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A Selection of Cartoons from Puck cover

A Selection of Cartoons from Puck

Chapter 44: BETWEEN SLAVERY AND STARVATION.
By Joseph Ferdinand Keppler
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About This Book

This collection gathers satirical pictorial essays and caricatures originally published in a humor magazine, pairing sharp visual exaggeration with allegorical scenes to comment on political and social issues of the late nineteenth century. An introductory essay explains the artist’s German-influenced approach that fuses caricature and cartooning into dramatic parables, and the plates reproduce large, detailed cartoons with accompanying captions and an index to aid interpretation. The volume emphasizes visual wit, topical parody, and the interplay of character drawing and symbolic narrative.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND STARVATION.

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.’”