Mansplaining Women's History Month

'Tis spring, and a cartoonist's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of millinery.

"The Worried Weather Man" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 26, 1921

I had thoughts of putting forth a post in honor of Women's History Month sometime in March, yet events of 100 Marches ago seem to have given cartoonists but one inspiration on women's issues. It wasn't just Clifford Berryman's weather forecaster; here's a cartoon I almost led last Saturday's 100-year-old post with:

"St. Patrick's Day" by Magnus Kettner, March 17, 1921

On the other hand, there was a brand new First Lady to draw about, even if she was not yet a familiar face.

"A Voice from the Attic of a House in Marion" by Harold T. Webster, March 3, 1921

And guess what cartoonists did know about Florence Harding! Her hat!

"She Wants What She Wants When She Wants It" by Wm. Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, ca. March 28, 1921

So I turn to the funny pages, where, happily, the men drawing the cartoons had —mostly— run out of hat-related gags. I found there, however, a curious coincidence among several of the comic strips that had women in the title role.

"Polly and Her Pals" by Clifford Sterrett for Hearst newspapers, March 6, 1921

"Polly and Her Pals" was the popular creation of Cliff Sterrett, running from 1912 to 1958. Yet here at this fairly early date — the focus of the strip seems to be not Polly Perkins, but her father, Paw. 

Again and again, Polly exists only to set up Paw Perkins's predicament in the first panel — here, two weeks later, she's setting the poor old sap up yet again to humiliate himself musically on the local vaudeville stage...

— returning only in the third-to-last panel in which her mother reports that their ethnically something-or-other houseboy, Neewah, has bought up all the rotten eggs in town.

Excerpted from "Polly and Her Pals" by Clifford Sterrett, March 20, 1921

Sterrett could just as easily have had Polly herself running around town buying up those rotten eggs. Was she not as much fun to draw? Oh, sure, Paw couldn't have challenged her to put up her dukes in the penultimate panel; but then again, parental violence wasn't unheard of in 1921. Or she could have been the one to uncover and report Neewah's ovate buying spree. Anything to allow her some dialogue that week!

Heck, Polly was pretty good-looking (she didn't take after either of her parents). Oughtn't she to have been the one going out on stage to display the extent of her musical talents? Couldn't that have been equally funny?

"And Why Do You Weep" by Nate Collins in Cartoons Magazine, March, 1921

We turn now to the working girl.

"Miss Information" by Wood Cowan for George Matthew Adams Service, March 19, 1921

Women in the labor force was nothing new in 1921. For eons, women toiled on the farm, in the shirt factory, in the schoolroom, and doing whatever Cosette did in Madeleine's factory before having to turn to the World's Oldest Profession. Taking over the previously male occupation of office clerk, however, was novel, and contributed to the popularity of cartoons about secretaries.

Like Polly Perkins, the title character of "Miss Information" did little but set up the punch line for the boss or the office boy — which may explain why the strip was later retitled "In Our Office."

"Somebody's Stenog" by A.M. Hayward for Public Ledger Co., April 1, 1921

Some comic strip heroines, on the other hand, took center stage. Compare Cowan's Miss Information to her fellow office worker, Miss O'Flage, the title character of Alfred Hayward's "Somebody's Stenog." (A while back, I featured one of Hayward's other strips, "Colonel Corn.") O'Flage's starring role was helped in that Hayward stretched some story lines over several days at a time; here, she testifies in a lawsuit her employer has filed against a supplier.

"Somebody's Stenog" by A.M. Hayward for Public Ledger Co., April 9, 1921

Most of the time, neither O'Flage nor her co-worker Mary Doodle display much of a work ethic — O'Flage drives The Boss crazy skipping out of work for frivolous reasons — but he wouldn't have kept her around if she didn't get the job done.

Ask your grandparents about "carbon paper."

From working women, we turn now to Maggie Jiggs, arguably the most quintessentially 1920's cartoon female (after Betty Boop).

"Bringing Up Father" by George McManus, March 27, 1921

The Jiggses, he a bricklayer and she a laundress, won a million dollars and settled into the lifestyle of the nouveau riche and fabulous — the American dream of the Good Life and Easy Money. Her husband seemed to be more or less content with whatever his lot, but Maggie craved the status she felt should come along with riches. This set her up for repeated come-uppance, thus setting her apart from the comic strip heroines who blithely created chaos for the menfolk in their lives.

"A Well Dressed Wife" by Walter Wellman for Cartoons Magazine, March, 1921

It's a bit late for a spoiler alert or trigger warning, but I hope you didn't read this far hoping to find feminism and wokeness in 1921 comics. These cartoonists were, to a man, men, after all.

100 Years Ago: The Democratic Convention

Scrollback Saturday continues yesterday's review of cartoons about the 1916 political conventions. Let's start with one by Sidney Smith ("Old Doc Yak," "The Gumps") on the news pages of the Chicago Tribune.

