Cartoons from PUCK 1877-1893

PUCK, October 4th, 1876.

These two expressive portraitures of two distinguished German-Americans, General Sigel and the Hon. Carl Schurz, appeared in the initial number of the German Puck (New York) as interesting specimens of Mr. Keppler’s skill as a caricaturist, pure and simple. They had no timely significance in particular.

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PUCK, February 28th, 1877.

The idea of this cartoon is not free from guilty obligation to a small pun; yet it depicts the situation of the Democratic Party in the last months of 1876 with considerable aptitude and force. It appeared at the time when the Democrats in Congress had been hoodwinked into accepting the Electoral Commission scheme, which deprived Mr. Tilden of the Presidency, and put Mr. Hayes in the chair. Under these circumstances, it was certainly truthful, even if it was trite, to say that the “Democ-Rats” were caught in the political trap.

THE
Democ-rats
CAUGHT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL
Trap

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[ZUR PRESIDENTEN-FRAGE]

Wie die Demok-RATTEN in diesem falle in diese falle geriethen.

PUCK, January 26th, 1881.

“The telegraph companies have been consolidated, which in simple language means that Mr. Jay Gould controls every wire in the United States over which a telegram can be sent,” said Puck of January 26th, 1881, and the statement was no exaggeration.

The editorial went on to express a fear that this monopoly of telegraphic facilities might be used for stock-jobbing purposes, as it made suppression or falsification of price-quotations not only possible, but temptingly easy. This fear was far from groundless at the time, although it has since been removed by the enormous growth of the business of electrical communication, which has now become a machine too huge to be readily perverted from its proper working by any one man. It is, however, undeniable that the Western Union wires were misused for parties and purposes in the doubtful and troublous days immediately succeeding the Presidential election of 1884. At the time when this cartoon was published there was a very general feeling that the federal government ought to take charge of the whole telegraphic system. This feeling, however, changed when the people realized that a postal telegraph scheme would practically involve the enrollment of a new army of office-holders who would be, under our inadequate and ineffective civil-service reform laws, merely the hirelings and henchmen of the party in power. Although the phrase “pernicious activity” had not yet been coined to characterize the performances of unscrupulous office-holders, the people had seen quite enough of the thing itself to want no more of it; and the project of government interference became unpopular. At the same time, it can not be said that Mr. Gould, who lived until 1892, ever inspired the people with confidence or made any recognizable attempt to that end.

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PUCK, April 22nd, 1885.

The so-called “Freedom of Worship Bill Controversy” has been carried on so many years, through so many varying phases and under such exceptional and peculiar conditions, that it has become most difficult of description and characterization. Its exciting cause is a bill introduced into the New York legislature ostensibly in the interests of what might be called sectarian fair play. On the face of it, it aims to secure to the Catholic, confined by sickness or for other reasons in a public institution, the right to enjoy the ministrations of his religion at the hands of a priest of the Roman Church. Its opponents have alleged that it is calculated to go much farther than this in practical effect, and to afford a foothold for the regular and official installment of Roman Catholic Priests in the public institutions of the state. The bill has appeared and reappeared for many years. It has assumed many forms, has provoked a vast amount of discussion, and has engaged the interest of a very large, and in some respects a very peculiar, collection of friends and enemies. Its good faith has always been questioned, and we do not think it is expressing an ex parte opinion to say that it has always been open to question—in view of the breadth and comprehensiveness of our American common law as applied to the civil rights of the citizen and the equal status of all religious organizations in the commonwealth. At the time (April 22, 1885,) when this cartoon was printed, the bill had appeared in a form which gave good reason for the belief, in which the whole press of New York shared, that it was a covert attack upon non-sectarian institutions.

It is to be hoped that this cause of so much contention will some day be forgotten in the natural growth of a spirit of religious tolerance.

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PUCK, March 31st, 1880.

Loyalty and lack of moderation were equally marked as characteristic of the support which Mr. Roscoe Conkling gave to any cause that enlisted his sympathies. The hot, unreasoning, fanatical vehemence of the attempt which he made in 1880 to dragoon the Republican party into nominating General Grant for a third term undoubtedly made the third term idea far more unpopular than a more judicious advocacy might have made it. Mr. Conkling treated the question of General Grant’s nomination almost as though it were a matter of divine right; and although Mr. Conkling himself had a right to be considered honest in his enthusiasm, as much could not be said for the most of his active assistants in the management of the “Boom”—among whom were Ex-Secretaries Belknap and Robeson, two officials who had reflected anything but credit upon General Grant’s cabinet, Boss Shepherd, and other members of the ring that had been formed in Washington during the Ex-President’s second administration. The artist has drawn a parallel between the methods employed by the “Salvation Army,” which had invaded this country a little while before, and those of the “halcyon and vociferous” Mr. Conkling—to quote his own immortal phrase.

PUCK, October 13th, 1880.

During the Presidential campaign of 1880, which ended in the election of Mr. Garfield, Mr. R. B. Hayes, then the incumbent of the Presidential chair, was treated with studied neglect and coldness by the leaders of his own party. Although General Grant had failed to get the nomination at the Chicago convention, in spite of the vigorous efforts of Mr. Roscoe Conkling, the ex-President and his ally were prominent in the campaign on their own account.

“They speak at mass-meetings, they are interviewed, they write letters; they are never out of the public eye,” says Puck of October 13th, 1880. Mr. Hayes, however, received no pressing invitation from the party managers to assist in electing their Republican ticket. Undoubtedly this deliberate slight was due to the extreme sensitiveness felt by all classes of Republicans on the question of Mr. Hayes’s title to the office which he held; and it was in its inception a creditable feeling that prompted the desire to keep him in the background. At the same time, it was a severe, almost a cruel retribution to be visited upon a man who had tried hard to atone for his capture of the Presidential chair by trick and device, by giving the country an uncommonly good, and, in some respects, decidedly courageous administration. Messrs. Grant and Conkling seemed to be solicitous to draw attention to their complete silence concerning the outgoing administration, and their enthusiasm in Mr. Garfield’s behalf. Although, to quote again from Puck, “both these talkative gentlemen might have found their eloquence at a discount if Mr. Hayes had not kept up the score of the party through the last four years.”

“His administration will be held notable, in days to come, not merely for its positive performances, its vetos of the infamous Silver Bill and the unconstitutional Chinese Act; but for its negative excellence. He has done his duty as he saw it. If he has made himself ridiculous by carrying the contemptibly small social practices of a little Ohio town into the wider sphere of life to which Fate has introduced him, it is a pardonable fault. Let us say for him, after all, that, considering the wretched way in which he got to be President, he has done far too well with his chances to be snubbed by men in such equivocal positions as Messrs. Grant and Conkling.”

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PUCK, May 25th, 1881.

Mr. Conkling’s resignation to the Senate, in hope of re-election under circumstances which would have made such a triumph a severe rebuke to President Garfield, proved to be, as most people foresaw, the end of his political career. But, at the time, there were plenty of people to applaud his act and to liken his resignation to a “bombshell” thrown into the Senate. It was a sort of fireworks bombshell that destroyed nothing but itself, but it made a great noise for the moment. Mr. T. C. Platt chose at the same time to pop his toy balloon, and probably thought that it made part of the noise.

PUCK, January 14th, 1885.

