition in the Constitution. With ratification by Nebraska, North Carolina, and Utah legislatures on January 16, 1919 — less than a month after its approval by Congress — Prohibition had passed muster in the required 36 out of 48 states. Missouri and Wyoming approved ratification later that day, and all the remaining states but Connecticut and Rhode Island would follow suit by March 3.

"United Sahara America" by Sidney J. Greene in New York Evening Telegram, January 19, 1919

The 1910's witnessed a rash of amendments to the Constitution — one more of them than the antebellum trio of Amendments from 1865-70. Passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, authorizing federal income taxation, paved the way for the Eighteenth Amendment by giving the government, heavily reliant on liquor excise fees, an alternative source of funding. The Nineteenth Amendment extending the vote to women was slogging its way through Congress and state legislatures simultaneously with the Eighteenth.

"Well, There's No Getting Out of It" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 19, 1919

The Eighteenth is unique among all the Articles and Amendments in that it is the only one to limit the freedom of individuals. All the others grant powers to or limit powers of the federal government or states. (Granted, one could argue that the Thirteenth Amendment limits the freedom of individuals to own slaves, but it does so by extending the Declaration of Independence's promise of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to other individuals.)

"Slipping? Well, Yes" by Harry Murphy in Chicago Herald and Examiner, ca. Jan. 8, 1919

And so, the Noble Experiment was underway.

"'Long 'Bout This Time o' Year, Next Year" by Coleman .F. Naughton in Duluth (MN) Evening Herald, January 17, 1919

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

"Maybe Now We Won't Need That Fence at All" by John N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, January 21, 1919

"Ding" Darling brings our discussion back to the present day and Teetotaler Trump's obsession with his ugly border wall. If Congress lets him have this one vanity project, who's to say he won't shut down the government again to force repeal of the Twenty-first Amendment?

At the End of the War to End All Wars

Surrenderback Saturday today observes the centennial of the end of World War I with a quick survey of the editorial cartoons that appeared in America's newspapers on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

"Licked" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 11, 1918

Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern having abdicated days earlier, Germany surrendered to the Entente powers effective at 11:00 a.m. Paris Time, November 11. It accepted Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points as the basis for the post-war world and agreed to pay heavy reparations to the victorious allies.

"Humanity's Greatest Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1918

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had launched the war in 1914, no longer existed; Vienna looked on, spent and helpless, as its various Slavic groups established break-away republics and Hungary divorced in the "Aster Revolution" of October 31. On November 11 Emperor Karl I stepped away from active participation in Austria's affairs of state (although he did not officially abdicate).

"Thank God!" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World, November 11, 1918

Most of the American cartoons I have found, however, focused on Kaiser Wilhelm's fate.

"How the Mighty Fall" by Winsor McCay in New York Journal, November 11, 1918

World War I marked the last gasp of royalty as the basis of government in most of Europe. Leftist revolutions took over in Berlin and Vienna, and republics of various stripes took root throughout Mitteleuropa where Kaiser Wilhelm had planned to crown Germanic monarchs, as well as in the former Viennese vassal lands. In most remaining countries with a crowned head of state, elected legislatures would do the actual governing.

"A Mute Inglorious End" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, November 11, 1918

Yet monarchy was not the only institution to take a beating. Military technology had progressed greatly in the few years since the 19th Century. For the first time, war could be fought in the air (essentially by amateurs and hobbyists) and underwater, and with a long-range gun located nearly 100 kilometers from its target. Chemical weapons killed and maimed even those sheltering in their trenches. Most deadly, however, were the rapid-fire machine guns and the improved accuracy of artillery, many times more fatal than the blunderbusses and cannons of old; yet the generals on both sides insisted on the outdated tactic of sending wave after wave of soldiers "over the top" into the line of fire.

"Germany Does Not Regret the Kaiser's Ghastly Murders..." by Charles Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, November 11, 1918

Those soldiers who managed against the odds not to be mowed down by enemy fire returned home disillusioned by the incompetence and stubbornness of their commanding officers. As a result, in stark contrast with those of earlier wars, the memorials and statues to World War I (and our observance of Veterans' Day) celebrate the common soldier and not the commanding general.

"On Their Way," unsigned (Harry Murphy, perhaps?) in Washington (DC) Times, November 11, 1918

A poem by British soldier Wilfred Owens, included in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, twists the biblical account of Abraham and Isaac:

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenched there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! and angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so,
but slew his son, —
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

"Get a New Chauffeur, I Resign!" by "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, November 11, 1918

Even though the allies' victory was assured several days before Germany surrendered, the fighting continued right up to the stroke of 11:00 November 11. As a final tribute to the ghastly pointlessness of the military strategy of those "old men," some 2,000 sons on both sides were killed in those final eleven hours of the war.