Sidney Smith for Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1916

100 years ago today, the Republicans had wrapped up their convention in Chicago, and the Democrats were gathering for theirs at the Coliseum in St. Louis.

Robert Carter in New York Evening Sun, June, 1916

Incumbent President Woodrow Wilson and Veep Thomas Marshall were unopposed for the Democratic nomination, so there wasn't any of the drama of the previous week.

C.F. Naughton for Duluth Evening Herald, June 14, 1916

Other than the occasional speaker going too far in promising four more years of peace and prosperity, there was nothing for Republican cartoonists to remark upon except everything they already disliked about the President's policies.

Robert Carter for New York Evening Sun, June, 1916

If the cartoonist (or his publisher) liked Wilson, you picked up your newspaper to find this sort of hagiolatry on the front page:

Luther Bradley in Chicago Daily News, June, 1916

Or this:

C.F. Naughton for Duluth Evening Herald, June 14, 1916

Should we read anything into Naughton's cartoon that he left plenty of room to sign his cartoon, but didn't?

In those days, several newspapers would have cartoons, some topical, featured on various pages besides the front and editorial pages. Sidney Smith's cartoon at the top of this post is one example; here's another by Frank King ("Bobby Make-Believe," "Gasoline Alley"):

Frank King for Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1916

Taking a less partisan approach in the Sunday funnies, A.E. Hayward's Colonel Corn, having gotten nowhere with the Republicans, tried to impress delegates to the Democratic convention.

"Colonel Corn" by A.E. Hayward in the New York Herald, June 11, 1916.

Meet the Colonel

Yesterday, I posted the first three panels of the premiere episode of A.E. Hayward's "Colonel Corn." I don't want to keep anybody in suspense over the Colonel's budding interest in crime fighting, so here's the whole Sunday comic from October 24, 1915:

"Colonel Corn" by A.E. Hayward, October 24, 1915

100 Years Ago: Colonel Corn

Political commentary on the comics page didn't start with Prickly City, or Doonesbury, or even Pogo; it dates all the way back to the very beginning with Yellow Kid. We're not going back quite that far today, however, as Soapboxback Saturday takes another look at the Sunday Funny Pages of a century ago.

A.E. Hayward was the nom de cartoon of Alfred Mark Hayward (1884-1939). Hayward used the "E" — for Earle — to distinguish his cartooning work from his "serious" painting. He had a penchant for punny names in his cartoons; His most successful strip was "Somebody's Stenog," which he drew from 1918 until his retirement in 1933, centering on the foibles of a stylish blonde stenographer deceptively named Cam O'Flage.

From 1915 to 1918, he drew "Colonel Corn" for the New York Herald Syndicate about a self-important aspiring politician with plenty of ambition but no particular aptitude. The colonel was introduced on October 24, 1915, without his last name, deciding to launch his political career by getting appointed to the police department — the clear implication from Panel One being that his family would be better off were he to apply himself to some honest work.

It can't have been a coincidence that his career plans echoed that of a certain Col. Theodore Roosevelt, although Joel Corn still hadn't attained the first rung of the ladder by the time he took aim at the 1916 presidential contest.

"Colonel Corn" by A.E. Hayward, May 14, 1916

At this point 100 years ago, incumbent Woodrow Wilson was unopposed for renomination as the Democratic nominee for President. A win in the Oregon primary over auto manufacturer Henry Ford was sealing the Republican nomination for Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who had been touted as a possible Republican nominee since 1904. The candidate of the party's Old Guard had been Elihu Root, but at 71, the former Secretary of War decided that he was too old to run. Former President Teddy Roosevelt had returned to the Republican Party and was making speeches around the country as if he were a candidate; he would turn down the Progressive Party nomination when it was offered to him.

"Colonel Corn" by A.E. Hayward, May 21, 1916

In the May 21 episode above, Hughes is the candidate who "doesn't say anything at all and draws a crowd"; as Chief Justice, he wasn't yet actively campaigning on his own behalf. Former President Teddy Roosevelt produces the "whiskered nut-eating bird" (while Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan shows off his "eclair-eating peace eagle"), a reference to Roosevelt having returned from a trip to the West Indies with a guácharo, proclaiming it as his own discovery in spite of its existence already being well documented.

I guess the whiskered nut-eating bird briefly stood a chance of joining the political cartoonists' bestiary with elephants, donkeys and bull meese. It reappeared in the following Sunday's episode of Colonel Corn, and in this cartoon by the New York World's Rollin Kirby:

"Another Bearded Bird" - Rollin Kirby for New York World

"Throwing one's hat in the ring" is a boxing-based cliché for declaring oneself for public office, and there are lots of cartoons showing piles of hats in a ring on the ground. I had never seen the hat-in-the-ring cliché depicted this way before running across the May 28 episode, however:

"Colonel Corn" by A.E. Hayward, May 28, 1916

Ultimately, the popularity of the whiskered nut-eating bird was no match for that of the Teddy Bear. For which, generations of toddlers should be eternally grateful.