Edwina Dumm, Dog Lady

Comic Con has announced new inductees to the Will Eisner Hall of Fame this year, including Edwina Dumm (1893-1990), one of the earliest women in the field of American cartooning. The Graphical History Tour highlighted Dumm in our Women's History Month episode a few years ago; since she is about to be enshrined in a hall of fame, let's highlight her again.

Dumm started out drawing editorial cartoons (among other things), as reported in the May 7, 1921 edition of The Fourth Estate, a publishing industry journal: "Edwina started her career at the Columbus (Ohio) Monitor, a weekly at that time and later a daily, now defunct. At that time she drew political cartoons."

I have not been able to find any on-line archive of the Columbus Monitor, but I have found two of her editorial cartoons in Cartoons Magazine. She was the all-purpose cartoonist for the Monitor from its first edition in August, 1915, (her editorial cartoons went unsigned until that November).

This is from an article in Cartoons Magazine's January, 1916 edition introducing her to her colleagues.

"Adrift and Handicapped" by Edwina Dumm in Columbus Saturday Monitor, ca. Dec., 1915

"It is not often that the ladies make a success of political cartooning, but Miss Edwina Dunn [sic.] of the Columbus Saturday Monitor, refuses to be handicapped by precedent. No subject is too big for her to wrestle with, and she interprets world events in real masculine cartoons."

In a feature article one year later, Cartoons Magazine got her name right.

"Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now" by Edwina Dumm in Columbus Daily Monitor, ca. Dec., 1916

"She had always wanted to be a cartoonist, so she went to work to pay for an art education, thus showing a lot of spunk and independence. She is quite old, being in her early twenties, and is the daughter of a newspaper man."

According to her biography at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum, at the start of her cartooning at the Monitor, Dumm relied on her father — the paper's editor — for political information. After he suffered a stroke, she found inspiration from her friends, including some serving in the military. She later told an interviewer, "I thought you had to know a lot about the politics of the past... [but] all you had to know at that time — and possibly today — was what was going on that day and the policy of the paper."

The Monitor ceased publication in 1917, whereupon she moved to New York City and pitched a comic strip she had drawn for the Monitor to the George Matthew Adams Syndicate. "The Meanderings of Minnie" was about a tomboy and her dog; she and the editors agreed to change the girl to a boy, and "'Cap' Stubbs and Tippie" was born.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dunn for George Matthew Adams Service, March 4, 1918

ibid.

A Local Girl Makes Good article in Marion [OH] Daily Star on Feb. 20, 1918, states that "now she will have a daily comic strip in some of the leading newspapers of the country, including the Boston Globe and the Pittsburgh Post. ... It deals with kid life, humor, thrills, action and human nature." The earliest examples of the strip I can find were in neither of those two newspapers, but both published on March 4, 1918: the top one in Rock Island [IL] Argus, the lower one in Beaumont [TX] Journal. 

(This was not at all unusual for comic strips when the cartoonist didn't write a date in the cartoon. Editors received a bundle of cartoons at once, perhaps a week's worth, and printed them in whatever order they wanted.)

Advertisement in Morning Post, Camden NJ, March 8, 1926 (also in Camden Courier, March 6, 1926)

100 years ago this month, her comic strip, "'Cap' Stubbs and Tippie," was finding a new home in the Morning Post of Camden, New Jersey. In a note to Morning Post readers, Cap, the boy starring in the strip, explained, "You know, we useta live there at the Currier [sic.] about 4 (four) yrs. ago. Well, we come back today, but we ain't gonna live at the Currier, but at the Mornin' Post, which I hears is a New Brother to the Currier, or something."

Women cartoonists being very much a rarity in the 1920's, The copy headlined "Meet Edwina, Too" leaned into her gender as a selling feature:

"You can regard this as confidential or not, as you please. Edwina, who draws ‘Cap’ Stubbs, is a girl.

"The male members of the comic profession are falling over flat on their backs to see a MERE girl running off with the honor of what is undoubtedly the truest-to-life humorous strip depicting the every-minute experiences of a boy and his dog.

"When we reveal Edwina's identity to anybody who has studied her comic strip for several weeks, the usual comment is, 'Impossible! A girl couldn't draw such a good strip about boys and dogs!'

"All we can say is, 'Well, she does.'