"The Goth and the Flame" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November, 1918

The victorious allies sowed the seeds for the end of their colonial empires. Asian and African people who had seldom or never known popular rule saw the Entente powers grant self-determination to the people of eastern Europe and saw no reason why their fate should be any different. But Germany's colonies and the Ottoman Empire were divvied up among the European victors instead, without regard to their subjects' ethnic, religious and tribal identities — with repercussions that continue to echo a century later.

"Across No-Man's Land" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, November, 1918

Punishing terms imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles led to the Nazi's "Make Germany Great Again" nationalism, and to the Great War's sequel in 1939-45.

"When a Feller Needs a Friend" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, November, 1918

Emerging from the war relatively unscathed, the United States took over from London as the seat of global finance, launching a robust economy for the next decade. For many, this was a time for optimism that the cause of democracy was on the ascendancy around the world (by which we meant Europe).

"From the Ashes of Despotism" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, November 11, 1918

Further to the left, the world socialist movement saw the end of the war as their chance to overthrow the forces of capitalism and plutocracy. A mutiny by German sailors at Wilhelmshaven at the end of October spread, fueled by socialist unrest, and sent Kaiser Wilhelm fleeing into exile on November 9.

It's unfortunate that The Masses had been shut down, scattering its cartoonists to the winds; but I still have an example for you of a radical left-wing cartoon from the socialist New York Call. (Ryan Walker's cartoon in the November 11 issue had no relevance to war or peace, so here's his cartoon from the next day.)

"My Place Is in the Sun!" by Ryan Walker in New York Call, November 12, 1918

Walker's cartoon depicts the "Worker" demanding his place in the sun from human figures Capitalism, Militarism, Profiteer (plus two others I can't read) and a snake labeled "Reactionary Press." Under his feet are the ruins of Russian, German and Austrian autocracy. And since I relaxed the deadline to include Ryan Walker, here's the November 12 cartoon by Clifford Berryman, who didn't get a cartoon in his paper the previous day.

"Me Und—Napoleon" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Times, November 12, 1918

While cartoonists across the United States were celebrating the fall of the Kaiser and the triumph of democracy, readers of the Des Moines Register's front page on November 11 were treated to a more somber message from the pen of John "Ding" Darling. Every party needs its pooper.

"Now All She Has to Do..." by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, November 11, 1918

Tune in again next week for a look at what European cartoonists were up to in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Life During Wartime

After two Saturdays in a row rummaging through my own cartoons, it must be time to turn the clock back a full century and see what the Committee on Public Information's Office of Cartoons was suggesting to American editorial cartoonists in the summer of 1918. Let's see which issues that would survive World War I were showing up in these wartime cartoons.

"An Efficiency Expert at Work" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1918

McCutcheon's printing is tiny no matter how much you embiggen these cartoons, so here's a summary. Mr. Efficiency Expert recommends putting convicts to work making equipment for bridges, insane asylum patients to work in the ship camouflage department, and schools vacated during the summer to use teaching English "to every citizen who can't speak it." Lastly, for "the distillers and brewers likely to be closed next Jan.," he suggests putting them to work making liquid flame for the Kaiser.

"All Highest Has the Influenza" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1918

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed anywhere from 50- to 100-million people worldwide between January 1918 and December 1920. Kaiser Wilhelm was not one of them, but I wanted to include these cartoons just to be able to mention what remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history.

"Germany Suffers from the Grip" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, July 11, 1918

We don't know for sure where the pandemic started; various theories have pointed to Austria, northern China, and Haskell County, Kansas — but probably not Spain. (In Spain, the disease was nicknamed "el soldado de Nápoles.")  What is certain is that the wartime confluence and dispersal of soldiers and sailors is responsible for spreading the contagion to every continent and some of the remotest locations on Earth.

"Not Fatal" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 12, 1918

In a typical epidemic, the sickest patients stay home and don't spread the disease much farther than their own family; but in this instance, soldiers with the worst cases of the flu would be sent from the front in crowded trains to equally crowded field hospitals, facilitating widespread dispersal of the most virulent strains.

