Off and Running

I'm out of the office this weekend, but I couldn't leave you without catching you up on the news from August of 1924.

"A One-Sided Affair..." by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, July 28, 1924

Our Graphical History Tour will start off with this portent of the depression to come. The United States government policy of high tariffs on foreign goods, intended to protect domestic producers, would be answered in kind by its trading partners. 

But was that an issue in the 1924 presidential election? Not judging from the editorial cartoons below the 49th Parallel.

"The Democratic Machine Loses One of Its Vital Supports" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1924

John McCutcheon and the Chicago Tribune had no love for Robert LaFollette and his Progressive Party candidacy, but looked on with glee as the Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor endorsed LaFollette and his running mate, Democrat Burton Wheeler (how did McCutcheon miss the obvious pun?), over the Democratic Party ticket of John W. Davis and Charles Bryan.

The Democratic and Republican conventions had both rejected AFL-promoted planks calling for the prohibition of injunctions in labor disputes, the ratification of a constitutional amendment to ban child labor, expansion of workmen’s compensation laws, and recognition of the right of workers to bargain collectively through unions and representatives of their own choosing.

"The High Hats" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, August 5, 1924

The AFL’s executive board’s statement noted that its endorsement of the LaFollette-Wheeler ticket was because “throughout their whole political careers, [they had] stood steadfast in defense of the rights and interests of wage earners and farmers.” The statement cautioned, however that,  “cooperation hereby urged is not a pledge of identification with an independent party movement or a third party, nor can it be construed as support for such a party, group or movement except as such action accords with our nonpartisan political policy.”

Gompers's endorsement of LaFollette was less than enthusiastic: “It looks as if we are forced to turn to LaFollette. … There is no other way.”

"Say, Lissen Kiddo..." by Marvin P. “Hay” Bales in Labor Herald, Chicago, August, 1924

The Marxists over at the Trade Union Education League's Labor Herald monthly were not amused by the AFL's endorsement of the LaFollette campaign. (As we've covered before, the AFL expelled TUEL activists at successive conventions, so they couldn't have been surprised by it, either.)

I'm assuming that "Hay Bales" was this cartoonist's nom de plume. Does anyone know who he or she really was?

"To Robt. LaFollette from Sam Gompers" by Fred Ellis in Labor Herald, Chicago, September, 1924

There was one other not-so-Marxist option available to the AFL. The Farmer-Labor Party's ticket of miners union leader Duncan McDonald and grange activist William Bouck, however, gave up campaigning soon after their party's convention.

"By His Enemies Ye Shall Know Him" by Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. August 29, 1924

Talburt didn't include the Marxists of the Trade Union Educational League among LaFollette's enemies. It is interesting that he does include farmers (apparently not the discontented ones cited by John McCutcheon), as well as the more expected Big Biz, Private Monopoly, and Invisible Government. And of course, the Ku Klux Klan, but we'll get back to them presently.

Farmers were a vital component of the populist movement of the turn of the century, and the Progressive Party sprang from the same soil as the Non-Partisan League and Farmer-Labor Party of the 19-teens. Nationally, the coalition did not hold together well, and the Progressive Party of 1924 was more closely associated with certain labor unions, particularly the railway workers. A party plank proposing nationalization of the railroads should have appealed to farmers who were at the mercy of the railroad companies' prices for carrying their produce to market; but if you can believe Harold Talburt, who was clearly a fan of the Wisconsin senator, some farmers were content with that.

"Hard to Get Rid Of" by Chas Kuhn in Indianapolis News, August 29, 1924

If you expected labor to be in the Democrats' pocket, the association of the party's presidential nominee with Wall Street goes a long way to explain how labor's love was lost. The AFL had backed William McAdoo for the Democratic nomination, but Davis was a partner in the law firm that represented J.P. Morgan, a sworn enemy of the labor movement.

"The Persistent Talker" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, ca. August 13, 1924

I can make out "Klan Vote," "Soldier Vote," and "Patriot Vote" on the fish ignoring the Democratic donkey's bait in Carey Orr's cartoon. He faults John Davis's refuting the Ku Klux Klan and defending his running mate's opposition to military conscription.