"And how Edwina can draw dogs! Your ordinary newspaper cartoonist can only draw one side of a dog, and that's all. Most of them can draw a dog going South. But Edwina can draw the ANATOMY of a dog.

"And so there is real drawing in 'Cap' Stubbs, and in the other people in Edwina's pictures. None of the tricks and short cuts of conventional comic art are evident in her work."

I have no idea what ordinary newspapers cartoonist Ms. Dumm (a "MERE girl" of 32 years) or her publicist were dissing. 

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 1, 1926

Dumm's strip occasionally spread a story arc over several days, as in a series of strips in which Cap's mother and grandmother had been planning a tea party. In these cases, it did make a difference in what order they were printed.

"'Cap Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 2, 1926

Other times, the day's strip was a one-off. Either way, it's unlikely that the Cap Stubbs fans in Camden New Jersey needed much time catching up with the four years of Cap Stubbs strips that they had missed after the Courier had dropped the feature.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Svc., March 8, 1926

Cap was a sometimes ornery boy who got into minor trouble every so often, always with his dog by his side. A girl friend of his appeared in the strip from time to time, but Cap was a bit young to have a girlfriend. The women in his house figured more prominently than his father, mostly because they were around the house most of the time and Milt Stubbs had a job somewhere.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 18, 1926

You may have noticed that the credit line for Cap Stubbs was always "By Edwina." That was certainly intentional, and she kept it that way throughout her career. 

Dumm was not the only woman cartoonist in the 1920's, as remarkable as her accomplishment was. Fay King was perhaps the most famous in the day; Juanita Hamel and Nell Brinkley drew stylish panels for newspapers' "Women's Page"; Barbara Shermund achieved fame as the "flapper cartoonist" for several popular magazines; and Virginia Huget would be the artist behind the comic adaptation of  Anita Loos's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" debuting on June 7, 1926.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 31, 1926

Tippie didn't have much to do in these strips from 100 years ago. He didn't speak, you can't read his thoughts, and he didn't fantasize about flying a Sopwith Camel in World War I. He pretty much just followed Cap around on his adventures.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Service, March 29, 1926

Dumm's strip was a Monday-through-Saturday feature to begin with. Once a Sunday color comic was added in 1934, the additional newspaper real estate opened up more opportunities for Tippie to take center stage.

"Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Service, March 29, 1956

Eventually, Tippie got top billing in Edwina Dumm's strip. Even if the basic gags had similar premises.

"Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 31, 1956

Although apparently the dog wanted to go to Washington D.C. for some reason.

Meanwhile, in 1931, Dumm launched another canine-centric cartoon feature, "Alec the Great," a one-column-wide drawing of a little puppy (very similar to the later, shaggier Tippie) over quaint little couplets written by her brother Robert. The Miami Herald introduced it to readers in 1936: 

"Alec the Great is a puppy. A rollicking happy-go-lucky, awkward pup that steals his way into your heart, and makes you want to cuddle him or give him a piece of hamburger and a pat on the head. Alec is waiting to welcome you on the editorial page of the Herald. He's a regular there."

"Alec the Great" by Edwina & Robert Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 29, 1936

The Herald was one of several papers that used "Alec the Great" to break up the type on their otherwise gray editorial page; other papers relegated it to the classified ads for the same purpose.

"Alec the Great" by Edwina & Robert Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 30, 1936

As if Tippie and Alec the Great weren't enough, Dumm also contributed cartoons about a dog named Sinbad to Life magazine. If it's Sinbad in this 1929 cartoon, it was before a readers' contest gave him a name.

"Gee, I'm So Hungry, I Could Eat a Sandwich Man" by Edwina Dumm in Life, Jan. 18, 1929

Here's Sinbad, and I have to say he looks mighty familiar. So does Grandma.

"Sinbad/I'm Sorry" by Edwina Dumm in Life, Aug. 8, 1930

Edwina Dumm never married. When she first moved to New York, she roomed with and collaborated with singer-composer Helen Thomas, and you can a make of that (and "The Meanderings of Minnie") what you will. Living in New York has never been inexpensive. 

She retired from cartooning Tippie and Alec in 1966.