Moving on to lighter subjects:

"Snapshots" by Maurice Ketten (né Prosper Fiorini), in New York Evening World, ca. July 15, 1918

The characters in Ketten's slice of life cartoon regularly confronted the shortages and cultural changes brought about by the war. In this July cartoon, he poked fun at the price of shoe leather, women taking over jobs traditionally performed by men, and the peculiar if short-lived attempt to popularize what were called "cloth-saving suits" for men. This last measure was necessitated by shortages of wool; Germany dealt with the problem with the invention of paper-based fabrics. After the war, American and Britain would (pardon the expression) follow suit.

"Fall Styles, 1918" by Harry J. Tuthill in St. Louis Star, ca. June, 1918

Sending so many young men (and not-so-young men; the draft now included men in their 40's) off to the trenches, ships and airfields abroad meant that women were needed to take their place in the labor market. Harry Tuthill didn't foresee Rosie the Riveter just yet, but turning urban housewives into household breadwinners completely undercut one of the last remaining arguments against extending women the vote.

"The False Patriot" by ? (Al Zere? Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman?), ca. July 8, 1918

I recently heard an interview with the author of a new book about Herbert Hoover; the author believes that Hoover got a raw deal from other historians because he is judged solely for his response to the Great Depression. Hoover isn't mentioned in these particular July cartoons, but his name was intimately associated with wartime rationing and belt tightening measures. In a way, this must have set him up for the popular resentment when that austerity returned under Hoover eleven years later in peace time.

"Fight Behind the Lines" by John Cassel in New York World, June 24, 1918

Meanwhile, back in 1918, the Office of Cartoons surely recommended combating any discontent such as illustrated in "The False Patriot" (if I find the name of that cartoonist, I'll correct it here) with cartoons illustrating the reported bread shortages among the Central Powers. The Entente press played up accounts of demonstrations protesting food shortages, especially in Austria.

"Felix Fake May Be an Edison Yet" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, June 12, 1918

Americans aren't much for hardship, but we'll put up with a lot as long as some enemy has it worse.

Front page notice in Duluth Evening Herald, July 13, 1918

But, oh, no! Not the free promotional copy of my newspaper!

Hält die Klappe und Geh Raus!

Sprechenback Saturday continues last week's discussion of the push in the U.S. to repress all things German during World War I. I got somewhat distracted toward the end of last Saturday's post, so I'm going to get the distraction out of the way right off the bat today with a cartoon about Prohibition.

"Not a Drum Was Heard" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, May, 1918

Indiana approved state-wide prohibition of alcohol on April 2, 1918, followed by Michigan on April 30. While Burt Thomas's cartoon features ward heelers lamenting the loss of their occupation and restaurateurs fretting that they must now provide quality food, what I want to point out is that John Barleycorn's casket is adorned with a beer stein and pretzel. And I suppose that's a bottle of liebfraumilch.

Before the war, cartoonists tended to portray the evils of liquor using Demon Rum or Wicked Whisky. Associating booze with the hated Hun, however, would soon facilitate passage of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Increasing voting rights for women and shifting revenues from alcohol excise taxes to federal income taxes were also significant, but our topic today is animus toward German-Americans.)

"No Compromise" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Republic, ca. May, 1918

Even in German enclaves such as St. Louis and Cincinnati, there were drives to force German language out of the public sphere. Streets, hospitals and entire cities changed their names: Germantown, Nebraska, for example, being renamed Garland, for a local soldier killed in the war. There were contests to find a more Amurikin word for sauerkraut, although the name "liberty cabbage" didn't last as long as actual sauerkraut does. A Massachusetts doctor tried to get German measles renamed "liberty measles" ... but it didn't catch on.

Detail of "Saluting 'Cincy, the Queen City of the West'" by Manuel Rosenberg in Cartoons Magazine, July, 1918

It is a shame that neither the Milwaukee Journal nor Milwaukee Sentinel employed editorial cartoonists of their own at this point in history, because I would have liked to see the sort of reaction they would have drawn to all this Germanophobia. The Journal played up Teddy Roosevelt's May 29 visit on Page 1, at which the former president called for an end to "all societies, social, political, or any other" based on European heritage. That included ethnic churches (the norm for American Lutherans, Catholics, and some smaller denominations) and, of course, newspapers.

"I wish we could provide by law so that within a reasonable space of time, a space of time that will avoid unnecessary hardship, there shall be no newspaper published in the land except in English. ... If... treasonable or semi-treasonable matter is published in a newspaper in another tongue, people do not know that the poison is being instilled at all."

"Beware the Snake" by J.E. Murphy in San Francisco Call-Post, May 13, 1918

Of course, if Milwaukee had paid any heed to Mr. Roosevelt's "campaign against the hyphen," its summers would not be anywhere near as fun.