The first cartoons were doubtless chalked on dead walls, and even when the art reached a higher development, sticking to walls remained the cheapest and most convenient method of publication. It is often a test of a cartoon’s worth to-day—its suitability as a wall-decoration. It is a natural and simple impulse that moves us to pin on the wall the picture that has pleased us. Readers of Puck who travel much in this country can not but notice how many people delight in pasting and pinning their favorite cartoons to the walls of their offices and workshops, and even of their dwelling-houses. A really popular cartoon is always sure of these humble but well-meant honors; and, curiously enough, experience has shown that next to the really telling “hit,” a playful, familiarly puzzling trifle like “Puck’s Political Hunting-Ground,” if it is conceived with some grace and prettiness, is the most certain of this sort of popular favor. This particular picture was, no doubt, made attractive to many by the simple puzzle afforded by the faces of the animals. As, however, the passing of time must make some of these faces unfamiliar, it may be well to offer the following key—first calling attention to the fact that all the personages introduced were at the moment, in one way or another, at odds with fortune—except the late Mr. Jay Gould, who is figured as a bird of prey (in a general way, and with no over-particular ornithological accuracy) comfortably bearing off a lamb. The fact that this one figure of success is quite unconscious of the attempts of Puck’s water-dog to catch him, may be supposed to show the usual disregard that Wealth entertains for Wit:

The fox, of course, is the ingenious Mr. James G. Blaine. The hyena, ex-speaker Kiefer, and the next animal of doubtful breed “Star Route” or “Soap” Dorsey. The paw and the head seen in the reeds behind the dog belong to Brady. The lineaments of Ben Butler may be discerned in the head of the frog, and the nature of the beast in the distention of the belly thereof. At the other end of the cartoon, General Grant’s features, without distortion or caricature, fit the head of the dead lion. Next to him “Secor” Robeson lies in the similitude of a dead boar, incapable of mischief for all his glaring eye-balls. In the foreground, Roscoe Conkling lies a dead pouter pigeon. (Caricaturists frequently showed Mr. Conkling as a pouter pigeon, but most of them carried the analogy too far and made a frail, spindle-shanked thing of him. In this picture the thickly feathered legs and stout frame of the bird do not bely its sturdy original.) The owl is the late John Kelly—and a powerful and accurate owl he was, too, in his time! The pendent monkey is T. C. Platt, who was at that time suffering from one of the temporary eclipses which flecked the pathway of the political adventurer with appropriate forecasts of oblivion.

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PUCK, January 10th, 1883.

The times change, and we change with them. When this cartoon was designed, the popular theological fad was the harmonization of science and religion, and the immediate cause of its appearance was some utterance, now forgotten, but at the time considered highly audacious, of the Reverend Heber Newton. It was, we believe, the introduction of the practice of “slumming” which changed the current of clerical taste.

PUCK, October 27th, 1880.

The picture of the Democratic party as Rip Van Winkle was suggested by the fact that in 1880, when it appeared, (Oct. 27) the party had been for just twenty years wrapt in the sleep of political inactivity. The figure of the old sleeper is the one made familiar by Mr. Jefferson’s wonderful interpretation. He starts up from his twenty years’ slumber to see a spectral host flit by him, as he lies upon the mountain crag—Douglas, Greeley, McClellan, Seymour, Tilden, and Hancock the Superb, leading the doomed line of hapless Presidential candidates. The mean realities of life are represented by the two fiery-eyed owls in the tree at the old man’s back—General B. F. Butler and Mr. John Kelly of Tammany Hall, who never appeared in national politics, except as secret and mischievous birds of prey.

Down in the right-hand lower corner of the picture a pocket-flask labelled “Bourbon” may puzzle the reader who turns this page a generation hence. It is a sly reference to a jest well known and well understood at the time,—it had a much earlier origin. The Democrats were called Bourbons because it was supposed that “they never learned anything and never forgot anything.” As it happened, Bourbon County, Kentucky, had given its name to a brand of whiskey at that time in great favor. As whiskey was America’s democratic drink, in the broader sense of the word, by a natural association of ideas Bourbon whiskey was set down as the drink of the Democratic party. It was generally known as “Bourbon” and pronounced “Burbin.”

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PUCK, July 28th, 1880.

This cartoon depicts so simply and clearly the position of the two great parties and their respective leaders in the early part of the campaign of 1880 that even at this date it hardly calls for any elucidation whatever.

It may, however, be proper to note that the placing of Mr. Arthur as a burden upon Mr. Garfield’s back, in the bag labeled “Credit Mobilier” and “De Golyer Contract,” is not intended to imply that Mr. Arthur himself had any connection with these scandals. Mr. Arthur himself undoubtedly was regarded as an incumbrance to Mr. Garfield’s canvass because of his very unwise choice of associates among the politicians of New York, and his singular indifference to the regard of the people with whom his birth and breeding should naturally have led him to affiliate. In this it must be admitted that Mr. Arthur did himself an injustice, for which, however, he amply atoned when Mr. Garfield’s death threw upon him the responsibilities of the Chief Executive.

HE CARRIES THE PARTY.

THE PARTY CARRIES HIM.

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PUCK, December 22d. 1880.

There are few more tragic or startling pages in our political history than those which record Mr. Garfield’s brief career as the national leader of his party. Nominated for President in the Chicago Convention of 1880, after the collapse of the Grant Third-Term Movement, (although it was generally supposed that he was too firmly committed to the interests of Senator Sherman to enter the lists on his own account,) he was elected in November, after a somewhat heated campaign, during which much publicity was given to his unfortunate dealings with the Crédit-Mobilier people and other objectionable speculators. His opponent was General Hancock, a soldier and a gentleman of unblemished reputation. He owed his defeat partly to certain utterances concerning the tariff question which, though just in themselves, were injudicious in view of the popular sentiment of the time; partly to the wide-spread distrust of the Democratic party that then prevailed, and partly, as Mr. S. W. Dorsey, one of Mr. Garfield’s campaign-managers, most gratuitously and indecently announced after election, to wholesale bribery in the State of Indiana. (This was the notorious “Soap” Dorsey, so called from his using “soap” as a euphemism for bribe-money.)

By a permissible pictorial license, the artist, in Puck of December 22nd, 1880, represents the President-Elect as already quartered within the White House, distributing the spoils of office as presents from a Christmas tree. Around him are the leaders of the Republican party: General Grant, Senator John Sherman, Don Cameron, General Logan, Vice-President Chester A. Arthur, and Carl Schurz in the foreground; James G. Blaine and Marshall P. Jewell (the collector of the campaign-fund) in a corner. The shadow of Roscoe Conkling’s head and of the ambrosial curl which was supposed still to linger on his brow, is thrown upon the side of the window-casing, but from what quarter it is projected is difficult to determine. Mr. Conkling’s attitude toward the new administration was dubious and peculiar.

Outside, in the cold Winter night, are the Democrats gazing hungrily into the lighted windows. The head of Mr. W. H. English, the defeated candidate for Vice-President, rises from a barrel, supposed to represent the large fortune which alone gave him any political standing. Mr. James Gordon Bennett appears in the character of a sportsman who has brought down a large owl-like bird having the features of Mr. John Kelly—the New York Herald was credited with having obtained the local victory over the Tammany leader. “Up in a tree,” are Tilden, Wade Hampton, L. Q. C. Lamar, Chairman Barnum of the Democratic Committee, General B. F. Butler (constructively a Democrat, for cartoon purposes), and Thomas F. Bayard.

“To the man of statelier figure, who stands outside, but not among the shivering crowd of malcontents,” Puck wished that year a Merry Christmas; and hoped that there would be many Merry Christmases for him, if not in the White House, at least “in the place where he well served the country.” The wish was vain: General Hancock died not long after.

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PUCK, July 2nd, 1884.

This simple but effective cartoon hardly requires any further elucidation than is afforded by the date of its publication. It appeared on July 2nd, 1884, immediately after the nomination of Mr. Blaine at the Republican Convention at Chicago, and the consequent bolt of the Independent Republicans and so-called Mugwumps. With reference to the appearance in the picture of Mr. John Kelly in the attitude of a hostile savage, we need only say that the readiness of the Tammany Hall of that day to stab the Democratic Party in the back whenever it furthered its own ends by so doing was something that was more than suspected then, and that was conclusively proved in the first Cleveland and Harrison campaign.

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PUCK, August 11th, 1886.

“Mr. Tilden’s death is to be regretted by his friends and by his political enemies. He was a man of principles and ideas. He had ambitions that looked higher than to the mere accumulation of money or the acquirement of that cheap, ephemeral power which flatters some small souls. And beside this he had courage and independence, and the breeding and education of a gentleman. Many were forced, by conscience and conviction, to oppose his political aspirations; but all found him an adversary to be respected, and a man of dignity and power. History must record of Samuel J. Tilden that he did his best to purify a great party fallen into a frightful moral decadence in its own Capuan stronghold,—must note his wonderful work in the cause of civic honesty and good government, and his loyalty to his country at a time when all his affiliations must have inclined him to disloyalty or to an indifferent neutrality. And more than this, History must say of him that he suffered a cruel wrong with dignified fortitude, and by his wisdom and self-restraint relieved his country from a well-grounded fear of dangerous civil disturbance. Remembering this, it is easy for the most partisan spirit to forget much else, and to do honor to the dead statesman and patriot.”—Puck, August 11th, 1886.

