One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This week's episode of Sneezeback Saturday catches (up on) the Spanish Influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918, which was at its worst in October.

"La Nouvelle Indisposition" by TEL in L'Homme Libre, Paris, August 24, 1918

But first, let's reach back to August, when the French cartoonist penning under the nom de plume "TEL" referenced the Spanish Flu in a cartoon about Spain's official letters of protest to Germany over the sinking of Spanish ships. Neutral in the war, Spain nevertheless lost a fifth of its merchant marine and at least 100 Spanish sailors to German torpedoes. In retaliation, the Spanish government threatened to confiscate an equal number of German ships if Germany did not guarantee safe passage for continued Spanish shipping.

"Speaking of Epidemics" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1918

There is a theory that Germany's defeat in the war was due in part to the Central Powers' armies being ravaged by the Spanish flu pandemic. That, and propaganda that the disease originated in Austria may or may not have helped inspire John McCutcheon's cartoon above. The Spanish flu was spreading through the Entente lines as well, however.

"Open a Window..." by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, Sept./Oct. 1918

As noted here before, the Spanish flu had nothing to do with Spain. The first documented case of the disease befell Private Albert Gitchell at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas in March of 1918; within a week, 100 more soldiers at Fort Riley had the disease, and it was spreading as the soldiers shipped out through New York to Europe.

"How to Get a Seat" by Maurice Ketten in New York World, October, 1918

Somehow, the contagion got the name Spanish flu even though there were no cases of the disease in Spain until November. In other European countries, wartime censorship kept the press from reporting the extent of the pandemic; the association of the disease with Spain may have had something to do with the lack of such wartime censorship there.

Detail from "The Rectangle" by Frank O. King in Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1918

We weren't about to let it be called "Kansan flu," you know.

"LaBarouche Toreador..." by J. McIsaac in Le Charivari, Montreal, Canada, October 19, 1918

Not that we actually fooled the rest of the world, or at least our neighbors to the north.

"Grand-dad Inadvertently Sneezed..." by William Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, October, 1918

In spite of the tens of thousands of their fellow citizens stricken with the deadly flu, American cartoonists seem to have had a flippant attitude toward the disease. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that there was a deliberate campaign to downplay public fears.

"That Guiltiest Feeling" by Clare Briggs in Chicago Tribune, October, 1918

Well, I don't know any better, so I'm going right ahead with my plans to suspect a conspiracy borne of wartime censorship.

"It Happens in the Best of Families!" by Sid Chapin in St. Louis Republic, October, 1918

P.S.: Have you gotten your flu shot yet?

Riffing on World Affairs

Today's Graphical History Tour takes a quick check-up on the colonial world:

"Getting Down to Cases" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington [DC] Post, August 1, 1925

When last we checked on international affairs, France had sent its military to help Spain quell a revolt in Morocco. Abd El Krim's Moroccan guerillas had stymied the Spanish army since 1921 in the mountains of Rif, effectively establishing the independent state of Rif and confining the Spanish to scattered fortified positions along the coast.

"And Still He Gets Away" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3, 1925

With the entry of France into the Rif War, the European nations launched all-out war to extinguish the independent Berber nation. 

"Up Against It" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 22, 1925

Aside from being satisfied to stay removed from the conflict, U.S. cartoonists were divided in their sympathies. The U.S. had allied with France in the Great War, but France's punitive demands against Germany were widely seen as an impediment to a lasting peace; American impatience for France to repay wartime loans from the U.S. was mounting.

"The Iron Dove of Peace" by Douglas Rodger in San Francisco Bulletin, August 10, 1925

As for American attitudes toward Spain, memories of the Spanish-American War were fading — and the U.S. had emerged victorious anyway, so why hold a grudge? Still, it might be telling that, with no justification whatsoever, we blamed the country for the so-called Spanish flu.

"Take Care" by Winsor McCay, ca. August 28, 1925

On the other hand, Americans viewed Europe as a seat of civilization and Africa as part of a backward, benighted world requiring guidance and oversight by White People.

"One of Those English Jokes" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, August 5, 1925

Meanwhile, did we mention war debts?

"Going Up" by Orville Williams for Star Company, ca. Aug. 6, 1925

In part due to protectionist tariffs and trade barriers in vogue between the World Wars, the U.S. demand for rubber to keep everybody's cars on the road had run up against the British Empire trade policy.

"Rubber-r-r" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. August 17, 1925

As long as we have the Philippines essentially as a U.S. colony, some Americans argued, why not promote rubber production there?

