Pilgrims Digress

I hope you've saved a little room for some more Thanksgiving feast, because I've got some 100-year-old leftovers to serve up today!

"If the Pilgrims Had Started Thanksgiving Day in 1923" by Harold M. Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 29, 1923

Back in 1923, the U.S. celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month, of which there were five that year. Merchants pushing for a longer Christmas Shopping Season™ persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving up to the third Thursday of November in 1938, which, however, didn't please many non-merchants. In 1941, FDR pushed it back to the fourth Thursday in November, where it has been ever since.

"We're Thankful" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 29, 1923

Tom Foley's gripe about the price of coal was the equivalent of today's complaints about the cost of gas. Coal was an absolute necessity for the heating of nearly every home, and miners' strikes after World War I kept reducing its supply. Gasoline, on the other hand, was cheap and plentiful, and most families could get along just fine with only one car or none at all.

I do like Foley's version of a John Held cartoon character in the third panel. I wonder what their girlfriends thought of the fellows' looks.

Thanksgiving offered cartoonists an opportunity to observe that on the whole, citizens of the United States were better off than many people elsewhere.

"I'd Like to Share with the People Over There" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca, Nov. 29, 1923

Morris didn't specify what "people over there" he had in mind for this cartoon, because they could have been practically anyone anywhere. Hyperinflation in Germany and food shortages in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere were well known in the U.S. The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan should also have been fresh in readers' memories.

Whatever Morris's specific intent was, it allows us to pivot to editorial cartoonists who decided to tie the holiday in with contemporary politics.

"Thanksgiving 1923" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Nov. 29, 1923

The table in 1923 may not have had the overstuffed turkeys Butterball & Co. offer us today, but I still think that there should have been enough white meat back then to satisfy the appetites of three diners. After all, one has got to make room for all that stuffing, sweet potatoes, veggies, corn bread, cranberry sauce, and pie, too.

Maybe I'm missing some interpretation Berryman assumed his readers would make. (I'm pretty sure there's nothing race-related in this cartoon, though.)

"The Pilgrim Fathers Were Not the Only Ones..." by Wm. A Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, Nov. 28, 1923

The new president, Calvin Coolidge, was the overwhelming favorite for the 1924 Republican Party presidential nomination, yet that didn't mean that he was completely unchallenged. Ceperley's cartoon has Cal threatened by Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA), Congress, and "Blocs" (see Berryman's cartoon above) hiding behind a tree. The 68th Congress had yet to be convene, as the party's Progressive wing was trying to wrest power from the Old Guard in the House of Representatives. 

(Side note: There was a mailing label slapped on top of the Ceperley cartoon in the archives where I found it. I have scribbled in some lines where the label was. I find mailing labels covering part of front page cartoons somewhat often; why couldn't someone have stuck the labels on the newspapers' flags, huh?)

"Won't Talk Turkey" by Dennis McCarthy in Fort Worth Record, Nov. 29, 1923

Dennis McCarthy's cartoon serves as a reminder that WKRP's Arthur Carlson wasn't entirely wrong in thinking that turkeys could fly. They can.

Just not very far.

"Thanksgiving Birds" by Thomas E. Powers for Star Company, ca. Nov. 29, 1923

T.E. Powers offered a three-for-one holiday cartoon. Stinnes in the top panel was German industrialist and newspaper publisher Hugo Stinnes, then also a member of the Reichstag. The middle panel refered to a general income tax cut some U.S. politicians were proposing as an alternative to bonus payments for World War I veterans. And the bottom panel was echoing Dennis McCarthy's warning against Europeans coming after Uncle Sam's turkey.

"A Thanksgiving Controversy" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha World-Herald, Nov. 29, 1923

Other cartoonists stuck to the tried and true themes of the holiday, such as Guy Spencer reminding his readers that Benjamin Franklin thought the turkey should be the United States' national bird rather than the bald eagle.

Spencer had been drawing editorial cartoons for two decades by this point, so I find it odd that he didn't leave the eagle's head white — the principal distinction between the American symbol and that of Prussia, Austria, Russia, Poland, et al. Bald eagles are not strangers to Nebraska, and had been a staple of editorial cartoons for decades. 

So was this supposed to be a juvenile? A brown eagle? Heck, before reading the dialogue, I thought it was a crow.

A Thanksgiving controversy indeed!

"Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Nov. 28, 1923

The farmer's axe may have come as a surprise to Guy Spencer's tom turkey; Elmer Bushnell's bird lived in mortal dread of it.

"Theory Versus Practice" by Maurice Ketten (Prosper Fiorini) in New York World, Nov. 29, 1923

Meanwhile on the consumer end of things, our great-grandparents fretted about such things as overeating on the holidays. Even if, as we were earlier reminded, children were starving in Europe. 