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PUCK, November 3d, 1880.

Puck for November 3d, 1880, went to press, of course, too early to receive the news of the result of the election. Consequently the cartoonist had to content himself with constructing this curious puzzle picture, in which may be found, with a little study, the portraits of the Republican and Democratic candidates, as well as those of many other prominent public men, including Mr. Roscoe Conkling, Mr. J. G. Blaine, Mr. Carl Schurz, Mr. Marshall P. Jewell, Mr. Chester A. Arthur, General U. S. Grant, Mr. R. B. Hayes, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, Mr. Wm. H. English, General John A. Logan, Mr. John Kelly, (of New York City,) General B. F. Butler, Mr. Thos. F. Bayard, and Mr. Abram S. Hewitt.

“There is, moreover,” Puck goes on to say, “something more in that cartoon. There is a gentle hint of a duty that we have forgotten too long, in the excitement of that wild political fight—the duty of going back to the plain old ideal of friendly federation which our forefathers had constantly in mind. We do not wish to talk any of the cheap cant about clasping hands over the bloody chasm. All the hand-shaking in the world won’t close a crevasse up. But is this nonsense to go on forever? We hope not. The work of the campaign is done. A President is elected. There will be no need of renewing the battle for another four years. Let us see if we can not use those four years in making preparations for a contest on a broader basis—on points less mean, less cheap and malicious. There is time, in these four years, for the honest men, North and South, to come to some understanding with each other; to make up their minds as to what are dead and what are living issues; to build up a new party, or two new parties, if need be, and to make the Presidential election of 1884 a respectable contest, between people who, however they may disagree on matters of principle or opinion, have all but one end in view—a wise and honest government.”

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Conkling.—Want a guide, sir? Garfield.—No; thank you!

PUCK, February 2nd, 1881.

This cartoon sketches fairly the situation a month before Mr. Garfield’s inauguration in 1881. Mr. Conkling had shown a certain willingness to lend a hand to Mr. Garfield’s administration, and Mr. Garfield had shown no willingness whatever to accept the proffered hand. It was not to be expected that Mr. Conkling would prove himself an unreservedly loyal and disinterested Secretary of State, and there was little room for doubt that the desire of Messrs. Don Cameron and J. A. Logan to hold office under the President-Elect was of the most strictly selfish sort.

Note.—As the word “Mentor,” on the flag over the distant dwelling-house shown in this cartoon, might be supposed to have some ulterior significance, it may be well to say that it is simply the name of Mr. Garfield’s home and P. O. address in Ohio.

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PUCK, August 31st, 1881.

The situation, which this cartoon, published in Puck of August 31st, 1881, commemorates after a peculiarly forcible fashion, is too unpleasant to invite further comment than is absolutely necessary to explain it. During the latter part of the Summer of 1881, while President Garfield lay dying from an assassin’s bullet, certain politicians of a peculiarly coarse fibre were unwilling to wait for his death to make their arrangements for the distribution of the spoils of office under his successor. These were not men who were in any way concerned in shaping the course of the government in matters of statecraft or policy; they were simply out for the spoils, as the phrase goes, and their undisguised eagerness was scandalous under the circumstances.

Puck said at the time, with more moderation than, viewed in the light of subsequent events, the occasion called for: “Whether presidents live or die, the game of politics goes on. It is humiliating and deplorable, but it is nevertheless true that many professional politicians of more or less reputation are carefully laying their plans of procedure in the event of the decease of the dying President, We will not wrong these gentlemen by saying that they desire his death; but it is scarcely decent to raise even a discussion on the most trivial matter connected with mere machine politics, before the vital spark has fled from the body of the chief magistrate. Although his presumptive, or, to use a monarchical term, his apparent successor has acted throughout in a manly and modest way, there are political friends of his whose demeanor has not been distinguished by the sympathy and consideration that, at least, might be expected on such an occasion.”

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PUCK, June 7th, 1882.

In 1882 (June 7th), when “Uncle Sam’s Lodging House” was drawn, the Irish “patriots,” who were trying to free their country by exploding dynamite in public places, had made this country their base of supplies, and were especially active in New York and Chicago. Their lawlessness created much excitement, and if it had not been that there was more bluster than performance about their pernicious liveliness they might have involved us in a war with Great Britain, in which we should certainly have lacked the moral support of our own conscience. These gentry did not relish the stand Puck took in the matter, and their threats of reprisal by dynamite were frequent. The rate of letter postage had some time previously been reduced from three to two cents.

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PUCK, September 6th, 1882.

The Summer of 1882 was just changing to Fall when Mr. Blaine made a notable speech at Portland, Me., which was generally received as an announcement of his determination to seek the nomination for the Presidency in 1884. In this speech, which attracted great attention, he stated with singular clearness his position in politics, affirming the moral right of the Republican Party to a continuance in rule on the strength of its record. This was, we believe, the first clear, frank and open enunciation of this idea in all its naked simplicity. It has formed since then the stock in trade of many candidates and of countless campaign orators, but the credit of putting it fairly and squarely before the people belongs to Mr. Blaine, and it should be noted that the time he chose to express his views was one in which most Republicans were offering apologies or explanations for the past and present shortcomings of their party. Mr. Blaine reaped no personal benefit from the enterprise he displayed in taking this bold stand, but he undoubtedly gave his party a lesson in audacity by which it profited materially. It was what might be called a “bluff,” and it was certainly a big and effective bluff. At the time when it was made its far-sighted cleverness was under-estimated, and its insincerity was so apparent that the reader of that day could have had little difficulty in seeing why Puck suggested to Mr. Blaine to abandon his extreme and untenable position, and to take another, which would have been at once more credible and more popular. It is curious that the idea with which Mr. Blaine inspired his party should have been the means of his own undoing, and, in some measure, of electing Mr. Harrison to the Presidency over his head.

PUCK, December 21st, 1881.

Mr. Blaine was the most highly honored of President Garfield’s cabinet officers. In the convention that nominated Mr. Garfield he had been, next to General Grant, Garfield’s most dangerous rival—or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that he might have been, had the time been ripe for him to exert his full strength. So, when President Garfield died, and Mr. Arthur, who had been an unpopular candidate for the Vice-Presidency, succeeded to the Presidential chair, two apparent probabilities interested the populace. It was assumed, of course, that a President must be a candidate for re-election and under such circumstances it was thought that in all likelihood Mr. Blaine would be far more powerful in the next convention than a President who owed his elevation to mere accident. Thus, when Mr. Blaine made his bow and retired from the cabinet formed by President Garfield, his very leaving seemed to imply a threat that he would return to Washington only to assume a prouder position.

Puck of December 21st, 1881, says, discussing the possibility of Mr. Blaine’s election to the Presidency:

“There are two or three miracles which we would gladly see worked in this country. There is that great miracle which always seems near at hand, yet which never seems nearer—the miracle of a great popular awakening to a healthy political life.... Is it not a disgrace, indeed, that we should talk about electing to the highest office in the nation a man of whom an honest, unprejudiced and unbiased journal has to say that although he is clever and strong, he has not an absolutely unblemished record?! An absolutely unblemished record! Why, a statesman’s record should be as unblemished as a woman’s should be. And yet it is very possible that we shall find the man of whom this is said the very best man whom it is possible to put at the head of our Government in 1884. Is it not time for a miracle?”

It was pretty nearly time: the miracle was worked in 1884.

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PUCK, October 22nd, 1884.

The New York Sun’s “bolt” of the Democratic ticket during the Cleveland Campaign of 1884 was so characteristic, so extravagant and so funny in its fantastic futility, that it can not be forgotten, even now. This cartoon appeared about the time that Mr. Chas. A. Dana was running General Benj. F. Butler as a candidate for the Presidency, and was predicting for that harlequin among political adventurers a majority over Mr. Cleveland in the City of New York. General Butler came out of the death-struggle with four-thousand-odd-hundred votes, in all, as his share of the suffrages of New York’s citizens; and Mr. Dana, a day or two after the election, blithely caroled, to the somewhat discordant accompaniment of his organ:

PUCK, April 11th, 1888.