"Nobody Wants His Friendship" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune, August 25, 1024

Sam Armstrong depicts LaFollette and Davis running away from a bewildered Klansman, and Republican vice presidential nominee Dawes readying to hurl a boulder from the back of a fleeing elephant. Unless that leg in the foreground belongs to the incumbent president of the United States, it's curious that Calvin Coolidge is absent.

"Scared Stiff" by Rollin Kirby, in New York World, ca. August 29, 1924

Democratic-leaning cartoonist Rollin Kirby drew the Republican Party haunted by Klan infiltration of the Grand Old Parties of Maine and Indiana.

We've discussed the Klan and Indiana Republicans before. In Maine, the Klan was active against the state's Catholic and Jewish minorities. The Republican candidate for Governor, Owen Brewster, had co-sponsored Klan-backed legislation seeking to outlaw state aid to parochial schools, and now tacitly welcomed Klan support against the anti-Klan Democratic candidate, William R. Pattangall.

By the way, I still have not seen any cartoons by Indianapolis News cartoonist Chas Kuhn about Klan influence in his state's Republican Party.

"Darn" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. September 1, 1924

But turning back to Rollin Kirby, he here ridicules Calvin Coolidge for having little to say about the Klan.  While Coolidge did speak out in defense of Catholics, Jews, Native Americans, and Blacks on various occasions, he believed the best way to deal with the Klan was to avoid giving it publicity. 

His running mate, Charles Dawes, condemned the Klan in a speech in Maine on August 23; according to the New York Times account, the audience was "unresponsive." Coolidge would explicitly criticize the Klan in a speech to the American Legion almost a year after the election.

Back to School, 1922 Style

I had intended to publish this Graphical History Tour last week, but then Mikhail Gorbachev up and died, so I had to post cartoons about him instead. So here, with apologies to the British royal family for not coming up with a collection of QEII toons, is my 1922 Back to School tribute.

"Freckles and His Friends" by Merrill Blosser for NEA, Sept. 5, 1922

Freckles must have been utterly oblivious to the passage of time that summer if he somehow was completely unaware of the start of the school year. I could see him forgetting about it if he were just entering kindergarten, but he's obviously a year or two into schoolboydom if he views going to school as "Just Like Going to Jail."

From the look of things, he's getting the school year off on the wrong foot. The school bell is ringing, and he's at least a quarter mile away. Pop's was not a generation whose cars lined up for blocks dropping off and picking up their younguns at school.

"Life's Little Tragedies" by Alfred "Zere" Ablitzer in New York Evening Post, Sept. 9, 1922

Yeah, kid, go ahead and blame it on the dog.

"'Cap' Stubs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, Sept. 5, 1922

Mutts have feelings, too, you know.

"Aw―Gee Whiz" by Gaar Williams in Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1922

With the end of summer, the rest of these schoolboys, unlike Freckles McGoosey, were well aware of their impending doom. The lad in Gaar Williams's cartoon may try to hide, but he won't be able to hold his breath underwater long enough to do much but make his own self late for the bell.

"The Hardest Part" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Association, ca. August 30, 1922

As you have probably noticed, these cartoons are all about boys. Girls went to school, too, but they apparently didn't grow up to draw cartoons about it. 

"'Cap' Stubs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, Aug. 28, 1922

Even in Edwina Dunn's strip, the girls are peripheral characters — like Violet and Patty, or Susie Derkins, or Katie Franklin. (As we discussed last March, Cap, too, would also be relegated to the margins as Tippie the Dog took over the strip.)

"Another Strike Possibility" by Terry Gilkison for Autocaster, ca. August 18, 1922

Reluctant schoolboys are already a cliché in 1922, so let's turn to a cartoon that made an extra effort to be timely. Terry Gilkison references here the months-long and contentious strikes by coal miners and railway workers in his back-to-school cartoon.