The last installment of "Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dunn for Washington Star Syndicate, Sept. 3, 1966

Inducted into the National Cartoonists Society in 1950, she received the Gold Key Award from the NCS Hall of Fame in 1987, the first of only two women to receive this honor. (The other was Bunny Hoest of "The Lockhorns," in 2013.)

Edwina Dumm died in New York on April 27, 1990, at age 96.

Lenin and Wilson

Graphical History Tour pauses this week to commemorate the passing 100 years ago of Vladimir Illyich Lenin and Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

"Lenin †" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Feb. 11, 1924

Vladimir Ilych Lenin (deadname Ulyanov) died on January 21, 1924, nine months after suffering a stroke — his third — that left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak.

"The Inexorable Law He Could Not Defy" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune, Jan. 24, 1924

Neither man's death came as a shock to the world. Lenin contemplated suicide even before his first stroke in May of 1922, and Wilson spent the last year of his administration as an invalid.

"The Headless Horseman" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Jan. 29, 1924

Yet neither man had adequately prepared his country for transition to a successor. Wilson (or at least Mrs. Wilson) entertained the notion that he could run for a third term as President of the United States despite being bedridden. For his part, Lenin didn't trust any of his fellow Bolsheviks enough to give any of them his blessing, and effectively undermined each of the more promising candidates.

"Jettisoned" by Albert T. Reid for Bell Syndicate, Jan. 30, 1924

He had felt strongly that Josef Stalin was ill-suited to leadership, but was apparently unaware of Stalin's moves behind the scenes to bolster his own position within the party. Leon Trotsky, whom Lenin regarded off and on as perhaps the best choice for Russia's future, was convalescing in the Caucasus and missed Lenin's funeral — later alleging that Stalin had sent him the wrong date.

"Changed in Name Only" by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 30, 1924

Other potential successors then are obscure trivia now. One of the politburo members who spoke at the funeral was Grigory Zinovieff (who looked nothing at all like Fred Morgan drew him), chairman of the Communist International. He and Lev Kamenev allied with Stalin against Trotsky, eventually to turn against Stalin two years later. Things did not turn out well for him in the end.

The empires of old had primogeniture; the representative democracies that grew out of the Enlightenment had popular elections. The world waited to see how the Soviet Republic would select the next Red Father.

"Zeremoniell bei den Neuen Kroningstagen in Moskau" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, February 24, 1924

Two weeks after Lenin shuffled off his mortal coil, Woodrow Wilson died at home in Washington, D.C., 100 years ago today.

"His Eternal Resting Place" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Feb. 4, 1924

Roy James gives us a rather tepid, neutral eulogy for the former president. Although he was not completely alone among editorial cartoonists, most expressed gratitude for a man who, while unable to "keep us out of war," led us successfully through that war once we were in it. And left the nation in a much better position than the countries who had been fighting it for years before our boys arrived Over There.

"Undying Fire" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 4, 1924

"Among Presidents Woodrow Wilson achieved one supreme distinction. If it cannot today be said of him, as Stanton said of the murdered Lincoln, 'Now he belongs to the ages,' it can be said that at the height of his power he dominated world affairs and world thought as no other president ever did in the history of the Republic. In its moral and physical aspects the crisis he faced was the gravest that civilization ever confronted, but he is dead before his work in meeting it can be fully measured." — Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 4, 1924

"His Work Shall Be Finished" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Feb. 6, 1924

Harding and Alley can be counted as generally sympathetic to the Democratic Party, and their cartoons convey admiration for Wilson's ideals, particularly his commitment to establishing an international forum to maintain global peace. 

"Woodrow Wilson" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Feb. 5, 1924

Despite clear evidence that his League of Nations was already proving incapable of that task, it was Wilson's intentions that mattered to Canadian cartoonist A.G. Racey. His Clio penned "He who activated by a noble purpose and a high resolve. He worked for peace."

"We Mourn a Truly Great Leader" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Feb. 4, 1924

Harold Wahl's memorial cartoon of Warren Harding had said that the late Republican had "the respect and love alike of enemies and friends." From the viewpoint of today, his eulogy cartoon for Wilson is equally overstated.

But death will do that. Just weeks before, Wahl had drawn a cartoon with a fairer estimation of Wilson's postwar legacy:

"As Simple as a Mother Good Rhyme" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan. 29, 1924

My point, however, is that whatever their political differences, until fairly recently, Americans generally set them aside when the Grim Reaper came calling. Here are a pair of cartoons by editorial cartoonists whose Republican Party bona fides were without question.