The editorial article accompanying this picture draws a curious historical parallel between the characters of Samuel Pepys and Grover Cleveland, with a side glance at “South Sea Bubble” Law and certain moderns who resemble him in certain ways. After sketching Pepys’s career in the British Admiralty Office, the article closes:

“‘A man of the old way of taking pains,’ they called him in that degenerate day. Is not that even now a good standard by which to test public service? Is all greatness to lie in bluster, noise, braggadocio, and what we are pleased to call ‘smartness’? These were the attributes of the men who were the official superiors of Samuel Pepys just two centuries ago. The world has forgotten their names. But the old fashion of honest service is still honorable. Those who have borne with us so far in this historical recital may forgive us if we suggest a modern instance. A few weeks ago, the presiding officer of the United States Senate told his distinguished audience that no man was so mean or so obscure that he might not be President of the United States, now that Grover Cleveland held that place. Mr. Grover Cleveland was a lawyer in one of our smaller cities. He became, successively, Sheriff and Mayor of his town, Governor of his state, and President of the United States. In every office he has done his duty ‘in the old way of taking pains.’ He has had no hand in the corruption of political life; he has never been the pensioner of corporate monopolies. As Sheriff, Mayor, Governor and President he has served the people honestly and wisely, ‘in the old way of taking pains.’ To our mind this gives him a claim to the regard and respect of the people that will not easily be shaken by the bluster of his enemies. The people will look at the work he has done before they decide whether or no he is President by accident—whether the Time has done everything for him, he nothing—but what the little critic could have done too.”

There was a great stir made among the Beasts, which could boast of the largest family. So they came to the Lioness.

“And how many,” said they, “do you have at a birth?”

“ONE,” said she, grimly; “but that one is a Lion!”

Æsop’s Fables, LXVIII.

PUCK, December 23rd, 1885.

When Mr. Cleveland first became President in 1885, he put into practice a much broader theory of Civil Service Reform than certain active politicians of his party had any use for. Nor did he show any great eagerness to shower offices and honors upon those members of his party who had proved false to him in the campaign of the previous year. On December 23rd, 1885, Puck pictured these unfortunates as Christmas “Waits,” standing outside the White House in the wintry cold, and raising their voices in plaintive song:

PUCK, January 18th, 1888.

Another phase of the tariff question is illustrated in this cartoon, which was designed to serve as an offset to the impudent accusations of disloyal desire to serve English interests so frequently made by high protectionists against all those who questioned their divine right to profit by their ingenious scheme of taxation.

Adapting Sydney Smith’s famous formula to modern American use, Puck said on January 18th, 1888:

“You may sit down, O well-protected Average Citizen! at your protected table, in your protected arm-chair; and button your protected coat about you, and dream that your protective tariff is a drain on the wealth of the English. But the fact remains that you pay every cent of the duties that you impose upon foreign goods, and that nobody is the worse off for the increased price, except yourself. The fact remains that you pay for goods manufactured in this country the same price which you pay for foreign-made goods of the same grade; that price being greater than the fair price by the amount of the duty imposed. And, above all, the disgraceful fact remains that all these goods on which you pay a tax are brought to this country in English ships, sailing under the English flag, which take back, on their homeward trip, your American money, O Average Citizen! in payment of freight imported by you in English bottoms. And yet, before we had a protective tariff, we were able to do our carrying trade for ourselves.”

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PUCK, December 28th, 1887.

When Mr. Cleveland began his now historic struggle for Tariff Reform he found that he had to encounter more ignorance and apathy among the public at large than he had reckoned on. In fact, he began his fight in a very mist or fog of popular misconception, and his surroundings in these first days were such as naturally suggested the grewsome allegory which Puck published on December 28th, 1887.

The animal-portraits in this picture are for the most part readily recognizable—J. G. Blaine, John Sherman, Whitelaw Reid, W. M. Evarts, B. F. Butler, T. C. Platt, (dead, but floating,) C. A. Dana and Joseph Pulitzer. The owl in the left hand upper corner is Secretary Folger. In the corner below him is Most, the anarchist. The hedge-hog and the wild boar on the extreme right are Jacob Sharp and J. B. Foraker. The two tails protruding from holes in the ground are reminders of the brief period of activity enjoyed by Mr. Henry George and his clerical ally.

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PUCK, August 10th, 1881.

Bright as is the idea which inspires this cartoon, it inspires only the interest of reminiscence. Puck’s chief cartoonist figures himself as falling asleep upon a hot midsummer day, so soundly that during his slumber the subjects of his facile pencil invade his studio and use his drawing materials to depict themselves according to their own conceit. Thus Roscoe Conkling, practically withdrawn from active politics, portrays himself as a Jupiter Tonans in the prime of life, and Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who was at the time accused of dallying with æsthetic dandyism, appears as a figure somewhat like Mr. Gilbert’s Bunthorne. Peter Cooper appears as a young and auburn-whiskered man; and Mr. Tilden, even then in the feebleness of old age, sketches himself as an ambitious athlete. Mr. James Gordon Bennett sketches himself as the Apollo Belvidere. A subtle pun is here intended. Mr. Bennett was then prominent through his efforts to introduce the game of polo into this country. The patch on his nose marks the wound he is supposed to have received in his mysterious encounter with Mr. Frederick May, a disreputable man-about-town, with whom Mr. Bennett was at one time intimate. Mr. John Kelly draws himself as a fashion-plate model; and Mr. Beecher, whose lineaments age had made somewhat gross, paints for his picture the likeness of the young man whose eloquence and originality waked a new fire in the religious circles of the West. Mr. Talmage draws himself as he perhaps would have liked to have people think he looked. General Grant sketches a mighty emperor who bears his features. And that curious political tramp, General Benjamin F. Butler, uses the canvas to straighten out his curious, ugly mug into the likeness of a good-looking man. The picture curiously suggests what General Butler might have been had he been anything but the queer and unpleasant thing he was.

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PUCK, March 23rd, 1881.

The hideous cruelties practised by the government of the Czar of Russia on all those of his subjects who do not worship and adore the “Little Father” with single-minded devotion and reverent awe, have more than once furnished a subject for Mr. Keppler’s sympathetic pencil. At the time of the appearance of this cartoon, in March of 1881, these brutalities had attracted general attention throughout the civilized world. Perhaps they were no worse than they had been before; but there seemed to be reason to believe that they were just then of an exceptional atrocity, the recent Russo-Turkish war having noticeably stimulated the savage element in what one of their own artless writers calls the “semi-barbarian race” of Russians.

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PUCK, February 15th, 1888.

This cartoon bears date of February 15th, 1888, but it might have appeared with very little variation at any time during the last ten or twelve years of Bismarck’s premiership. While that great and clear light shone in the European heavens nothing was left wholly to chance in all that quarreling, jealous congeries of states. Nothing was done—nothing was even planned that was not in some measure suggested or shaped by that giant will and that alert and far-seeing intelligence.

It is worth while to call attention to the logical composition of this cartoon. Observe that it is thought out to the last point. The eye takes in at a glance the thronging, hungry beasts of prey, the mighty luminary hanging high in the firmament and the poor little Bulgarian rat helpless on his little rock amidstream between the frowning cliffs, yet safe in that clear radiance so long as it deigns to shine upon him. But note the settled suggestion of warlike possibilities conveyed by the helmet on the head of the Man in the Moon and the curious hints of animal ferocity given by the lines under the heavy moustache, the feline cleft in the middle, and the mane-like touches beside the cheeks. Now, looking at the cat-like beasts of prey, observe that Prussia occupies the point of advantage, and uses it to “stand off” the approach of Russia, who crouches on a somewhat higher cliff, rapacious, strong, eager, yet with wary eyes half-turned upon the ever-dreadful Prussia. Follow that furtive cat-like glance a little further and you will see that it takes cognizance of the sly approach toward the prey which Austria is making under cover of Germany’s position. Italy and France crawl on in the background, paying more attention to each other than to their remote chances of individual gain. Russia and France, you see, are on one side of the stream; the Triple Alliance of the hour on the other. For a touch of interesting detail look at the figure of France with its fine bushy beard, its red liberty cap, and its very conspicuous epaulettes. To one who follows the nicety of the artist’s symbolization, this indicates that the picture was drawn at the time when “Boulangism” was rampant in Paris. It was not the era of Thiers, the clean-shaven statesman, or the vieux Militaire time of MacMahon, or the time of Grévy with his little bourgeois whiskers. It was a sort of bogus-Gambetta revival, which is aptly characterized here in features that suggest those of President Carnot, without permitting the weak amiability of his expression to typify militant France. And—one thing more—note how that whole picture, by means of color, composition and perspective, centres itself to your eye in one little figure that does not occupy (by measure) the one two-hundredth part of its space.