"Out Our Way" by J.R. Williams for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 30, 1923

Children here in America — at least in its cartoons — were sure to get something at the dinner table.

The Willet family in "Out Our Way" wasn't particularly large, so they must have had an awful lot of guests for dinner in 1923 if all that was left for young Willis Willet at the end of the table was the neck.

Either that, or he had been a bad boy that Thanksgiving, pestering Dad for the white meat.

"Out Our Way" was based on J.R. Williams's memories of growing up in small-town America; perhaps it was the future cartoonist who was expected to be thankful for the most difficult-to-eat cut of the Thanksgiving turkey. 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

"Ye Olde Thanksgiving" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Nov. 29, 1923

But it's a sure-fire hit for the holidays.

Cartoonists and the Photoengravers Strike

Last Saturday's entry here was long on words and short on cartoons, so I'm going to try to strike a better balance today.

One of the cartoonists I had hoped would have drawn a good cartoon about the Tulsa Pogrom was the New York Evening World's John Cassel. He had drawn a couple war-time cartoons praising African-American soldiers, so I went looking through the World's June, 1921 archives to find what he had to say about Tulsa.

I found instead that he was preoccupied with the strike against newspapers in New York and elsewhere by the International Photoengravers' Union.

"Look Before You Strike" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 1, 1921

I can't say for sure that this cartoon specifically addressed the photoengravers union, because theirs was not the only strike underway at the time, by a long shot. Employers, backed by the Harding administration and a Republican Congress, were pressing their workers to give back gains won under the more sympathetic Wilson administration during the Great War.

In any event, the newspaper photoengravers paid no heed to Cassel's cartoon, and the strike was on.

"Typographical Hooch" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 2, 1921

So instead of his usual grease pencil cartoon, Cassel greeted Evening World readers the next day with this display of graphic typography.

"The President Waltzes..." by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

He followed up a day later by adding some clip art.

"Can You Imagine This Cartoon?" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 1921

The strike affected some 17 New York newspapers, but the only other Big Apple cartoonist I found who tried John Cassel's approach to dealing with it was this one cartoon by Nelson Harding across the East River at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Harding missed a few days on the editorial page that week, but his little one-column cartoons continued to appear daily on the front page.

"Can You Beat It" by Maurice Ketten in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

The gag cartoons seem to have been unaffected by the strike, as evidenced by Cassel's fellow cartoonist at the Evening World, Maurice Ketten. Elsewhere, the New York Evening Post hadn't run any editorial cartoons since Haydon Jones's departure in April, but Alfred "Zere" Ablitzere's light-hearted cartoons continued daily on another page. Nor was there any interruption in John "Ding" Darling sending his editorial cartoons in from Iowa to the New York Tribune.

Likewise, the Evening World's sports cartoonists kept showing up in print during the strike.

"The Sportoscope" by Ken Kling in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

Was it a matter of pen and ink over grease pencil? A question of willingness to cross a picket line?

I don't think so. The strike also resulted in newspapers being unable to run the comic strips, which were such a popular selling point in those days. At the Evening World, the editors strove to keep their comic strip fans engaged by making a readership contest out of it.

Blank version of "Joe's Car" by Vic Forsythe, in New York Evening World, June 2, 1921

Blank version of "Little Mary Mixup" by R.L. Brinkerhoff, in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

Blank version of "The Big Little Family" by Bud Counihan in New York Evening World, June 4, 1921

The strike also interrupted the work of Sidney Joseph Greene, who had come to Pulitzer's Evening World from the Evening Telegram a year or so earlier. Instead of drawing editorial cartoons, Greene was drawing a filler feature on the comics page. No comics page, no Greene.

Meanwhile, John Cassel kept plugging away at his typographic cartoons on the Evening World editorial page.

"Two-Handed Diplomacy" by John Cassel in New York Evening Post, June 4, 1921

Cassel managed to create a reasonable caricature of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain George Brinton McClellan Harvey (certainly better than his attempt at President Harding the day before).

Well, I'll let you be the judge.

"A Rose from Last Year's Garden" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 6, 1921

By the next week, the strike was settled, union and management returned to the bargaining table, and Cassel was back to his customary style of cartooning.

It would be naughty of me to close this Saturday post and leave you in suspense over the outcome of the Evening World's comic contest. The original strips and their prize-winning imitators ran on the comics pages June 13, 14 and 15.