By the time my generation was matriculating, teacher strikes were no longer the stuff of a kid's fanciful imagination. For a while, teachers in my school district were going on strike just about every other year. A strike during my senior year lasted nearly two months; when it was over, the district had to add several Saturdays and the entire month of June to the school year in order to meet the state-mandated minimum number of school days. (We seniors got to graduate on schedule so that those of us going to college could meet their deadlines for sending in our graduation records. Everyone else had to go to school for three more weeks.)

"The Days of Real Sport" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, August 17, 1922

School has not been the only option for older kids, then or now, as illustrated by this Clare Briggs cartoon. For some people, an early entry into the workforce is the right answer. Ma and Pa do not believe that Malcolm here is one of those people, and are old enough to remember a time when many kids Malcolm's age had been in the workforce for years.

(Malcolm, for that matter, is old enough to remember those days, too; even if he didn't personally know anyone in that situation.)

"The Road to Success" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, September 12, 1922

John Knott's Mr. J.H. Wisdom would give Malcolm the same advice as his parents.

And not just to boys like Freckles, Cap, and Malcolm:

"School Authorities Report..." by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Sept. 25, 1922

Now, I'm putting together something for next Saturday already, so nobody important gets to die next week, okay?

Cartoons of the Week

For these Saturday posts, I usually try to tie things together with some unifying theme, but this week's is a pretty thin thread. Some time ago (long enough that I've forgotten how), I came into possession of three issues of The Outlook magazine from November and December, 1916. A regular feature was their two-page "Cartoons of the Week."

To be honest, the 1910's are not generally thought of as the heyday of editorial cartooning. Thomas Nast and Johannes Keppler were gone, and while there were such well-regarded cartoonists as John Darling, Rollin Kirby, John McCutcheon. Boardman Robinson, Art Young and Robert Minor coming into their own, most ink-slingers (and grease-slingers) traded in didactic, derivative fare: hapless Common Men, imperious European royalty, harridan suffragettes, and other images that had already become cliché. (And labels, labels everywhere!)

So how did magazine editors of the day decide what the best Cartoons of the Week were?

"The Man Who Is Out in the Wet" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, November, 1916

In the three issues that I have, all the American cartoonists drew for publications in New York, where The Outlook was also published. We can suspect that inclement weather on the way to work inspired at least two New York cartoonists and at least one sympathetic magazine editor.

"Poor Shelter" by Bell in New York Evening Post, November, 1916

The Outlook editors didn't seem to mind running redundant cartoons alongside each other, such as the two above. Last week, I included a cartoon by Nelson Harding of the Kaiser whipping a Belgian farmer to force him to labor for Germany, smoke rising from the farmer's home in the background. This cartoon ran alongside it.

"For His Own Good" by Robert Carter in New York Evening Sun, November, 1916

I don't believe the editors at The Outlook were trying to show up the cartoonists; the cartoons that used the same similes they would have used in a 500-word editorial are simply the ones that appealed to them. Given two cartoons of Kaiser Wilhelm whipping a Belgian, why not use both? Drives the point home, right?

Nor do I think that American editorial cartoons of the period are any worse than my own. I'll wrap this post up with a pretty decent holiday-themed cartoon that expressed a cartoonist's feelings on the topic of child labor laws — drawn, it should be noted, for a magazine. Not a newspaper.

"Gee, I Wish I Was a Kid Again" by Calvert H. Smith (?) in Harper's Magazine, December, 1916

I'm close, but not 100% sure that I'm correctly crediting Calvert H. Smith for this cartoon. Smith's reputation is for photorealism (see samples here and here, both signed "Calvert"), whereas this cartoon strikes me as more impressionistic. Wikimedia has a pen-and-ink cartoon from Life magazine with the same "Calvert" signature (here), but credits the cartoon only to "Calvert." The same signature appears in this cartoon, in a style closer to the one above, and credited by the blogger to Calvert H. Smith.

Labor Day, 1916

Strikeback Saturday makes up for last week's quickie glance at 1916 to celebrate Labor Day Weekend by taking a long, hard look at U.S. labor relations 100 years ago.

"Capital, Labor, and War Prosperity" by John McCutcheon for Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1916

The two issues in the doorway of this first Winsor McCay cartoon are the Workman's Compensation Act and the Keating Owen Child Labor Bill.