"The Chief Joins His Legions" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Feb. 4, 1924

I can think of quite a few of my colleagues who will have great difficulty coming up with anything nice to draw when Jimmy Carter or Joe Biden are called Up Yonder. I myself cannot imagine coming up with a respectful cartoon when Donald Trump goes the way of all flesh.

"That Peace Which in Life Was Denied Him" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Feb. 4, 1924

I will note here that despite his Republican inclinations, "Ding" Darling approved of Wilson's designs for a League of Nations for world peace. Thus it is Peace herself left to grieve his loss. Are Death, Wars, and Hatred retreating into the heavens, or are they left to roam free throughout the cosmos?

Wilson's reputation has sunk considerably in the past few years. It is true that he held racist attitudes and opposed women's suffrage until that position was no longer politically feasible. But you won't find 100-year-old cartoons criticizing him upon his death.

Unless you look into some of the satirical German magazines.

"Wilson vor seinem Richter" by Theodor Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, Feb. 18, 1924

For a cartoon critical of Wilson's legacy, we have to turn to Germany and this cartoon of Wilson arriving before the devil; a demon displays Wilson's Fourteen Points as the evidence against him. 

Coincidental with Wilson's death were leaks ahead of publication by the French government of a "yellow paper" which would claim that French President Georges Clemenceau, Britain's Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and Wilson secretly agreed that France should occupy the Ruhr. This allegation was denounced by Clemenceau and Lloyd George, both by this time out of office. Lloyd George said that he was not in Paris at the time of the supposed pact; Clemenceau stated flatly that no such pact existed.

"La recherche de la paternité est interdite" by Oskar Theuer in Ulk, Berlin, Feb. 29, 1924

Wilson appears in a draped portrait on Marianne's wall in Theuer's cartoon, above portraits of Clemenceau and former Italian Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, whose government had brought Italy into World War I against the Central Powers.

An aside here: I've translated "Sieges-Rausch," literally "rush of victory," rather loosely; yet I think I'm getting close to the gist of the cartoon, since rausch can indicate euphoria or intoxication. (For that matter, the French "interdite" can also mean "dumbfounded" rather than "forbidden"; but if you see that word on a sign, assume that it's ordering you not to do whatever the verb next to it means.)

"Monuments of History" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune,  Feb. 5, 1924

Orr didn't attribute his poem, which I haven't found on line. Either it was so popular at the time that citation was unnecessary, or he made it up himself. You can judge for yourself whether time has left Wilson's boulder larger or diminished it instead.

Unfortunately, I have no examples of editorial cartoons from the suffragette or Black American press to include today. Instead, I will close with this from an editorial assessment of Wilson's legacy from a Black American newspaper:

"If Woodrow Wilson had been free to live up to the spirit of the letter he wrote to Bishop Alexander Walters before his elevation to the presidency, he might truly have been known as the 'President of Humanity.' But his southern antecedents and connections were too binding. Unfortunately some of the evils that grew out of these connections were handed down as a legacy to the Republican administration, which still suffers them to exist." —The New York Age, February 16, 1924

Everything Old Is New Again

Italy appears poised to have fascists in their ruling coalition, almost exactly one century after the National Fascist Party came to power the first time.

"What's It All About in Italy" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Oct. 30, 1922

Mussolini's March on Rome came right at the end of October, 1922, when most U.S. editorial cartoonists were preoccupied with their local elections for Congress and/or governorships. Not John Knott, in spite of a senate race in Texas pitting a Ku Klux Klansman against a last-ditch candidate suing in court to get on the ballot.

Between a couple gaps in the on-line record of the Galveston Daily News in October and a few days when it doesn't appear to have run Knott's cartoons, I'll concede the possibility that Knott drew something about the candidates running for office in Texas. I just haven't found it.

"A Perfect Fit" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 4, 1922

I have come across a couple other early cartoons about the fascist victory in Italy, however. Dorman J. Smith was drawing for a national audience rather than a local one, so he wasn't as preoccupied as most cartoonists were with politics close to home. And unless I'm missing something here in an allusion that's older than Caligula, it seems to me that Smith actually approved of the fascists coming to power.

Conservatives today would never make such a mistake, would they? Would they?