"Joe's Car" by Vic Forsythe, and H. Turner

"Little Mary Mixup" by R.L. Brinkerhoff, and William Delaney

"The Big Little Family" by Bud Counihan, and Leslie Bradsaw

Merry Christmas, 1920 Style

"A Rare Bird" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Dec. 25, 1920

St. Stephenback Saturday wishes you a merry Second Day of Christmas; and as my gift to you today instead of a couple of lousy turtledoves, I bring you a collection of cartoons from the newspapers on December 24 and 25, 100 years ago. We'll start off with a rather bizarre holiday offering from the great Jay N. Darling, capturing the Spirit of Christmas in a bear leg trap.

"Just What We Wanted" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 24, 1920

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle's front pages in December were full of reports of a crime wave plaguing New York, but I am just going to assume that Nelson Harding is being facetious in this cartoon of New York Mayor John F. Hylan.

"To All Evening World Readers" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, Dec. 24, 1920

Other editorial cartoonists took a holiday from grave matters of politics. John Cassel wished his readers a merry Christmas...

John M. Baer, The Nonpartisan Leader, Fargo, ND, Dec. 27, 1920

...As did cartoonist-Congressman John Baer, fresh from a defeat at the ballot box which he apparently accepted without filing dozens of frivolous lawsuits or entertaining the notion of martial law. (I know I said these cartoons were going to be dated December 24 and 25, but I'm granting the biweekly Nonpartisan Leader a little leeway.)

"A Couple of Wiseacres" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, Dec., 1920

Magnus Kettner's cartoons generally steered clear of politics and were relatively gentle when they didn't. His cartoons were targeted to a rural readership, where it appears the horseless carriage was still a thing for future generations.

"Poker Portraits" by Harold T. Webster in New York Tribune, Dec., 1920

Guys get their share of ribbing in the humor panels for Christmas. A charitable explanation here might be that this fellow isn't as clueless as he looks. Perhaps he's Jewish or Sikh, and new to this country. And if he's Sikh, it's cartoonist Harold Webster who is the clueless one, having forgotten to draw him wearing his turban.

Be that as it may, cluelessness survives from bachelorhood to married bliss...

"Oh, Man" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, Dec. 25, 1920

I'm sure that Alice got a nice bathrobe, at any rate.

"You Send an Answer" by Robert Ripley in Washington Evening Star,  Dec. 24, 1920

Robert Ripley (yes, he of "Believe It Or Not" fame) leads our selection of cartoonists pushing Christmas commercialization. What heartless bastard could possibly let down this little girl praying to Santa for a doll?

"Can You Beat It" by Maurice Ketten in New York Evening World, Dec. 24, 1920

Maurice Ketten's shoppers aren't confusing religion with shopping. They are hep to a variety of Christmas shopping strategies, from fancy wrapping to regifting. Note the Prohibition reference in panel five.

"We're Out of 'Em" by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, Dec. 1920

Hey! Put the newspaper down and get that little girl her doll! Right now! Before they're all gone!

"Has She Forgotten Anybody" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Dec., 1920

If consumerism isn't your yuletide thing, there's also plenty of Christmas Charity guilt tripping to go around.

"I Wish My Mamma and Me Was Dogs" by Albert Wallen for Federated Press, Dec., 1920

Albert Wallen offers up a "Bah, humbug!" to the dogs of the late Mrs. Louise B. Pams, proving that there was nothing strikingly original about Leona Helmsley. Yet who knows but that Mrs. Pams was a loving and kind soul, forsaken by the grasping wretches of her ungrateful family, all except for Fido and Fifi. And seeing as all her children were deathly allergic to canines, wasn't this the charitable and thoughtful thing to do, all things considered?

"Same Old Knockout" by "Jim Nasium" in Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 25, 1920

Striking a blow against commercialization of the holiday, "Jim Nasium" was the pen name of Philadelphia Inquirer sports cartoonist Edgar Forrest Wolfe (1874-1958). Yes, Virginia, there used to be sports cartoonists as well as editorial cartoonists at any newspaper able to brag about its circulation figures.

 

This Santa may pack a mean punch, but he has got to be one of the scrawniest Santa Clauses ever drawn.

"No Hold-up Here" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, Dec. 24, 1920

Man, you really do not want to get on Santa's bad side in Philadelphia. That guy has a wicked temper!

Well, that's enough violence for one holiday. I'll close today's trip beyond Memory Lane with a gentle wish to you and yours from the nation's capital.

Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Dec. 24, 1920

And to all a good night.

Reichedämmerung

The theme of this week's Sprechenzieback Saturday is Twilight of the Empires, because we have reached the centennial of the final month of World War I, and with it the final month of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires.

"The Twilight of the Gotts" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune,  October 5, 1918

As American, British and French forces pushed Germany's western front farther and farther back, Entente cartoonists produced a flurry of editorial cartoons depicting Kaiser Wilhelm feeling betrayed by the German "Gott." It almost seems as if the ink slingers and charcoal smudgers were accepting the ancient Hebrew mindset that accepted the existence of other nations' distinct gods, believing however that their own was superior to the others.