"Save the Children First, Senators!" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1916

Congress went on its vacation anyway, so both issues were still waiting for them when they got back.

"Training Our Next Generation!" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1916

The Child Labor Bill sponsored by Congressman Edward Keating (D-CO) and Senator Robert L. Owen (D-OK) sought to prohibit the sale in interstate commerce of goods produced by factories that employed children under 14, mines that employed children younger than 16, and any facility where children under 14 worked after 7:00 p.m., before 6:00 a.m., or more than eight hours per day. The bill had almost unanimous support from Republican senators, as well as the strong backing of the Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson.

"Getting Admission, but No Welcome" by John Knott in Dallas News, 1916

It faced strong opposition, however, from advocates of "states' rights," particularly southern senators. With slave labor a thing of the past and migrant labor a thing of the future (at least in the American Southeast), southern textile mills relied more heavily than other regions and industries on cheap, poorly educated child labor. Democrat Lee Slater Overman was Senator from North Carolina from 1903 to 1930, and literally made this argument in defense of child labor:

"See, It Keeps Them Out of Mischief" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, 1916

The only two Republican Senators opposing the bill were Boies Penrose and George T. Oliver, both of Pennsylvania, which may have endeared them to the coal mining interests, but earned them plenty of condemnation from home state newspapers. "Is it any wonder," editorialized the Philadelphia Public Ledger, "that hundreds and thousands of Pennsylvanians hang their heads in shame when Pennsylvania's representation in the Senate of the United States is brought to their attention?"

"Their Parting Shot" by Frederick T. Richards in Philadelphia North American, 1916

After an initial defeat prompted some changes to the bill, Congress, including 11 of the Southern Democratic Senators, passed the Keating Owen Child Labor Act on September 1, 1916 with a provision that it go into effect a year later. Siding with a North Carolina textile mill owner, however, the Supreme Court would rule it an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce in Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918.

Labor conditions for adults were at issue in 1916 as well. The Kern-McGillicuddy Federal Employees' Compensation Act mentioned in the first McCay cartoon above passed Congress on September 7, creating compensation for federal employees who lost income due to on-the-job injury.

"The Goat" by Clarence Batchelor in Topeka State Journal, August, 1916

New York street railway workers began an extended strike in August seeking the right to unionize and a five-cent increase in pay. Streetcar management refused to deal with the union, insisting that they would only deal with workers as individuals — certainly not with some "alien organization" with offices out of town. The dispute continued throughout August and September, with management trying to scuttle agreements hammered out through arbitration with Mayor J.P. Mitchel, and New York trade unions nearly instituting a general strike.

"If They All Strike It Will Be Like This," by Sidney J. Greene for New York Telegram, August 4, 1916

Meanwhile, a national railroad strike by the 360,000 engineers, brakemen, firemen, conductors and other workers on the nation's 225 railways threatened to grind America's economy to a standstill.

"The Big Fellow Pays the Freight" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Evening Dispatch, August, 1916

The central issue was the unions' demand for an eight-hour day, with overtime pay beyond that.

"The Millstone" by Alford in Baltimore Star, September, 1916

Wilson called unions and railroad management to a White House summit in August for two days of arbitration. Failing to bring the parties to an agreement, Wilson pressured the Congress to take up the "Adamson Bill," named for Congressman William C. Adamson (D-GA), promising a 16% pay raise for railroad workers and, on a trial basis, the 8-hour day.

"Making the Straw Fly" by Ole May in Cleveland Leader, August/September, 1916

Over Republican objections, including those voiced by presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes, the Adamson Bill was introduced and passed by the House on September 1, passed by the Senate on September 2, signed into law on September 3, and went into effect on September 5. If ever a bill was "railroaded" through Congress, this was it.

"Mediation" by T.E. Powers in Hearst Newspapers, September, 1916

At any rate, the strike was thus averted, leaving implementation of the details up to the rail barons. Federal regulation of private companies' working hours was unprecedented; but in this instance, the Supreme Court would uphold the Adamson Act (Wilson v. New,1917).