"The Open Season for Politics" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1922

To be fair, Americans of the 1920's had no experience with fascism yet. As far as our cartoonists a century ago were concerned, this was just another change of government in a land far away. 

Nowadays, you'd think people would know better.

"The Big Four" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Oct. 20, 1922

If Italian fascists didn't yet catch the interest of editorial cartoonists in the U.S., more of them took note of the break-up of Great Britain's coalition behind Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Grover Page depicts Lloyd George joining the former leaders of the other Entente powers, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau in involuntary retirement.

"A Dangerous Bookworm" by Harry Murphy for Star Publications, ca. Oct. 3, 1922

Joining Italian fascists in the repetition of history, we have this cartoon decrying wokeness in our schools. The newspaper empire of Anglophobe William Randolph Hearst was worried that impressionable schoolboys were being terrorized by textbooks infested with "propaganda belittling American Revolution."

"Still Teaching Treason" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. Oct. 11, 1922

The textbooks weren't reminding them that many of our Founding Fathers were slave-owners, of course. Perhaps some textbook had the temerity to suggest that King George wasn't entirely wrong to expect the American colonists to help pay for the redcoats defending them from the French and Indians. 

Turn we now from America's leading Anglophobe to one of its leading Anglophiles.

"According to Ambassador Harvey" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Oct. 28, 1922

Faithful followers of these Saturday History Tours may remember John Cassel having caricatured U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, George Brinton McClellan Harvey with typographical symbols during a photoengravers' strike. Reported in the London Daily Telegraph, Ambassador Harvey gave an address to the Authors Club of London on the theme "Have Women Souls?"

At the start, Ambassador Harvey gave that "[O]ur preceptors in religion... would declare with concordant impatience, if pressed, that of course women have souls, and it is absurd, if not indeed positively sacrilegious, to suggest a doubt to the contrary."

Foolishly, he continued.

"And yet, they teach with like unanimity that woman is not the equal of man in the possession of inherent rights, but is and was designed by God to be his subordinate and subject."

Going on, Harvey observed that the Ten Commandments were written "exclusively for men": the fourth commandment lists who must not work in the home on the sabbath without mentioning wives; while the tenth forbids coveting one's neighbor's wife, but not one's neighbor's wife returning the coveting.

"Not a Woman Here" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, Oct. 26, 1922

"There is no recognition in the decalogue of the possession of souls or inherent rights by women. The fact of course is that women are not only not bound by but freed at last by inference of any obligation to observe the requirements of our fundamental religious law. ...

"[E]ither the commandments should be revised to meet the requirements of modern conditions, or a specific decalogue should be constructed exclusively for women." 

Harvey, it must be noted, was not being completely serious, and his audience received his talk in the light-hearted manner in which it was intended. Yet the ambassador had earned a reputation for shooting his mouth off, and his remarks rankled feminists and clergy on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Aren't They Going to Offer the Lady a Chair" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Oct. 18,1922

Senate-appointee Rebecca Felton (D-GA, pictured here by John Knott) had a few words to say when reporters showed her Ambassador Harvey's remarks. 

"Ambassador Harvey is at home in politics — and he seems to be at a banquet table — but he is all wrong and away out of his element in commenting on the Ten Commandments and their application to women. ... That's the most amusing thing I've seen today. Isn't it funny how so many men try to change things that have been in existence for thousands and thousands of years.

"I'm glad I saw that dispatch, though. It does one so much good to be amused when suffering from a bad cold. I feel a great deal better already."

"She May Come" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, Oct. 5, 1922

Rebecca Felton has the distinction of being the first woman to serve as United States Senator, although it was only for one day. Appointed by the governor in an effort to appeal to women voters (in a state that resisted women's suffrage) after the death of Sen. Thomas Watson, she was named with the understanding that she wouldn't stand in the way of the men running for the seat in November.

As these two cartoons suggest, there was the distinct possibility that the Senate would not be in session to seat the 87-year-old Felton at all. Senate leadership did, however, call the body into session on November 21 just so she could be sworn in and give a speech. 

In that speech, Felton, an advocate of both Prohibition and women's suffrage predicted, "When the women of the country come in and sit with you…you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness."

She might be a heroine to the feminist movement today if she weren't also an outspoken white supremacist and erstwhile slave owner.

