Fasten your seat belts: today's Graphical History Tour is going to lurch from one theme to another like a Prokofiev symphony.
 |
| "And If You Don't Like It You're a Red" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oklahoma City OK, March 14, 1923 |
This is a local-issue cartoon, but it will do nicely to kick off today's piece.
We last saw the work of this fellow Butler during Oklahoma's 1923 recall election that removed Governor Jack Walton from office — and I thought that perhaps Butler had laid down his pen after the recall was successful.
But here he is again, portraying a statehouse infested with, right-to-left, Cement Trust, Attorney General [George Short], Standard Oil, Reliance Shirt Factory, KKK, Bank Vampire, School Land Leech, Kept Press, Insurance Graft, School Book Trust, Bribery, [President of the State Board of Agriculture John] Whitehurst, Jack Walton, Corruption, and Loot.
The shirt factory had won a state penitentiary contract, slammed by the Leader as illegal. The Oklahoma House voted in February to impeach John Whitehurst, accusing him of corruption and neglect of duty, but fell short in a vote to impeach the State Attorney General. The Leader favored the Farmer-Labor Party, which was denounced by the state's mainstream media as "red."
✍
Since we're all hot and bothered about immigration today, here's where we were 100 years ago:
 |
| "Give Me More of Northern Europe" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Feb. 28, 1924 |
I regret that I wasn't able to put together a Graphical History Tour with a Black American History Month theme in February, even though half of last week's oeuvre was devoted to doings of the Ku Klux Klan.
There was an plenty of bigotry to spare in this country in 1924, as evidenced by this William Morris cartoon. Mr. Melting Pot supposedly can't digest Catholic Italians and swarthy Slavs, who were on the same side as the U.S. side during World War I; apparently Morris had gotten over any lingering distaste for Germans by this time.
I'm just surprised he didn't figure out how to add Jews to his personae non gratae.
✍
The Daily Cartoonist featured a post about turn-of-the-century editorial cartoonist Frederick Opper last week, so here's his take on the Teapot Dome Scandal:
 |
| "The Dough-heny Minstrels" by Frederick Opper for International Feature Service ca. March 7, 1924 |
Opper's modus operandi was to cram as many little ideas into a cartoon as he had room for, and to repeat them as necessary or convenient. For instance, the Island of Yap had absolutely nothing to do with the Teapot Dome scandal. The tiny Pacific island and telegraph communications hub had been a German territory claimed by Japan after World War I, a claim contested by the U.S. Opper devoted a long series of post-war cartoons to Island of Yap doggerel because he thought its name was funny.
The title of his "The Dough-heny Minstrels" series was a play on the name of oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company (today's Pemex). Doheny had secured a deal with then Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall (the goat atop the mountain in the cartoon) to lease the naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, and was a financial backer of Democratic contender William McAdoo (fishing in the boat). The other seated figure, Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, had won the Teapot Dome lease.
By this time, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby had resigned from President Coolidge's cabinet, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty would be out of office by the end of the month.
George Creel, depicted by Opper in a gratuitously racist caricature, was actually a white man, a journalist with Colliers who had been Woodrow Wilson's head of the wartime Committee on Public Information. I don't know what exactly made Creel relevant to Opper's Dough-heny Minstrel series, in which he appeared repeatedly. What I find is that Creel wrote in February in defense of selling arms to Mexican President Obregon, and the editorial board at Colliers regarded the Teapot Dome scandal as something not worth Congress's time or their own pages.
Perhaps Opper thought Creel’s name was funny.
✍
 |
| "Fertile Soil" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1924 |
Speaking of Teapot Dome, third-party interests saw in it an opportunity for the Progressive presidential candidacy of Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin. The Oklahoma Leader, for one, touted Fighting Bob on its front page. Col. McCormick's Chicago Tribune, with this front page cartoon, clearly felt differently.
LaFollette had been in charge of an early investigation into the scandal, his belief in Secretary Fall's innocence shaken after finding his Senate office ransacked. The investigation was turned over to Democrat Thomas Walsh of Montana, the Senate's most junior member, eventually turning up Doheny's $100,000 loan to Fall.
✍
Incidentally, someone commenting on D.D. Degg's post about Frederick Opper asked whether Opper had included Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt in any of his editorial cartoons during the 1920 election.
I have not come across any; by and large, veep candidates didn't attract much attention from editorial cartoonists that year. Indeed, Claude Bowman's several cartoons in 1900 that included Teddy Roosevelt and/or Adlai Stevenson Sr. stand out as the few examples I can think of when a cartoonist paid any attention to the running mates in that era.