It has been a while since we have visited the archipelago taken by the U.S. along with Cuba and Puerto Rico as spoils of the Spanish-American War over a quarter century earlier. The U.S. occupation quashed initial independence movements, promising Filipino self-determination someday. Someday just got pushed a little further down the road.

In spite of a tide of isolationism, the U.S. had come to appreciate close ties with its colonial territories.

"Let's Do It Thoroughly" by Orville P. Williams for Star Company, ca. July 1, 1925

Just not too close.

Life During Wartime

After two Saturdays in a row rummaging through my own cartoons, it must be time to turn the clock back a full century and see what the Committee on Public Information's Office of Cartoons was suggesting to American editorial cartoonists in the summer of 1918. Let's see which issues that would survive World War I were showing up in these wartime cartoons.

"An Efficiency Expert at Work" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1918

McCutcheon's printing is tiny no matter how much you embiggen these cartoons, so here's a summary. Mr. Efficiency Expert recommends putting convicts to work making equipment for bridges, insane asylum patients to work in the ship camouflage department, and schools vacated during the summer to use teaching English "to every citizen who can't speak it." Lastly, for "the distillers and brewers likely to be closed next Jan.," he suggests putting them to work making liquid flame for the Kaiser.

"All Highest Has the Influenza" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1918

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed anywhere from 50- to 100-million people worldwide between January 1918 and December 1920. Kaiser Wilhelm was not one of them, but I wanted to include these cartoons just to be able to mention what remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history.

"Germany Suffers from the Grip" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, July 11, 1918

We don't know for sure where the pandemic started; various theories have pointed to Austria, northern China, and Haskell County, Kansas — but probably not Spain. (In Spain, the disease was nicknamed "el soldado de Nápoles.")  What is certain is that the wartime confluence and dispersal of soldiers and sailors is responsible for spreading the contagion to every continent and some of the remotest locations on Earth.

"Not Fatal" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 12, 1918

In a typical epidemic, the sickest patients stay home and don't spread the disease much farther than their own family; but in this instance, soldiers with the worst cases of the flu would be sent from the front in crowded trains to equally crowded field hospitals, facilitating widespread dispersal of the most virulent strains.

Moving on to lighter subjects:

"Snapshots" by Maurice Ketten (né Prosper Fiorini), in New York Evening World, ca. July 15, 1918

The characters in Ketten's slice of life cartoon regularly confronted the shortages and cultural changes brought about by the war. In this July cartoon, he poked fun at the price of shoe leather, women taking over jobs traditionally performed by men, and the peculiar if short-lived attempt to popularize what were called "cloth-saving suits" for men. This last measure was necessitated by shortages of wool; Germany dealt with the problem with the invention of paper-based fabrics. After the war, American and Britain would (pardon the expression) follow suit.

"Fall Styles, 1918" by Harry J. Tuthill in St. Louis Star, ca. June, 1918

Sending so many young men (and not-so-young men; the draft now included men in their 40's) off to the trenches, ships and airfields abroad meant that women were needed to take their place in the labor market. Harry Tuthill didn't foresee Rosie the Riveter just yet, but turning urban housewives into household breadwinners completely undercut one of the last remaining arguments against extending women the vote.

"The False Patriot" by ? (Al Zere? Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman?), ca. July 8, 1918

I recently heard an interview with the author of a new book about Herbert Hoover; the author believes that Hoover got a raw deal from other historians because he is judged solely for his response to the Great Depression. Hoover isn't mentioned in these particular July cartoons, but his name was intimately associated with wartime rationing and belt tightening measures. In a way, this must have set him up for the popular resentment when that austerity returned under Hoover eleven years later in peace time.

"Fight Behind the Lines" by John Cassel in New York World, June 24, 1918

Meanwhile, back in 1918, the Office of Cartoons surely recommended combating any discontent such as illustrated in "The False Patriot" (if I find the name of that cartoonist, I'll correct it here) with cartoons illustrating the reported bread shortages among the Central Powers. The Entente press played up accounts of demonstrations protesting food shortages, especially in Austria.

"Felix Fake May Be an Edison Yet" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, June 12, 1918

Americans aren't much for hardship, but we'll put up with a lot as long as some enemy has it worse.

Front page notice in Duluth Evening Herald, July 13, 1918

But, oh, no! Not the free promotional copy of my newspaper!

The Ladies Who Sketch

In celebration of Women's History Month, howzabout we check out some examples of women cartoonists of the 1920's?

from Cartoons Magazine, August, 1921

Cartooning has long had a reputation for being a male-dominated business, probably because of all those men hunched over drawing boards, but there have always been women among the ink-stained wretches. And not just to clean up after them.

Fay King was one of the most prominent of the bunch. She launched her career at the Denver Post at the age of 23 in 1912, drawing a regular cartoon panel and interviewing celebrities. A celebrity in her own right, her 1916 divorce from boxer and small-town mayor Oscar "Battling" Nelson was in all the papers.

"Flu Stories" by Fay King in San Francisco Call, 1918

King wasn't shy about appearing in her own cartoons; that's her caricature of herself peeking in from the side of the frame in this cartoon during the "Spanish flu" epidemic of 1918-19.

"Women Now read Newspapers" by Fay King, May 1, 1928

Nor was she shy about self-promotion; her name appeared prominently in the headline over her cartoons. (And there she is again at the newspaper stand.) She wrote articles to accompany her cartoons – or maybe it was the other way around — letting everyone know what Fay King observed, advised, remarked or said.

"Women Made Valentino Noted" by Fay King, 1926

Think she forgot to include herself in this cartoon? Nope. There she is, right next to her signature. 

Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that there was a select society of other women who, like King, found in cartooning a "promising and lasting success for women." I'm sure King was not being desperate for company when she explained in the above advertisement for Federal School of Illustrating and Cartooning: 

"It does not matter if she gets to weigh 200 pounds, has three chins and fat ankles. While her work meets with popular demand, she can continue as long as her ability and ideas hold out."

"Cap Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, March 11, 1922

Edwina Dumm started her daily comic strip, "Cap Stubbs" in 1918 after a few short-lived cartoon projects. This cartoon, however, lasted until 1966. Along the way, Tippie the dog was added to the strip's name, then got top billing, and eventually Cap's name was dropped from the strip title. 

"Cap Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm, March 16, 1922

Trade publication The Fourth Estate paid Dumm, who signed her strip with her first name, this clumsy compliment in their May 7, 1921 issue:

When “Edwina’s” identity is revealed to anybody who has studied her comic strip, the usual comment is: “Impossible! A girl couldn’t draw such a good strip about boys and dogs!” “Edwina” has been drawing ever since she was a child. Although she has just passed her twenty-second birthday, she has had a great deal of newspaper experience, as her comic strip “Cap” Stubbs, featuring the funny dog “Tippie,” has been syndicated for several years by the George Matthew Adams Service and has appeared in newspapers all over the country. 

"Cinderella's Dream" by Juanita Hamel for Newspapers Features Service Inc., March 18, 1922

A female cartoonist drawing about a little boy and his dog may indeed have raised eyebrows a century ago. What those eyebrows had been expecting were cartoons like the ones Juanita Hamel drew for the "Women's Features Page" of major newspapers: romantic fantasies and other heart-tugging fare told here in a single panel above a very short story.

"Mother's Memory Babies" by Juanita Hamel, Dec. 14, 1921

Hamel started her career at the St. Louis Times and Chicago Herald before getting syndicated by Newspapers Features Service out of New York. "Frequently I have been asked how I happened to take up art," she told an interviewer in 1923. "As a matter of fact, art took me up. I was raised in an atmosphere of art. I remember the work done by my grandmother — paintings of the Civil War time, with the atmosphere of real romance, and this with the stories of adventure and hardships endured by the pioneers of the middle west imbued me with the desire to paint."

"The Triumph of the Green-Eyed Monster" by Nell Brinkley for International Features Service Inc., Jan. 1, 1921

If romanticism isn't your thing, Nell Brinkley here gives us an example of another topic open to the fairer sex: Sunday School morality tales. "Poor little Dan" in this story, pays the price for entrusting his safety to two adults and their pet dragon, Jealousy. 

Brinkley drew romantic vignettes, too, of course. But perhaps she was in a particularly foul mood that day.

This second cartoon topped a full-page story by Brinkley.

"Four Things Too Wonderful" by Nell Brinkley in New York American, Aug. 29, 1926

In addition to the ladies shown above, notable women cartoonists of the early decades of the 20th Century included Emma Gordon, Ethel Hays, Virginia Huget, Alice McKee, Lou Rogers, Eleanor Schorer, Edith Stevens, and Dorothy Urfer. Trina Robbins, author of The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age, observes: 

“There’s this myth that women didn’t draw comics or that they had to change their names; this is untrue. If you were good, they published you. Women were drawing comics and people loved them. Just as many women read newspapers as men, and the editors were smart enough to carry the strips the women liked.”

✍

P.S.: The New York Times yesterday printed a very belated obituary for "flapper cartoonist" Barbara Shermund (1899-1978), whose cartoons appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, the original Life, Colliers, and Pictorial Review. Definitely worth a look-see.