PUCK, March 21st, 1888.

“There was one King in Europe two weeks ago, one King worthy of the name, and there is none to-day. And in this fact there is much more significance than we of America are likely to note. To us a King is an anachronism. His name is something that belongs to the time of fable and fairy-story. We do not quite realize that he exists; that he is still a power. There is an intrinsic unreasonableness in the idea of his continuance, out of the world of fiction, that inclines us to disbelieve in his very existence. We can hardly conceive of him as anything more than a puppet—as a mere figure-head for a governing ministry.

“But the late Emperor of Germany was a King. He was King of Prussia before he was Emperor of Germany; and as King and Emperor he set up a standard of conduct by which few men would care to govern their lives. He tried to be a King, having a high conception of what a King should be, and, as far as in him lay the power, he was a King. At least, he was a mortal who strove hard to be more than other mortals, and who strove from a sense of duty. We may—and must—hold the effort futile; yet we may respect the spirit that prompted it. We Americans have no use for Kings; and we have ideas as to popular government that King Wilhelm of Prussia, later Emperor of Germany, would never understand. But let us consider that it would be well for us if we had a few statesmen, among those who are governing us on speculation, who would look on their responsibilities as this dead European monarch did on his. He knew that his place was greater than he was, and he tried to make himself fit for it. And, now that he is dead, his people mourn a brave man gone; if they are to have Kings or Emperors to rule them in the future, they will go far before they find a better man of his kind.”—Puck, March 21st, 1888.

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PUCK, March 30th, 1887.

“The anarchists and socialists, and the turbulent and vicious among our German-American fellow-citizens, were more or less miserable over the celebration of Kaiser Wilhelm’s ninetieth birthday, last week; but decent Americans of German origin or free-born may well have taken pleasure in drinking the old gentleman’s health. No earnest republican can unreservedly admire even the best of emperors—or, indeed, wholly understand the imperial idea. But, since there are emperors, it is desirable that they should be good of their kind; and there is no kingly ruler in the world to-day who is a better man, after his own pattern, than the white-haired old soldier who has just ended his ninetieth year.

“And even the Anarchist who would not drink the old Kaiser’s health ought to reflect—if an Anarchist can reflect—that he has little right to complain of the good old Kaiser when he cries out against the government of Germany. Wilhelm is Emperor, in truth; but in Germany there is to-day a higher than the Emperor—the Emperor’s humble servant, the Chancellor of the Empire, a stern, shrewd, stubborn, overbearing, foxy, sinister, loyal, fearless old man, named Bismarck, who holds the government of Germany in the hollow of his hand, and is the one arbiter of peace and war in all Europe. It is this original and powerful man who practically stands for Germany in her dealings with other nations; and it is he who to-day holds the balance of power in Continental Europe. His fame will outlive that of the honest old Emperor. Kaiser Wilhelm will figure in the school text-books with Henry the Fourth of France and Elizabeth of England; but Bismarck’s name will live forever in the literature of politics; and even in fiction as a type more strong, deep and subtle than any in the annals of statecraft. We use the name of Machiavelli in familiar comparison—but whom shall we ever compare with Bismarck?”—Puck, March 30th, 1887.

PUCK, June 27th, 1888.

It will be well for Germany if, in the doubtful years that lie ahead of her, she has not reason to regret the loss of the brave and high-minded man whose sad reign came to an end two weeks ago. Frederick the Third inherited his father’s strength and his lofty sense of duty, yet his character was made at once broader and gentler by his better understanding of the spirit of his day. He was eminently the man for the hour, and the courage with which he enunciated his principles and took his stand for tolerance and modern ideas, under circumstances which might well have served as an excuse for inaction, showed that he would not have been unequal to greater emergencies. Had he lived, he would have made the most of peace, as his father made the most of war, and his talent complemented that of William, and was singularly fitted to the duties from which he was so soon taken.

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PUCK, May 4th, 1887.

“How often all Europe goes into what we slang-loving Americans call a keniption fit over a political ‘incident!’ We don’t care to attempt an exact definition of the word ‘keniption;’ but we are quite willing to explain that an ‘incident,’ in European politics, means a small affair of great importance. A native peasant pokes his umbrella into a foreign ambassador’s eye—that is an incident. A foreign ambassador pokes his umbrella into a native peasant’s eye—that also is an incident. On such incidents the fate of nations hangs. It may be the Mortara incident, or the Benedetti incident, or, as it is now, the Schnaebeles or Schnaebele or Schnaebelé incident, (how does he spell his gallicised German name?) but no year can pass without its incident, over which the press must shriek, and diplomats must excite themselves, and quarts of honest ink and ohms of good electric force must be wasted.

“The incident himself—there is generally a personality to the incident—is, as a rule, a most unimportant individual. There are exceptional cases, of course. Benedetti was a man of importance. He had too much importance, mayhap. But he would never have written his name in large script upon history’s page had he not been snubbed in a public park. So is it with Schnaebeles. He is world-famous to-day, who will never do anything else in his life that will get his name in American or English newspapers. He has been arrested by Germany, he, a French official, and he is an incident. He is an incident who does not amount to much, it seems; but still he is an incident. Twenty, thirty, forty years from now, a withered, snuffy, oddly dressed old man will sit, perchance, in front of some Paris café, sipping his eau sucrée or his syruped vermouth, and the boulevardier who passes by will say to his friend; ‘That is Schnaebele.’

“‘And who is Schnaebele?’ the friend will inquire, wonderingly.

“‘Why, have you forgotten your history? The hero of the Schnaebele incident—in 1887—or ’78—which was it? When we were so near going to war with Germany.’

“‘Ah, bah!’ his friend will reply; ‘un marron glacé! Qu’est-ce que tu me donnes!’

“And that is what it is to be an incident.”—Puck, May 4th, 1887.

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PUCK, February 2nd, 1887.

Elsewhere in these pages an attempt has been made to give some idea of the character and significance of “German Michel.” This cartoon, which appeared at the time of the Boulangist excitement in France, shows how Michel’s native shrewdness and stolidity rendered him proof against the ingenious, but far from ingenuous, attempts of Prince Bismarck to make capital for the War Department out of the disturbances in France. The sturdy toiler, overworked and overtaxed already, showed not only a frank unwillingness to add to his burdens, but bore himself toward the princes and potentates that were set above him with a certain self-confident freedom of attitude which had not been his wont of old time.

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PUCK, March 19th, 1890.

“‘German Michel’ is a typical figure of which the most remarkable characteristic is that it has made itself absolutely inappropriate to its original purposes. It is a figure created by the German caricaturists—a loutish, sleepy, heavy peasant, gazing on the world with dull, uninterested eyes. It stood for the political spirit of the German people—the spirit that existed in the years between ’48 and ’70—the spirit of indifferentism, of hopeless submission to superior power, of acceptance of whatever state of affairs it might please the rulers of the land to establish. It was aptly chosen. Even the possibilities of brute force suggested by the bumpkin’s sturdy build had a deeply significant application.... But 1870 and the war changed the spiritual state of Germany, or rather, began a process of change of which we have not yet seen the end. And now for twenty years the German government has been educating Michel, and Michel has been educating himself. While the government has been teaching him to read, and he has been teaching himself various things that are useful and interesting to any good citizen and patriot, there have been plenty of people who have devoted themselves to giving him what might be called an underground education. Recent events in Germany show that this part of Michel’s education has certainly not been neglected—at least, so far as the inculcation of the beauties of socialism is concerned.... Now it is to this Michel, not to the old Michel, to the public spirit of Germany of 1850 or 1860, that the young Emperor Wilhelm is issuing his extraordinary ‘rescripts,’ in which he describes himself as the emissary of God, sent to take charge of the future of the German nation (without specifying any qualifications for the task with which the Almighty may have been pleased to endow him); announces his intention of solving at once the everlasting problem of poverty and ignorance, and offers to ‘shatter’ or ‘dash in pieces,’ all who oppose him in his plans. Surely, this young man, this inexperienced youth, the son of an Emperor who reigned only on his death-bed, the grandson of an Emperor whose best work was done before that grandson had got well used to long breeches; this immature martinet; this quaint despot with the narrow forehead and the eager, intolerant face—surely he is ill-fitted to meet the subtle, secret-minded men, conscious of their growing strength, who have taken the place of the submissive ‘Michels’ of his grandfather’s time.”—Puck, March 19th, 1890.