"Le Délaissé" by Charles LaBorde in Le Rire, Paris, August 24, 1918

It's a peculiarity of common parlance, in the U.S. at least, that original German is the default for so many easily translatable words when referring to Germany, but Germany alone. Then and now, we always refer to Emperor William as Kaiser Wilhelm, but Austria-Hungary's Emperor Francis Joseph is never Kaiser Franz Josef.

"Some Folks Reckon They've Got a Monopoly of This Iron Fist Stuff" by David Low in Sydney Bulletin, September, 1918

Yet while any English speaker was familiar with some phrases such as "Gott strafe [fill in the blank]," others such as "Eisenfaust" did not leave the Vaterland without requiring translation. Australian cartoonist David Low, not yet having adopted the style of his more famous World War II cartoons, here turns around a famous comment by Kaiser Wilhelm to his brother, Prince Heinrich, in 1897: "If anyone ... should ever venture to wish to hurt or harm us in the due exercise of our rights, smash him with an iron fist."

"I May Have to Leave You" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, October, 1918

Anyway, with Central Powers' frontiers were collapsing on all sides, I'll let these cartoons speak for themselves with only minimal explanation from little old me. As Entente forces overtook the Hindenburg line on Germany's western front, German forces abandoned their occupation of Belgium, which had been Great Britain's reason for entering the war.

"La Couronne de Finlande" by TEL in L'Homme Libre, Paris, September 24, 1918

The Kaiser's dreams of a German-dominated Mitteleuropa were crumbling from the Baltic to the Balkans. I dealt more extensively with the Finnish situation in July, in case you missed it.

Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Republic, September, 1918

Czechs and Slovaks eagerly accepted promises that the Entente powers would recognize their independence from Austria-Hungary.

"The Reports of His Death Were Greatly Exaggerated" by William Hanny in St. Joseph (MO) News-Press, September, 1918

Serbia, where the first shots of the war had been fired, had been occupied by the Central Powers since 1915. Units of the Serbian army returning from exile liberated the country in September of 1918.  Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes would declare the creation of an independent state west of Serbia on October 29, but it was never recognized by the rest of the world, and would eventually be absorbed into the kingdom of Serbia.

"Didn't Get Away With It" by R.O. Evans in Baltimore American, Sept./Oct, 1918

French and Serb forces broke through the Bulgarian lines at Dobro Polje in mid-September. Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Entente on September 30, and Tsar Ferdinand I abdicated three days later.

"The Broken Span" by Maurice Ketten in Chicago Journal, Sept./Oct., 1918

Meanwhile in Ottoman territory, British forces had conquered Palestine and entered Damascus at the end of September. Cartoonists in Christendom were particularly enthused by the Ottoman-German army's retreat from Nazareth...

"Thanksgiving Is Coming" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1918

... but Great Britain's victory in Palestine would not be one that the English would long remain thankful for.

As far as Americans were concerned, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria were but junior partners in the Central Powers alliance. Entente victories over them now seemed guaranteed.

"A Race to Headquarters to Turn State's Evidence" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, Sept./Oct., 1918

"The Alliance in 1918" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September, 1918

"La Paix" by Lucien Métivet in Le Rire, Paris, October 12, 1918

The American press reported in the first week of October that Germany was prepared to surrender unconditionally. Another campaign was just underway in the U.S. to promote Liberty Loans; and with the end of hostilities visible on the horizon, that had to be an extremely difficult sell.

"If We Will Lend the Way They Fight" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 6, 1918

Nevertheless, it had become possible to anticipate the shape of a post-war world. The victors in Europe, having endured four long years of war, were not in a forgiving mood.

"The Bill" by Percy H. "Poy" Fearon, in Evening News, London, September, 1918

The devastation in lives and property over those four years hit a generation of Europeans especially hard. Disillusionment with traditional pre-war values would produce nihilistic novels and poetry, atonal music, skepticism of authority, and an ethos of "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." The Great War directly affected a greater portion of the populace than ever before, through conscription, air raids, and sinking of passenger ships.

In the whole of the previous century, from the Napoleonic Wars to the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Europe had lost fewer than 4.5 million men. Now, at least 8 million had died in four years, while more than twice as many had been wounded, some of them crippled for life.

From his artist's desk in Munich, Erich Schiller predicted that the true winners after the war would not be the Entente Powers in general, but two of them in particular.

"Das Europäische Konzert nach dem Kriege" by Erich Schiller in Simplicissimus, Munich, October 15, 1918