Instead, I can offer this cartoon featuring FDR's future running mate, Texas Senator John Nance Garner.
 |
| "I Hope the President Isn't Playing Politics" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 13, 1924 |
Taxes, by the way, were due on March 15 in those days. Congress did not pass the tax cut bill in time.
Unless you've been living under a rock (or perhaps in a petri dish), you have heard by now that the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos have all the legal rights of living, breathing children. Fertility clinics in the state abruptly halted services to patients who have been using in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures in their desire to become parents.
Several of my colleagues, and multiple memesters, have flooded the internet with jokes about Alabamans no longer being able to distinguish breakfast eggs from chickens... which was worth a chuckle the first time I saw it, but glosses over the fact that your breakfast eggs are unfertilized. They do not contain any chickens, real or theoretical. I wager that most people upon finding cracking open an egg to find a half-formed chick inside would be a little grossed out. (Unless they live on a farm. Or actually ordered the balut.)
Meanwhile, it's just as illegal to poach (in either sense of the verb) a bald eagle egg as it is to shoot an adult bald eagle.
I don't think one can reasonably dispute that the prospective parents whose frozen embryonic cells were accidentally destroyed by some bozo who had no business messing with them in the first place suffered some degree of damage, although I couldn’t put a dollar figure on it. If one set of parents can no longer produce eggs or sperm together for whatever reason, perhaps the figure should be high. Where same-sex couples may be barred from adopting children, IVF could be a valuable option.
But if parents of a frozen embryo split up, would that make that embryo worthless — at least to one of them?
The Alabama Supremes have nevertheless opened up a Pandora's icebox of embryonic dilemmas. Clinics don't save one embryo per couple, so what of all those embryos who are destined never to gestate into what Genesis 2:7 considers a living baby?
By the way, one should be careful about using Genesis 2:7 as an argument here. The verse refers specifically to Adam — who is a unique case, since he never spent nine months in somebody's womb but was instead molded out of clay.
Which technically makes him not a human being, but a golem.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, all those surplus frozen embryos.
In Georgia, Missouri, and fourteen other states which have laws or pending legislation granting full legal personhood to single-cell protohumans, those zygotes are destined to live forever.
In eighteen years, they'll even be eligible to vote.
Although in most of those states, officials will want to see proof of gender. Registering as something other than their future birth gender, an embryo could end up tried as an adult and sentenced to prison.
Ask a clutch of cartoonists what they have the most difficulty drawing, and a solid majority of them will probably tell you...
... hands.
Especially performing some function that you won't find in Bridgeman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life.
That's when it's helpful to live in the same house with someone willing to be a hand model.
Or to have a book with over a thousand illustrations of hands in all sorts of activities.
Or you can just resort to trial and error.
 |
| The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok, Warner Books |
This week's Graphical History Tour circles back to February, 1924 to catch up on the big news stories of the day:
 |
| "Another Victory for the Miners" by Fred Ellis in Daily Worker, Chicago, Illinois, Feb. 15, 1924 |
First, let's check back in at the violence-prone mining town of Herrin, Illinois, where one Glenn Young and A.J. Armitage had led a series of raids against businesses and private homes where booze was served in violation of the Volstead Act. Young and Armitage were backed by a mob, many of whom admitted membership in the Ku Klux Klan. An anti-Klan group calling itself the Knights of the Flaming Circle rose up to battle Young and his Klan Kohorts; others fighting the Klan were the "Shelton gang" of bootlegging outlaws.
When we last left Herrin in Williamson County, Sheriff George Galligan had called in the National Guard in an attempt to restore order. He sent them home when he thought tempers had cooled, but tempers flared back up immediately. On February 8, pro-klan police officers burst into an anti-klan meeting, and in the violence that ensued, one klansman was killed and another injured.
 |
| "The Unanswered Challenge" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Feb. 11, 1924 |
Sheriff Galligan took two police officers into protective custody in another county and called for the National Guard to return.
After a police constable named Caesar Cagle was shot on a Herrin street and died at a hospital where a wounded anti-klan member was also being treated, klansmen from miles around converged on Herrin, laying siege to the hospital. Firing shots into the hospital, they set up roadblocks around the town, took over City Hall.
Young declared himself Chief of Police and had Herrin Mayor C.A. "Mage" Anderson, Sheriff Galligan, and 38 others arrested for
complicity in Cagle's murder. The town
council named Carl Nall to replace Anderson at request of the military. A coroner's jury the next day found that Cagle had been killed by members of the Shelton gang.