PUCK, February 19th, 1890.

This is neither the place nor the time to attempt any summing up of the character of the Rev. Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. In Puck’s earlier days the eccentricities of this clergyman and his peculiar notoriety made him the especial butt of the cartoonist; and this latter revival of a familiar figure was provoked by some uncommonly audacious performance whereby the Reverend gentleman startled most people and shocked many on his return from a European trip. It is unnecessary to recall the details: the cartoon is founded on Dr. Talmage’s own utterances.

Let us note here that through all this long period of fun-making, Dr. Talmage seems to have enjoyed the jokes upon himself even more than the general public did, and Puck has for many years preserved a formal blessing or benediction, couched in terms of cordial regard, and sent by the clergyman in exchange for a small cash and a large advertising contribution to the re-construction of his tabernacle.

PUCK, June 28th, 1882.

Many who look at this cartoon to-day may well wonder what called it forth, and many others may have to be reminded that even so recently as ten years ago a morbid sympathy with criminals was so common among American clergymen that it was popularly held a reproach to the whole clerical body. It was, however, little more than a passing phase, a sort of hysterical epidemic that prevailed among people peculiarly exposed to emotional impulses. It seems to have died a natural death, and it has passed away so utterly that it is practically forgotten to-day.

We do not speak, of course, of the sympathy which every minister of God should feel for the erring and unfortunate, but of a certain maudlin enthusiasm which at one time moved many otherwise excellent and admirable members of the clerical profession, and brought about some startling exhibitions of misplaced sentiment. At the period of which we speak, namely: the decade prior to the publication of this cartoon, it was no uncommon thing to read of a clergyman, assisted by a band of female devotees, invading a prison to spend hours, day after day, in consoling, comforting, and generally coddling some red-handed murderer in whom they could have had no possible interest, and of whom they never would have heard save for the notoriety of his trial. Clergymen were found, too, to go on the gallows at the last moment, and publicly to avow their belief that the soul of the criminal about to die was purged of all earthly sin, and that his repentance with the noose around his neck had fully sufficed to fit him for heaven. Such shows as these were common enough and evil enough in their influence to justify even severer condemnation than that expressed in this vigorous cartoon.

The mania, for such we must call it, probably had its origin in the extravagant and widely advertised efforts of the Rev. Dr. Tyng, of New York, to save Foster, the “Carhook Murderer,” from the gallows. Foster, who was partially drunk at the time, wantonly killed an inoffensive stranger on the 26th of April, 1871; and, after every legal resource had been exhausted in his behalf, was hanged March 21st, 1873.

This cartoon appeared in Puck of June 28th, 1882, and its immediate occasion was the execution of Charles Guiteau for the assassination of President Garfield, which created a most unwholesome excitement in many quarters.

PUCK, August 4th, 1886.

“The State of Rhode Island has recently passed—to its own great surprise—a ‘prohibition law.’ The state did not really want the law. It was not passed as a matter of principle. The Republicans voted for the law to spite the Democrats; the Democrats to spite the Republicans. No one thought that the aggregate of votes thus cast would make the legal majority. But so it happened. Now, the State of Rhode Island is a small community, and, like most small communities, it is narrow, ignorant, and, save in things material, unproductive. One of the chief sources of revenue upon which it depends is its wonderful collection of Summer watering-places, which bring travel and traffic to the state and put many thousands of dollars into circulation every year. These places are supported by a civilized lot of people from the great cities—people who are accustomed to drinking wine and beer and whatever else they fancy; and, as a rule, in moderation. If they find that the new law interferes with their perfectly legitimate customs in this regard, they will leave Rhode Island for some more liberal and sensible state; and Rhode Island will be so much the poorer, and so much the wiser. No decent man will submit to be put in the category of criminals because a few hysterical women and unbalanced men think that the use of alcohol is as much a crime as its abuse.”—Puck, August 4th, 1886.

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PUCK, June 21st, 1882.

The cartoon suggested by the “First Annual Picnic of the Knights of Labor” can hardly be said to belong to Puck’s famous group of labor cartoons. Its appearance preceded by some four years the great discussion of the labor question; and it is essentially what is known to artists as a “situation” picture, aiming at nothing more than the simple presentation of a fact. But it is curious to note that it was called forth by the futile strikes in the iron mill region, and even at that early date the editorial comments accompanying the cartoon ascribed the anomalous condition of affairs principally to the inequalities of fortune engendered by the protective system. The comments close thus: “It is not extravagant wages that the workman wants, it is purchasing power with the wages he does earn.”

PUCK, March 17th, 1886.

It should be distinctly stated that this cartoon is not to be regarded as having a general or abstract application. It appeared during the first street-railway strikes in New York; and the lesson it tries to teach was addressed especially to the corporations which, acting as common carriers and holding valuable franchises, were putting the public to great loss and inconvenience in carrying on a protracted struggle with their employees, wherein there was little doubt that right and justice were entirely on the workmen’s side.

However, this was the beginning of the great labor struggle that did so much to clear the minds of the people on the great question of the inter-relation of Capital and Labor. Puck’s forecast was almost prophetic. The editorial, which rebukes the greed of the corporations, points out that the strikes which they had precipitated could only serve to teach the workmen to abuse the right to strike; and goes on to say: “They are not more wise, more temperate, more just than their employers. The employers, having power, have misused it. They will likewise misuse power. What could be expected otherwise? Where they have the upper hand, they will tyrannize. They will strike and paralyze business, not only to enforce just demands, but to enforce unjust demands. Their employers will use the power of money to retaliate as best they may. A war, a veritable Civil War is begun, to which who can see the end?”

PUCK, June 15th, 1887.

Incredible as it may seem, the hare-brained theories of Mr. Henry George as to the communistic ownership of land received at one time a most unmerited toleration from people who would not have been suspected of sympathy with such vagaries. That he and his partner McGlynn did not accomplish the mischief they set out to do was no fault of theirs. When this cartoon was drawn, June 15th, 1887, they seemed to be perilously near to attaining their end. The reason that they failed was that, as is usual in this country, Horse Sense ultimately triumphed over Hysteria.

PUCK, May 18th, 1887.

Mr. Henry George no doubt found his account in catering to the unruly and turbulent in 1887, but it is doubtful if Father McGlynn, the Roman Catholic Priest who got such a bad attack of the George doctrine that he earned for himself several years of suspension from his priestly functions, made as much out of it as his more astute colleague. But between them they made a great deal of noise, and Puck did what he could to counteract their influence. With this cartoon on May 18th, 1887, appeared the following editorial advice to the laboring man:

“Don’t be a laboring man—that is, labor, but as an employer rather than as an employee. You have got to serve your apprenticeship to poverty—so has everybody else, except the comparatively few who inherit large fortunes. But be diligent in your apprenticeship, and it will be mastership in the end. Work with this one idea in view—that some day you will have earned and saved enough to go into business for yourself. Then you can employ some other poor man, who would else go hungry; and you can treat him well and give him a chance to make money in his turn. That is the way of the world. It is not a bad way, if you take it bravely and cheerfully. If you refuse to take it in the right spirit, if you sulk and whine and call upon labor organizations to protect you, and cry for special legislation to right wrongs which you can’t even define—why, you will find it a pretty hard way. It is hard on shirks, idlers, skulkers, and men who do half-hearted work. But it is a way that is as old as the rising of the sun; a way that will be the same when the last sun sets on this world, and all the McGlynns and Georges and Anti-Poverty Clubs in creation will not change it. It is the good old way of duty, and it existed before Labor Leagues were thought of.”