You have to like Clifford Berryman's awkward attempt to address "Mrs. Senator Felton," though.

Good-bye—And Howdy!

"Good-Bye—and Howdy" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, ca. March 4, 1921

100 years ago this week, the second most corrupt presidential administration in U.S. history was sworn into office.

"Good Luck, Old Man" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, March 4, 1921

Of course, nobody could foresee the rot that would lead to the Teapot Dome Scandal (unlike Donald Trump's complete and utter lack of ethics and responsibility, which were well in evidence long before he rode down the escalator), so most editorial cartoonists welcomed the new administration into office. "Ding" Darling, while a loyal Republican, had drawn his disapproval of Warren Harding during the campaign; but there is no trace of that in his Inauguration Day cartoon.

"He Should Worry About Eviction" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Collier's, February 26, 1921 

Conversely, Ding had offered a less than dignified send-off in Collier's magazine for the departing President Woodrow Wilson.

"Good Luck and Best Wishes" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. March 4, 1921

So anyway, there were plenty of cartoons of Uncle Sam wishing the new president luck. I could re-post Clifford Berryman's sycophantic March 4 cartoon again today, but frankly, it wouldn't add much to the conversation.

"Exit the Donk" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1921

 For their part, partisan Republicans such as Carey Orr were especially gleeful.

"The Dawn of a New Day" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1921

To hear Republicans of the day, you would think that the Wilson administration had seen eight bleak years of depression and hopelessness during which Mr. Wilson spent the whole time in Europe ignoring the utter collapse of the republic at home. You can fault Wilson for cozying up to racist segregationists, ignoring suffragettes, and persecuting socialists, but I hardly think those were criticisms Mr. Orr gave one whit about.

"At Last, After Eight Years..." by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. March 3, 1921

No, for the most part, the change from Democratic government to Republican government was of interest solely to the committed partisans on either side. Hiram and Frank might have needled each other at the feed store, but well before March 4, neither one still had Cox, Harding, or Wilson For President flags still waving in front of their home.

"A New Brand" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. March 4, 1921

This must be a slightly less snotty way of saying "Put that in your pipe and smoke it." Do the kids still say that these days? As an aPOThecary reference, I suppose.

"The New Partner" by Wilson in Farmington (MO) Times, March 4, 1921

Miss Columbia appears positively underjoyed by her new dance partner in this cartoon by someone with the same name as the departing president. I know virtually nothing about Wilson the cartoonist, save that he appears to aimed his cartoons at a rural audience; they appeared on the front page of the weekly Farmington Times of St. Francois County, Missouri, until June, 1921 when he was replaced by someone named Parks. I did not find that any of his cartoons were about state or local issues, so this was likely a syndicated feature.

"Der Neue Mann im Weissen Haus" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, March 6, 1921

Across the pond, the German press, upset over the punitive postwar punishment insisted upon by France, and the Wilson administration's helplessness to do anything about it, hoped for a better deal from the New Man in the White House.

"De Verandering van Presidenten in Amerika" in De Amsterdammer, Amsterdam, March, 1921

But Harding had little interest in European affairs...

"His Legacy" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. March 5, 1921

... Elmer A. Bushnell's cartoon here notwithstanding. He left a lot of the foreign policy decision-making to his Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, who nevertheless could not convince him to let the U.S. join the League of Nations or the Permanent Court of International Justice.

The U.S. would, however, sign a separate peace with Germany in August.

"Inseparable" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, March 4, 1921

Lest I leave you with the impression that there was unanimous relief at the end of the Wilson era, here's the cartoon Democrat-leaning cartoonist John Cassel had published on Inauguration Day, lauding the retiring president for his efforts to bring peace to the universe.

"The Faces at the Window" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, March 7, 1921

All the same, Cassel's first Harding cartoon during the new administration lacked the animus Cassel had leveled at Harding during the election campaign.

"Being So Long Accustomed to the Hammer..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 4, 1921

Another Democrat-leaning cartoonist, this one sharing a name with the new Commander in Chief, leaves us with this trenchant observation that applies to just about any time the parties in and out of power trade places. 

 

I'm not familiar with the hammer and shovel maxim having been a well-known proverb in grandpa's day. Perhaps it was just Nelson Harding's way of saying those grapes were probably sour, anyway.