Was There a Ford in Their Future?

In today's thrilling episode of our Graphical History Tour, we catch up on jockeying in the 1924 presidential race:

"His Hat Is All Over the Ring" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 10, 1923

As far as the pundits were concerned, President Warren Harding was a shoo-in for the Republican Party's nomination for a second term. The economy was doing well (at least for Wall Street), the nation was at peace (even if other parts of the world weren't), and that Spanish flu epidemic was a distant memory. Heck, even Pancho Villa turned up dead (for reals this time).

"Hunting the Wild Redbird" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 18, 1923

Senator Robert LaFollette (R-WI) was actively considering a challenge to Harding, but on the Progressive Party ticket. "Ding" Darling had been skeptical of Harding's candidacy in 1920, but he was even less favorable to LaFollette, who was campaigning against the Republican Party candidate for Minnesota's open senate seat in favor of the Farmer-Labor candidate there.

"Oh Bill look Were I Got to in One" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, ca. July 13, 1923

Outcome of the Democratic race at this point was anybody's guess. Dealt a resounding defeat in the 1920 presidential race, and being in the minority in Congress since the 1918 elections, the party was without a natural leader to succeed Woodrow Wilson, sidelined by the strokes he suffered in the last years of his presidency.

"1924 Model" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 13, 1923

One possibility getting a lot of attention in the summer of 1923 was whether Henry Ford would run for president — and if so, for which party's nomination.

"Knitting Is Fine for the Nerves" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 10, 1923

Although there was talk of Ford mounting a third-party bid, the Democratic Party would have seemed to be Ford's more logical choice. Three-time loser William Jennings Bryan, in the foreground of Berryman's cartoon, was an unlikely candidate but still wielded considerable influence within the party over a quarter century after his first run.

The other knitters in Berryman's cartoon are the Democrats' 1920 standard-bearer, James Cox; Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law William MacAdoo; Alabama Senator Oscar Underwood; and Indiana Senator Samuel Ralston. Curiously absent is New York Governor Al Smith; but none of these gentlemen would end up as the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1924 anyway.

""My Isn't the Scenery Simply Wonderful This Year" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, July 7, 1923

"Ding" Darling here depicts neither major political party as being particularly interested in having Henry Ford as its standard bearer. The Ford for President "boom," as such movements were called, was primarily a creation of the Hearst newspaper chain.

"A Mixed Load" by Roy H. James in St. Louis Star, July 16, 1923

James illustrates the primary drawbacks of a Ford candidacy. His anti-Jewish attitude was offensive to some Americans; others may have found it embarrassing that he was saying the quiet part out loud. 

Ford published frequent antisemitic editorials in the newspaper he had bought, the Dearborn Independent, blaming a vast conspiracy of Jews for everything wrong with the world from jazz to baseball. Ford dealerships were required to carry the Dearborn Independent, and a four-volume collection of his editorials in booklet form, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, was translated into 16 languages for sale in the U.S. and Europe.

The Peace Ship was a widely derided voyage of pacifists Ford had organized in 1915 in an effort to head off World War I. It did not have the support of the Wilson administration, and its idealistic crew met with no European officials of any consequence.

"A Few Points to Be Considered" by Harold J. Wahl in Sacramento Bee, July 9, 1923

Henry Ford had used his influence with the Department of War to keep his son Edsel, then in his 20's, out of military service during World War I. Biographers now believe that Edsel would have preferred to enlist, and was acutely embarrassed that his father's connections held him up to scorn and ridicule as a symbol of unfair privilege. Thus, during World War II, Edsel made doubly sure that his car company was fully committed to the wartime production effort.

The "History is bunk" tack in Harold Wahl's cartoon refers to an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1916 in which Henry Ford said, 

"History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today. That’s the trouble with the world. We’re living in books and history and tradition. We want to get away from that and take care of today. We’ve done too much looking back. What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now."

That comment was in the "Chicago Tribune exposé," which had revealed Ford to be a shallow-minded, incurious blowhard who literally did not know British author Arnold Bennett from American turncoat Benedict Arnold. Ford had successfully sued the Tribune for libel over its reporting, for which he was awarded six cents in damages. 

No wonder he hated history.

Said the Tribune regarding his possible 1924 candidacy, "What makes him impossible is that he lacks any sense of his limitations. If a man is both ignorant and ignorant of his ignorance, he is not one to be put in any place of responsibility."

If Henry Ford reminds you of any presidential candidate today, that's the true value of history. But at least Henry Ford had a son with some redeeming social qualities.

Ah, well. I suppose there's yet still some hope for Barron.