PUCK, October 26th, 1887.

To realize the terrible truth of this picture, it is necessary to remember that trades-union tyranny cuts both ways. At a little earlier date Puck explained the situation thus:

“We read in the papers that such and such a body of working-men has struck for higher wages, by command of such and such a union. Popular sympathy is at once aroused in behalf of the underpaid laborer and the benevolent union that has taken charge of his interests. But the public does not know that the union which orders that the workman’s pay shall be so high also orders that it shall be no higher. When the union says to the employer: ‘You shall pay this man two dollars a day,’ it likewise says to the man: ‘You shall not receive more than two dollars a day. If you take ten cents more of your employer, every man in the place must receive a proportionate increase in his wages, or you must give the ten cents back. If you do not obey us, we will fine you. If you will not pay the fine, we will turn you out of the union. We will not let you work in any office where there are union men. If you get work in a non-union shop, we will boycott you, we will boycott your fellow working-men, we will boycott your employers, we will boycott every man who sells you food or gives you lodging.’”

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PUCK, May 19th, 1886.

The labor struggle of 1886 was not far advanced before the agency of the professional agitator became apparent—to those, at least, who honestly tried to look below the surface of things. That the whole fight was got up and kept up by these false friends of the laboring man, and that they were the only gainers by the disorder of the time is well known now. But it was not so well known then, and when this cartoon was put forth it had all the interest that attaches to the bold presentation of a truth for which the public is not prepared.

“The Suckers of the Working-man’s Sustenance” was published in Puck of May 19th, 1886. The three bearded men under the table have features which more or less suggest those of certain professional agitators of the hour—John Most, the editor of a dirty little paper that preached blood-and-thunder anarchy, and a couple of other scamps of the same sort.

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PUCK, October 20th, 1886.

The part that Mr. Henry George played in the troublous days of 1886 was probably profitable to himself, and to no one else. He started in with a reputation of a sincere and high-minded philosopher somewhat in advance of his time, but the moment he got the Socialist nomination for Mayor of New York, he turned into as frank and downright a demagogue as ever tried to tempt a mob with promise of the pillage of the rich.

“We are sincerely pleased to see that Mr. Henry George has come out frankly and made his canvass on the basis of an out-and-out alliance with the Anarchists. He no longer pretends to belong among the respectable reformers; he arrays his followers squarely and honestly against the law and the established order of things. He was a sanguine theorist so long as he kept at book-making. Now that he has taken to talking, he is a thorough-going, zealous demagogue of the old-fashioned sort. ‘Vote for me,’ he cries to the lawless, the idle and the improvident, ‘and I will give you free rides and free land; and the police shall be muzzled, and all laws that you do not like shall be repealed. A contract shall no longer be sacred, and if any man has wealth, he shall share it with you. The land of the rich shall be confiscated, and you may boycott to your hearts’ content.’ It may be doubted whether this is the right way to win favor with decent citizens; but it is Mr. George’s way of going to work.”

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PUCK, April 28th, 1886.

The series of cartoons on the labor question which Mr. Keppler contributed to Puck during the years of 1886 and 1887 certainly attracted more attention, and probably did more to influence public opinion than any series of pictures that ever appeared in the paper. They were drawn at a time of great public excitement, when fools, fanatics and unprincipled adventurers were tempting honest laboring-men into all manner of lawlessness and improper use of physical force. The American public had for the first time been introduced to that ugly thing, the “Boycott,” and the Anarchists were seizing the opportunity afforded by the general agitation to spread their infernal doctrines among the working-men. Of course, under such circumstances, the air was full of the hysterical shrieks of the excitable people who thought that all law and order were to vanish from the face of the earth. The value of these clear and direct pictorial expositions was great indeed, in that time of trouble, doubt and perplexity.

Puck said of Trades-Union tyranny on April 28th, 1886: “The boycott business is bad. But it is an extravagant, monstrous, impossible thing, that the laws of a free country must crush out, sooner or later. This other evil flourishes in secret and strikes at the laborer’s self-respect. It is part of such a tyranny as no employer or body of employers ever dared to dream of establishing. Every working-man who wants to do something, to be something in the world—something better than the spy-ridden slave of a secret society—should rise up to fight it. There is no need of general organization for this purpose. Wherever one brave man, or a handful of brave men, stands boldly up and insists on every man’s natural right to make his own price for his labor, to sell it for what he chooses to sell it for, a blow will be struck in the cause of the laboring man’s independence. And it rests with the laboring man to work out his own salvation.”

PUCK, May 28th, 1890.

Of all the disreputable schemes for illicit money-making that ever flourished in this country, the Louisiana lottery is probably the most iniquitous and inexcusable. No agency of modern times has done more to send boys to the devil, to tempt unprotected women into squandering their subsistence, and to lure decent men from their daily duty by the temptation of illegitimate gain. At the best, every public lottery is a danger to the community; but of all public lotteries of modern times, the Louisiana lottery is easily the worst and most dangerous. At no time has it enjoyed the reputation of being even what is known as a square gambling game. An honest lottery—that is, a lottery honestly conducted—may be profitable to the people who get it up. But the Louisiana lottery has never earned the name of being honestly conducted in any respect. Its only claim to respectability—and it is the thinnest sort of a claim—has lain in its employment of two ex-confederate officers, General Jubal T. Early and General P. G. T. Beauregard as the overseers of its drawings. The fact that they were ex-officers of the confederate army alone gave these men a right to consideration. Personally, such adventurers could be bought by the pound, like a side of pork, for any purpose.

This cartoon appeared at a time when the state of Louisiana was making a vigorous attempt to rid itself of this hideous disgrace. The attempt was but partially successful. Dauphin, the original agent of this infamous concern, is dead, but his successors’ advertisement is still to be found in certain public prints where everybody can see it, except the United States District Attorney.

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PUCK, December 7th, 1887.

There is a marvelous pregnancy of significance in this cartoon; as we can not but see when we think that, at the re-assembling of Congress in December, 1887, one of the first questions it had to confront was the question of the Surplus. The revenues of the government, especially those coming from customs duties, were so vast that an enormous, useless, cumbersome and dangerous surplus was steadily piling itself up in the United States Treasury. It was the expectation of the people that Congress would pass laws reducing the customs duties. But the only tariff legislation made by Congress between that date and the appearance of this book has tended to increase rather than to lower these duties. And yet, as these pages go to press, the latest report of the Secretary of the Treasury announces that this surplus is so nearly wiped out that, unless the new administration takes measures to the contrary, there will be a deficit within a year. This is a curious, definitive accounting of a four years’ test of a peculiar latter-day theory of political economy. It is not wonderful that a practical people insisted on the abandonment of the experiment.

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PUCK, March 16th, 1887.

That Mr. Cleveland during his first term was the object of more newspaper criticism than a President usually receives was due to a combination of circumstances. He was the first Democratic President elected in a quarter of a century; he was elected in part by Republican or Independent votes, and he had incurred the enmity of a faction of his own party. Nor were his ideas of the duties and responsibilities of government calculated to please a certain numerous and noisy class of Democratic politicians who were “out for the spoils.” On March 16th, 1887, Puck commented thus upon the situation:

“It is pretty hard for a practical politician and a strict party-man to toil away, day after day, editing a great paper and moulding public opinion at two or three cents per daily mould, and to see public opinion doing its own moulding all the time, in just the way it should not. It is disheartening—it is hard on a truly great editor. And yet to such misery are some of our most prominent moulders subjected. They toil unceasingly to show to President Cleveland the error of his ways—giving the public an incidental glimpse—and the more they show it to him, the less he sees it—and the less the public sees it. He goes on and does his work as he promised to do it, and the public seems to be thoroughly well pleased with him. But it is hard on the moulders.”

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PUCK, November 19th, 1890.