Young would be charged with "injury to property" and forced to quit his usurped office and leave town. Charges were also brought against klansmen, including some prominent Herrin and Marion businessmen, for firing upon the hospital.
Cartoonist Ellis's declaration of victory would not stand for long. Klan candidates would sweep Williamson County elections in April.
 |
| "The Newest State Capitol Decoration" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Feb. 15, 1924 |
Meanwhile, in Missouri, the Klan held a rally inside the state capitol. The official who granted the permit for use of the capitol building claimed that he had no idea that the persons who made the request, an engineer with the State Highway Commission and a labor commissioner, were acting on behalf of the Klan. "However," Commissioner of the Permanent Seat of Government Harry Woodruff told the press, "it would have made no difference if I had known the meeting was a gathering of the Klan, for I would not have denied them use of the hall."
Woodruff's protestations of innocence were disputed by Heber Nations, the labor commissioner. According to Heber, Rev. Z.A. Harris, a national representative of the Klan, had heard that "a lecturer for a secret religious organization, speaking in the House chamber two weeks before, had made slurring remarks about the Klan and its principles. I mentioned the request to Mr. Woodruff, who wanted the hall and what for, and he gladly granted it."
According to press reports, a crowd estimated in the hundreds listened to Harris preach on "Americanism and the Ku Klux Klan," calling for limiting immigration "in order to prevent an influx of ideas of the ideas of internationalism."
 |
| "Knights of the Double-Crossed" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Feb. 28, 1924 |
If you've been following these Graphical History Tours, you may recall that the Klan was split between factions led by self-styled "Colonel" William J. Simmons, founder of its 1920 iteration, and the more radical Hirman Wesley Evans, whose supporters dumped Simmons from their leadership. Simmons then founded a rival group, the Knights of Kamelia.
The latest offshoot was the Knights of the Mystic Clan, launched in Atlanta but establishing its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. The KMC forswore masks and secrecy, and declared that it "the order is not connected in any manner with the Ku Klux Klan, Hiram Wesley Evans, or William Joseph Simmons."
Like that of the Klan, KMC membership was limited to qualified men who are "white and of the Protestant Christian faith." John R. Jones of Kansas City was elected temporary chair of the splinter group, and chapters were set up in Atlanta; Kansas City; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Tulsa, Oklahoma; El Dorado, Kansas; Durham, North Carolina; and Russell, Kentucky.
I'm finding that by April, KMC headquarters had moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma under the leadership of one H. Tom Kight. In February, 1925, someone claiming to represent the KMC left a letter on the doorstep of the Tallequa, Oklahoma Arrow Democrat — anonymously. "To protect our order and to make our enterprise possible, we maintain the utmost secrecy in our operations."
Their secrecy was pretty darned utmost; I have yet to find any mention of the Knights of the Mystic Clan after that.
Turning now to other major news:
 |
| "Every Day Is Washday for Some" by Dorman Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Feb. 29, 1924 |
Teapot Dome was not the only scandal coming out of Washington in February, 1924, but it was by far the most prominent. Every day seemed to bring new revelations, including against at least one of the senators making hay of the scandals. Interior Secretary Albert Fall at the center of the Teapot Dome scandal was already out of office; the scandal also ensnared Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby and Attorney General Harry Daugherty.
 |
| "His Nice New Cowboy Hat" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News ca. Feb. 14, 1924 |
Republican-leaning cartoonists played up the involvement of Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company founder Edward Doheny in a separate oil leasing deal with Interior Secretary Fall at Elk Hills, California. Doheny was a benefactor of Democratic presidential candidate James McAdoo (McAdieu in Thomas's cartoon), which was enough to fuel a lot of Whataboutism.
 |
| "Can't Stem the Flood" by Orville P. Williams in New York Evening Graphic, ca. Feb. 27, 1924 |
Roosevelt in this cartoon is not FDR, but Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the son of the late president, obviously). Smoot would have to be Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Reed Smoot (R-UT), better known for the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of 1930 that worsened the Great Depression.
 |
| "Thank Goodness, They're Not All Like That" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Tribune, Feb. 23, 1924 |
Finally, amid a flurry of cartoons on the theme of They’re All Crooked (They’re Politicians, Aren’t They?), “Ding” Darling’s stands alone for offering readers a list of government officials he thought they could still look up to.
