This Week's Sneak Peek

 Hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend. Here's the sneak peek at this week's cartoon.

Remember

Korean War Memorial, Washington D.C.

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.

Q Toon: The Ayes Had It

This past week, we were treated to the sausage-making spectacle that is the United States House of Representatives. Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) offered an amendment to a defense spending bill to require that defense contractors not discriminate against LGBT employees — writing into law an already existing executive order of the Obama administration.

In light of the healthy number of major corporations already having come out in defense of their LGBT employees (and prospective hires) after legislatures in Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and elsewhere pushed bills to legalize antigay discrimination, you would think the Maloney amendment would be a no-brainer. In fact, a majority in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives seemed to think so, too.

When time for the vote had run out, the Maloney amendment had the votes to pass. But then Republican leaders, horrified by the prospect that some antigay wedding cake baker somewhere might lose his defense contract, kept the vote open so that they could pressure enough Republican "aye" votes to switch to "nay" to defeat the amendment.

The identities of the seven vote-switchers were not publicly recorded on the House floor. The amendment failed 212-213. Democrats in the House were in an uproar, shouting "Shame, Shame, Shame," and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer protested because the presiding officer did not require that the members record the changes.
Later, Hoyer's press office tweeted the names of seven Republicans who he believes switched their votes.
They include California Reps. Darrell Issa, Jeff Denham, David Valadao, and Mimi Walters; Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, Iowa Rep. David Young and Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin.

Hoyer's beef is with a breach of the rules of the House:

Once the time period allotted to a vote has expired and the voting is closed, the results and individual positions cannot be changed. In the House, it’s customary for Representatives to file “Personal Explanations” explaining missed votes, or votes they entered incorrectly. These don’t permit lawmakers to actually change a vote or record one after the fact. They are statements of intent that lawmakers can point to and say, “Here’s how I would have voted.”

Members can change their vote before time expires by presenting a card to the tally clerk. That wasn't done in this case.

Republican House leadership has responded to Rep. Hoyer's complaints by promising to require that amendments be "pre-printed." The new rules give Ryan and pals time to pre-instruct their members how to vote.

This Week's Sneak Peek

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening all over this land.

But I'd take a good long nap through the middle of the day.

Set Your Clocks Back 100 Years

Welcome once again to Springback Saturday, with breaking news from a century ago. The Christian Science Monitor of May 23, 1916, takes front page note of a newfangled "scheme" just underway in Great Britain:

LONDON, England, Monday - Pleasantly named, the Summer Time Act was initiated yesterday morning, and though in the morning comparatively few reaped benefit, the evening showed the advantage of the scheme originated by Mr. Willett. The evening went on and on and at 10 o'clock, summer time, or at 9 o'clock old time, it was still light; some persons realized then the economy of the arrangement which shortens by an hour all over the country, in private houses, offices, factories, etc. the use of fuel and artificial light. Of yesterday's 23 hours in London, 13 were on record as bright sunshine.
The change of official clocks in many cases was made at the time prescribed by the act, 2 a.m. old time, yesterday morning.
Business firms in many instances stole the hour from the sun when closing Saturday for the week end and in Kingsway three clocks recorded three different times, one individual having done in May what he should do in September. Shortly before 2 a.m. the minute hands of Big Ben raced round 66 feet and the hour hand round five feet of clock surface in record time, little notice being taken of the feat, since Big Ben does not strike at present.
In government and other offices with night staffs the pace of the sun was quickened at the same time, while, generally speaking, clocks in railway stations and factories and elsewhere were changed between midnight and 2 a.m. old time. The general public put their watches on overnight, excepting those who forgot to do so.
Morning services were well attended, though a number of persons arrived as services were finishing.
Yesterday and today are beautiful summer days, and no better could have been selected to show the benefits of the Willett scheme and to prove the truth of the poet's maxim that the best of all ways to lengthen our days is to steal a few hours from the night. 

The Mr. Willett mentioned in the article was builder William Willett, who wasn't the first person to propose Daylight Saving Time, but advocated strenuously for it from 1905 until his death in 1915, upset at never having enough time in the evening to get in a complete round of golf. Parliament took up the idea in 1908, although it never got anywhere until World War I upped the ante by crimping the coal supply.

As this diagram from the May 28, 1916 Philadelphia Inquirer points out, the Axis Powers had already been employing Sommerzeit since the beginning of the month. Both sides of the Great War returned to "old time" on September 30, which was nice and considerate of everybody. It wouldn't have been sporting for one side to continue waking up an hour ahead of the other.

Since this blog is supposed to be about cartoons, here's John McCutcheon's cartoon about Daylight Saving Time for the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 1916:

Little could he know that 100 years later, we'd be rousing ourselves out of bed in the dark in March and November, burning up those savings on the gas and electric bill. 

McCutcheon's cartoon is arguing in favor of a newfangled idea, which generally isn't great fodder for an editorial cartoon. We're much better at poking fun or expressing outrage at things through reductio ad absurdum, taking ideas to their logical extreme. If we're in favor of an idea, we ridicule the alternative. Sticking with telling time the way we always had, however, hardly seems open to lampoon or exaggeration.

I did try hunting up a cartoon with a more skeptical view of Daylight Saving Time; but with the race for the Republican presidential nomination wrapping up, the Punitive Expedition in Mexico bogging down, and the ever-present issue of Preparedness dragging on, I guess most American cartoonists thought there were more pressing things to draw about that week.

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P.S.: You may have noticed the Monitor headline about "equal suffrage for Porto Rico." No, the House was not endorsing statehood for the American territorial possession, but that women there should have the same voting rights as Puerto Rican men.