Roosevelt's advice appealed to Sidney Greene, possibly one of the most strident Germanophobes to sling ink; his cartoon drawn after Roosevelt delivered much the same speech in New York appeared here last week.

"Marooned" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Evening Telegram, June 2, 1918

Suspicion of foreigners from whatever country one is at war with has always been fairly commonplace, and the Great War was no exception. And certain spectacular acts of German espionage had gotten cartoonists' attention, so you can't categorize all the anti-German immigrant cartoons as entirely baseless. Yet Greene seems to have been particularly anxious for the censorship of German-language media, returning to the topic again and again.

"How Long Must We Stand for This?" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, June, 1918

On May 16, 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act as an amendment to the 1917 Espionage Act, criminalizing "insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military" by speech or publication. (Since I discussed Teddy Roosevelt above, I should mention that he opposed passage of the Sedition Act.) Although the government used the law to go after International Workers of the World union leaders and a few German-American businessmen, it never used the law to prosecute any German-language American publication for collusion with the enemy.

"Drop It Now" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, June, 1918

But what, you may ask (go ahead, I'll wait), about the other side of the coin?

"Time to Abolish Everything That Is Foreign" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, May 25, 1918

I have not been able to locate Kaiser Wilhelm's speech about abolishing everything foreign, although I did find a satiric poem about it in the American Punch magazine. Whether the quotation is accurate or not, I have no doubt that it was reported in the American press (along with the reports of German soldiers tossing Belgian babies into ovens and infecting Red Cross blankets with pathogens), and it does seem to reflect the Kaiser's policy throughout his reign of promoting German cultural identity in his empire.

"Una Colazione Andata a Male" by Sirti in Il 420, Florence, May 12, 1918

"No other language permitted except German" proclaims the sign on the wall in this Italian cartoon. France, Italy, England and the U.S. present gold to the German at the table, whose feet rest on "International Law" and a "Directory of Mankind"; neutrals, Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium hunt for scraps in the foreground amid torn-up treaties and the skulls of Justice and Liberty.

★

Monday is Memorial Day, which did not escape cartoonists' notice in 1918, and it won't escape mine now. At roughly this time, Cartoons Magazine noted the death in action of Boston cartoonist Herbert Wolf, known for his cartoons of military camp life, and that of pilot Gordon Levy, son of cartoonist Bert Levy.

"When a Feller Needs a Friend" by Clare Briggs for Red Cross, May, 1918

American newspapers observed a week of emphasis on the Red Cross in late May, and the Committee on Public Education's Bureau of Cartoons must have promoted the image of a soldier tangled in barbed wire, because a number of cartoonists used it. "When a Feller Needs a Friend" was a regular feature of Clare Briggs's usually light-hearted, folksy cartoons for the New York Tribune.

(A bit of cartoonist-military trivia: Briggs's math professor at the University of Nebraska was John J. Pershing, later U.S. commander of the Western Front in the war. "I believe he will testify that it was easier to conquer Germany than to teach me math," Briggs said later. "One day he ordered me to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem, and while I was giving the problem a hard but losing battle, he remarked: 'Briggs, sit down, you don't know anything.' Right then and there, I decided to become a newspaper man.")

The Chicago Tribune's John McCutcheon was inspired to draw the cartoon below upon the death of  Major Gervais Raoul Lufbery, 33, a famous French-American flying ace in the Lafayette Flying Corps with a reputation for coolness and daring. "Luff," as he was known throughout the U.S. Army and French Air Service, was a recipient of the Croix de Guerre, Legion of Honor, Ten Palms, and Médaille Militaire, plus four British medals and one from Montenegro.  He was shot down over France on May 19, 1918.

"The Fallen Ace" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1918

According to newspaper reports,

"It was after six American aviators had attacked in vain yesterday that Maj. Raoul Lufbery took the air back of the American sector north of Toul against an enormous enemy biplane, a few seconds later to leap from his machine as it burst into flame and drop to the Earth.
"This type of  'flying tank,' it became known here today, is practically invulnerable to the bullets and machine guns now used by American flyers.
"So it was in a hopeless struggle that America's foremost ace lost his life, after his bullets had rattled harmlessly off the armored German machine."

Lufbery was buried with full military honors with high-ranking French and American officers in attendance. After the war, Lufbery's remains were moved to the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial near Versailles as a permanent monument to the 68 American pilots and their French officers who lost their lives during the war.