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?

Intrigue Surrounds Heiress' Death at 104

In the course of posting cartoons from The Minneapolis Tribune Cartoon Book for 1901: Being a Collection of Over One Hundred Cartoons by R.C. Bowman last year, I included a series of cartoons about Montana Senator, newspaper publisher and copper mining millionaire William Andrews Clark. Those cartoons caught the eye of msnbc.com reporter Bill Dedman, who has been covering the legal tangle over the financial affairs of Clark's sole heir, Huguette Clark, who died this past May at the age of 104 after living almost her entire adult life as a total recluse.

To explain the cartoon again: William Clark was elected to the U.S. Senate from Montana (with the strong support of the newspaper he owned) but forced to resign when evidence of bribery surfaced. Still determined to keep the office he had bought and paid for, he arranged for Montana's Lieutenant Governor to appoint him Senator on the same day Clark resigned -- the Governor being conveniently out of the state that day.

Whereas other robber barons (sorry, I mean Job Creators) of the day, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, left civic and charitable institutions to bear their names, Senator Clark left his name only to Nevada's Clark County, keeping his money in the family after he died in 1925.

Since corresponding with Mr Dedman, I've been following the story of the Clark estate with some interest, and there are new developments today.

"Based on 'shocking' evidence of tax fraud, a judge on Friday suspended [Ms. Clark's] attorney and accountant ... from handling her $400 million estate.

"The judge said there was more than enough evidence that the two men engaged in a tax fraud that allowed the elderly woman to run up an IRS bill of $90 million in unpaid gift taxes, interest and potential penalties."

The judge in the case declined to rule on the question of allowing descendants from Senator Clark's first marriage to enter into the legal dispute, which involves two wills signed six weeks apart in 2005, when Huguette was 98. The first leaves most of her fortune to those descendants; they are cut out of the second will entirely, although the aforementioned attorney and accountant would make out handsomely from it.

Bill Dedman's series on the Clark case is on line on this msnbc.com page.

R.C. Bowman's 1900 Cartoons: Sen. William A. Clark

Before the passage of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Senators represented -- and were elected by -- not the people of their state, but their state legislatures. Not surprisingly, there arose such cases as that of Senator William A. Clark of Montana, who bribed state legislators to elect him in 1898.

Out there in Montana.
(The musical staff quotes "get your money's worth" from what I assume was a popular song.)

Clark came to Montana in the gold rush of the 1860s, eventually establishing himself as a banker and in turn, a mine owner by virtue of foreclosing on mining properties. He also owned a newspaper, the Butte Miner, which he used to advance his political ambitions. He presided over Montana's 1884 and 1889 constitutional conventions, and advocated Helena for the state's capital over its rival, Anaconda. (He was one of the two richest Americans when he died in 1925; Clark County, Nevada, home of Las Vegas, is named for him.)

The New Chore Boy
When Clark's bribes came to light in 1899, the U.S. Senate refused to seat him. But in 1900, he won election again.

And the cat came back.
Clark served one term (1901-1907) in the U.S. Senate. He was the subject of a scathing Mark Twain essay, "Senator Clark of Montana" (1907; see Mark Twain in Eruption, ed Bernard DeVoto, 1940):

"He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time."

To bring this story into the present day, 104-year-old Huguette Clark is his daughter. You may have heard of the legal dispute over the financial affairs of the reclusive Miss Clark, who has not been photographed since the 1930's. Her palacial estate near Santa Barbara, California, has sat empty since 1963, and her properties in Connecticut and New York City are likewise unoccupied. The fact that nobody seems to have seen her except her accountant and her attorney in decades is a major point in the legal tangle.