Darling was an admirer of Herbert Hoover and Agriculture Secretary Henry C. Wallace; he approved of the statecraft of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who did not share the isolationism of many other Republicans. President Coolidge allowed the investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal to proceed without interference, effectively inoculating himself from any taint of corruption.
Useful idiot Tucker Carlson went to Russia to fawn over the clean subway and the Aldi-style shopping carts, and to interview President for Life Vladimir Putin last week.
In the days after the interview was posted on X, an Egyptian journalist asked Carlson why he hadn't asked Putin about the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, unjustly imprisoned in a Siberian concentration camp, or about the murder of dissident journalists, politicians, business leaders, and Putin's own military generals. Tucker whinged, “Every leader kills people, some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people, sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”
Then Navalny turned up dead at the age of 47, three years into his 19-year prison sentence.
Even the National Review and Wall Street Journal were embarrassed for Tucker Carlson.
By the way, I added the name of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to this cartoon at the last minute while inking it, and I should have fact-checked first. I have since learned that toward the end of the interview, Carlson did in fact ask Putin to release Gershkovich "as a sign of your decency." Putin, after complaining of a lack of "decency" from the West, suggested the possibility of trading Gershkovitz for some unspecified "reciprocal steps."
My bad. I won't argue if editors choose to omit Gershkovich from the cartoon (or to replace him with ballerina Ksenia Karelina, arrested for treason after Tucker left Russia).
On the other hand, I think it's important to keep all these names in the public mind. Editors who leave mention of Gershkovich in the cartoon can just pretend that later, Tucker noticed that he had a couple minutes left for his interview and decided to risk bringing the Gershkovich case up as long as his getaway car was warming up outside anyway.
Getting back to the part that makes this cartoon relevant to the worldwide LGBTQ+ community, Russian courts have begun convicting citizens arrested under new laws criminalizing so-called "extremist" LGBTQ activity.
Russian courts have issued the first known extremism convictions arising from the 2023 Supreme Court ruling designating the “international LGBT movement” as extremist, Human Rights Watch said today. The Supreme Court ruling, which was handed down on November 30 but became public only in mid-January 2024, indicates that many more convictions may follow.
The Supreme Court ruling also declared the rainbow flag a forbidden symbol of the “LGBT movement.” Displaying the flag is the basis for administrative penalties in at least three cases that courts have tried in recent weeks. In late January, a court in Nizhny Novgorod sentenced a woman to five days detention for wearing rainbow-colored earrings after an individual accosted her and her friend in a cafe. Also in late January, a judge in Volgograd region handed down a fine over a rainbow flag published on a social media page. In early February, a court in Saratov fined a woman for posting a rainbow flag on social media.
A police investigation of supposedly extremist LGBTQ propaganda at a "My Little Pony" fan convention in Moscow forced organizers to shut down their event this week. Police apparently were unable to find any My Little Ponies with rainbow manes, or whatever was allegedly perverting the morals of impressionable little Russians.
Russia's LGBTQ+ community is, of course, not the only target of the Putin regime's eradication campaign against whomever it slaps an "extremist" label on.
Since a court banned three organizations affiliated with political opposition leader Aleksey Navalny as “extremist” in 2021, Navalny and five of his supporters have been sentenced to prison on a range of extremism charges for legitimate activism, while dozens more have received fines and short-term jail sentences. Six members of Vesna, a democratic youth movement, have been in pretrial custody since June 2023 on various spurious charges, including extremism. Hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been jailed since the organization was banned as “extremist” in 2017.
And now, of course, the ballerina who raised funds for a charity aiding bombed-out citizens of Ukraine.
But at least Putin makes the trains run on time. And so clean besides!
At the end of my Valentines Day post a couple Saturdays ago, I included the February 14, 1924 installment of Frank King's "Gasoline Alley." I'm not aware of any newspapers, including its parent paper, the Chicago Tribune, that run "Gasoline Alley" in print, but I remarked that it's still available on line at GoComics.com.
In the weeks since then, its current cartoonist, Jim Scancarelli, has been teasing some Big News in the strip. The characters have been excitedly asking each other whether they have heard the news, and every one of them seems fairly upset about it. The dramatic tone led many readers in the comments section to wonder if Scancarelli were planning to bring the 106-year-old cartoon — described by Pierre Couperie and Maurice Horn as "the first Bildungsroman in pictures" — to an end.
Today's installment reveals that the Alley's fate is probably not quite as dire as that:
"The Rectangle"?
"Das Bildungsroman in Pictures"?
"Electric Plug-in Court"?