Subsequent events have proved that there was no mistake made in attributing the Republican defeat of 1890 to the effect of the McKinley Bill. Puck of November 19th, in enumerating various possible causes for the turn-over, says to the Republicans: “Do not distress yourselves to decide which sort of cake gave you the stomach-ache. You have eaten all the sorts that there were. Any one would have been enough.” Further, the editorial tells the leaders of the defeated party that they have passed “a bill, the like of which could not be drawn up elsewhere, unless it were in Bedlam, than in the Fifty-first Congress. It is called the McKinley Bill; but it ought to be called ‘A Bill to Raise Prices and to Make Life Harder for Everybody except a Few Prosperous Manufacturers.’ So mad a production was this bill that it actually put a tariff tax on tin-plates—something that every man, woman and child uses—not because any tin-plates are made in this country, but because some day, some man, somewhere, might wish to think of making them! And on top of all that, to add gratuitous insult to wanton injury, you raise the price of tobacco, so that every man can have a daily reminder that you don’t care how hard you make life for him. Do you think of anything calculated to irritate and enrage the citizen which you have forgotten to treat him to? Do you wonder that you will sit in the next House with a total representation hardly more than half the size of the Democrats’ clear majority? Nobody else wonders. If the Democrats, after they have been long in power, become half as arrogant, selfish and neglectful of duty as you became, they will be turned out of their places, too, if the people have to fill their seats with Farmers’ Alliance candidates.”

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PUCK, March 26th, 1890.

The Senate of the United States has been called the pleasantest club in the country, and perhaps it is. It is certainly a very pleasant club, and it is not unfair to say that very large entrance fees have been collected in certain State legislatures from gentlemen whose wealth constituted their only claim to be admitted to it. But, in view of the fact that the people of the United States pay the members of this delightful club reasonably generous salaries for belonging to it, it may be questioned whether it does not exceed its privileges in keeping up its indulgence in what are known as “Executive Sessions.” There was a time in the dim and distant past when Executive Sessions were rarely secret, and had some excuse in reason and common-sense. But it is many years now since there has been an Executive Session that was not promptly and fully reported in every paper that would give space to its generally unimportant doings. It is, no doubt, a pleasant thing for a Senator to have the doors of the Senate-Chamber closed, and to smoke his cigar in lazy comfort while the reading clerk monotonously and perfunctorily, but as unobtrusively as possible, drones through the thousand and one articles of the treaty to which the law-maker is supposed to be giving his statesman-like attention in spite of the fact that its acceptance or rejection has been decided upon in party caucus weeks or months before. But the people of the United States pay the Senator, and the people of the United States built the gallery in the Senate Chamber, and they really have a right to sit there at all times during his business hours. It is a right that they will sooner or later insist upon. We do not know, however, that there is any serious objection to letting the Senator smoke while they look at him.

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PUCK, March 5th, 1890.

It is a curious fact, to which Puck has called attention more than once, that the important post of Speaker of the House of Representatives has been peculiarly unlucky for members of the Republican party. Between 1863 and 1890, when this cartoon appeared, four Republicans and three Democrats had occupied the chair. The three Democrats, Michael C. Kerr, Samuel J. Randall and John G. Carlisle, were all men of unblemished reputation, popular in their party and well liked and thoroughly respected on the other side of the House. They all performed their duties creditably, and retired with honor. But to the four Republicans it proved to be a position fraught with misfortune. The first, Schuyler Colfax, was forced into retirement by the discovery of his connection with the terrible Crédit Mobilier iniquity. The second Republican speaker was Mr. Blaine, and it was while he was in the chair that he became involved in the Little Rock and Fort Smith transaction, which, more than anything else, caused his defeat for the Presidency in 1884. The next Republican speaker was Mr. John W. Keifer—but it is really unfair and insulting to the Republican party to call Keifer a Republican. Of Keifer the best thing that can be said is that he was an accident and that he did not happen again. The fourth speaker of the Republican party was Mr. Thomas B. Reed, a gentleman of fine parts and high character, who was misled by his natural strength of will into adopting a policy of tyrannical unfairness toward his political opponents, which earned for him the nick-name of “Czar Reed,” and probably contributed largely to the revulsion of feeling which produced the famous “turn-over” of November, 1890.

PUCK, January 21st, 1891.

The talk of the hour often renders editorial comment unnecessary at the time a cartoon is published, though its republication may make it necessary to accompany it with a word or two of elucidation. It seems proper to say that this picture is not meant for an outright arraignment of the Indian policy of our government, but as a reminder that there was no consistency in lavishing money and care upon foreign objects while far more pressing necessities much nearer home fail to receive proper attention. There is no doubt that for a long time our Indian Agencies have stood in need of a thorough overhauling; and our neglect in this matter was emphasized at the time of the publication of this cartoon, (January 21st, 1891,) by the extraordinary activity of the philanthropists who sought to express their sympathy with famine-stricken Russia by making Uncle Sam go down into his pocket for a relief-fund.

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PUCK, August 28th, 1889.

The first attempt of the Tammany Hall organization to swing into line with the national democracy, and to put municipal government in New York on a business-like basis, was received with a general incredulity that was natural enough under the circumstances. In a sense it was a most unfortunate thing that Tammany’s sincerity in the purpose of self-improvement was not more readily recognized by those whose opposition to Tammany rule was based on a broad-minded and reasonable distrust of factional control of party power. When Tammany Hall began to expel objectionable members and to put only able and trustworthy men in charge of public affairs, that powerful organization removed what had hitherto been the chief reproach against it. Yet the corruption and inefficiency which had characterized Tammany’s management in the past were but an accident of factional rule and not an organic element. This most obvious objection to the Tammany organization being removed, the average citizen was quite willing to accept the idea of Tammany Hall’s supremacy without reflecting at all upon the danger of allowing a part of a party to substitute its will for that of the majority.

Unhappily—if government by faction is a dangerous and objectionable scheme, as Puck has always contended—the most earnest and conspicuous opponents of Tammany Hall were rather theorists than practical folk. They were not in touch with the people, and had little knowledge of plain work-a-day life. In the common phrase, they meant well, but they didn’t know. In the face of a most striking and remarkable advance in efficient and economical municipal government they continued their fight against Tammany on the same lines upon which they had begun it years before, when the organization was undoubtedly open to the charge of gross malfeasance in office. This was a mistake, tactically—that it was also a mistake, practically, time may show. Tammany had little difficulty in showing that, whatever she might have done in the past, she had now taken to governing New York uncommonly well and uncommonly cheaply. That was enough to satisfy the minds of most citizens as to the advisability of renewing the contract with Tammany; and in 1890 and in 1892 Tammany riveted her rule upon New York as tight as a collar on a steamboat shaft. No matter what that rule may be, good, bad or indifferent, it is factional rule, and as such, to Puck’s thinking, dangerous and founded on injustice. If it ever brings mischief to New York, we must not forget that the responsibility lies with the theorists who made opposition hopeless by persistently conducting it upon untenable grounds.

PUCK, August 13th, 1890.

President Garfield had the opportunity of choosing for his Secretary of State the man who, in the national convention, had worked hard and almost successfully to secure the nomination of another candidate. But Mr. Garfield declined Mr. Conkling’s assistance, and lived to see his course receive the emphatic approval of his party. He chose for his “next friend” Mr. James G. Blaine, with whom he was entirely in accord, although Mr. Blaine had for many years been a candidate for the nomination. Four years later Mr. Blaine got the nomination and was defeated at the polls. Four years after that, again Mr. Blaine yielded the nomination to Mr. Harrison; and, when Mr. Harrison was elected, became Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine made no pretence of personal regard for Mr. Harrison or of devotion to his interests; in fact, during the last two years of Mr. Harrison’s term of office the probability of Mr. Blaine’s opposition in the next national convention was a constant menace to Mr. Harrison, who earnestly desired a re-nomination. Mr. Blaine’s health, however, was far from good; and he delayed putting himself forward as a candidate until it was entirely too late to obtain the support which he might normally have counted upon. The cartoon shows Mr. Blaine in the gloomy and depressing character of Poe’s “Raven,” croaking unfriendly discouragement to Mr. Harrison’s fond dreams of future success. In a rough parody of the famous poem, Puck, on August 13th, 1890, represented President Harrison as saying of the Blaine raven “perched above his chamber door:”

Italian Opera will succeed German at the Metropolitan.

—Daily Papers.

PUCK, February 11th, 1891.

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PUCK, December 5th, 1888.

The necessary ingredients of a Christmas punch are typified in this cartoon by four female forms. The verses that accompanied it in the Christmas Puck for 1888 were as follows: