The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature

PART IV
THE END OF THE CENTURY

CHAPTER XXIII
THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN CARICATURE

During the period covered by the present chapter the foundation of the two leading American comic weeklies, Puck and Judge, the former in 1877 and the latter in 1881, led to a distinct advance in political caricature in this country. It also made it possible for the first time to draw an intelligent comparison between the tendencies of caricature in England and in America. No one can look over the early files of Puck and Judge and compare them with Punch for the corresponding years without being struck with the contrast, not merely in methods of drawing and printing, but in the whole underlying spirit. For the past half century Punch has adhered faithfully to its original attitude of neutrality upon questions of party politics. Its aim has been to represent the weight of public opinion in a sober and conservative spirit; to discountenance and rebuke the excesses of whichever party is in power; to commemorate the great national calamities, as well as the occasions of national rejoicings. If it somewhat overstepped its established bounds in its repeated attacks upon Lord Beaconsfield because his foreign policy was regarded with distrust, it made amends with an eloquent tribute at the time of that statesman's death. And if on one occasion it cartooned him in the guise of the melancholy Dane, with broad impartiality it travestied his great rival, Gladstone, a month or two later, in precisely the same character. Taken as a whole, the English cartoons are not so distinctly popular in tone as those in this country. The underlying thought is apt to be more cultured, more bookish, so to speak; to take the form of parodies upon Shakspere and Dante, Dickens and Scott. And yet, taking them all in all, it would be difficult to point out any parallel series of cartoons which, after the lapse of years, require so little explanation to make them intelligible, or which cover in so comprehensive a manner the current history of the world.

On the other hand, the typical American cartoon of a generation ago concerned itself but little with questions of international interest, while in its treatment of domestic affairs it was largely lacking in the dignity and restraint which characterized the British school. Being founded upon party politics, its purpose was primarily not to reflect public opinion, but to mold it; to make political capital; to win votes by fair means, if possible, but to win them. From their very inception Puck and Judge, as the mouthpieces of their respective parties, have exerted a formidable power, whose far-reaching influence it would be impossible to gauge, especially during the febrile periods of the Presidential campaigns. At these times the animosity shown in some of the cartoons seems rather surprising, when looked at from the sober vantage ground of later years. Political molehills were exaggerated into mountains, and even those elements of vulgar vituperation and cheap personal abuse—features of political campaigns which we are happily outgrowing—were eagerly seized upon for the purpose of pictorial satire. The peculiar bitterness which marked the memorable campaign between Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Blaine in 1884 was strongly mirrored in the political caricature of the time. It marked the highwater line of the element of purely personal abuse in comic art. In the end the extreme measures to which each of the rival parties resorted during that year had very beneficial effects, for after the election the nation, in calmer mood, grew ashamed at the thought of its violence and bitterness, and subsequent campaigns have consequently been much more free from these objectionable features. Mr. Harrison, Mr. Bryan, Mr. McKinley, and Mr. Roosevelt have all been assailed from many different points. But we are no longer in the mood to tolerate attempts to rake up alleged personal scandals and to use them in the pamphlet and the cartoon. Enough of this was done by both parties in 1884 to last us for at least a generation. There are cartoons which appeared in Puck and Judge which even at this day we should not think of reprinting, and which the publications containing them and the artists who drew them would probably like to forget.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC

It is not strange that during these years American cartoonists concerned themselves but little with matters outside of their own country. For more than a decade after the close of the Franco-Prussian War there were very few episodes which assumed international importance, and still fewer in which the United States had any personal interest. France was amply occupied in recovering from the effects of her exhaustive struggle; United Germany was undergoing the process of crystallizing into definite form. Europe, as a whole, had no more energy than was needed to attend to domestic affairs and to keeping a jealous eye upon English ambition in Egypt and Russian aggression in the Balkan States. For some little time after the French Commune echoes of that internecine struggle were still to be found in the work of caricaturists, both in France and Germany. Before taking final leave of that veteran French artist, Honoré Daumier, it seems necessary to allude briefly to a few of the cartoons of that splendidly tragic series of his old age dealing with the France which, having undergone the horrors of the Germanic invasion and of the Commune, is shattered but not broken, and begins to look forward with wistful eyes to a time when she shall have recovered her strength and her prosperity. One of the most striking of these cartoons represents France as a deep-rooted tree which has been bent and rent by the passing whirlwind. "Poor France! The branches are broken, but the trunk holds always." Simple as the design is, the artist by countless touches of light and of shadow has given it a somber significance which long remains in the memory. It was to Napoleon that Daumier bitterly ascribed the misfortunes of La Patrie, and in these cartoons he lost no opportunity of attacking Napoleonic legend. Stark and dead, nailed to the Book of History is the Imperial eagle. "You will remain outside, nailed fast on the cover, a hideous warning to future generations of Frenchmen," is Daumier's moral. Of brighter nature is the cartoon called "The New Year." It represents the dawning of 1872, and portrays France sweeping away the last broken relics of her period of disaster.

In Germany, also, one finds a few tardy cartoons bearing upon Napoleon III. Even in the Fliegende Blätter, a periodical which throughout its history has confined itself, with few exceptions, to social satire, perennial skits upon the dignified Herr Professor, the self-important young lieutenant, the punctilious university student, one famous cartoon appeared late in the year 1871, entitled "The Root of All Evil." It portrayed Napoleon III., as a gigantic, distorted vegetable of the carrot or turnip order, his flabby features distended into tuberous rotundity, the familiar hall-mark of his sweeping mustache and imperial lengthened grotesquely into the semblance of a threefold root. Still better known is a series of cartoons which ran through half a dozen numbers of the Fliegende Blätter, entitled "The Franco-Prussian War: A Tragedy in Five Acts," in which the captions are all clever applications of lines from Schiller's "Maid of Orleans". As compared with the work of really great cartoonists, this series has little to make it memorable. But as an expression of a victorious nation's good-natured contempt, its tendency to view the whole fierce struggle of 1870-71 as an amusing farce enacted by a company of grotesque marionettes, it is not without significance and interest.

Almost as Germanic in sentiment and in execution as the "Maid of Orleans" series in the Fliegende Blätter was the curious little volume entitled "The Fight at Dame Europa's School," written and illustrated by Thomas Nast. This skit, which was printed in New York after the close of the War, contained thirty-three drawings which are remarkable chiefly in that they are comparatively different from anything else that Nast ever did and bear a striking resemblance to the war cartoons of the German papers. The Louis Napoleon of this book is so much like the Louis Napoleon of the Fliegende Blätter that one is bound to feel that one was the direct inspiration of the other. The text of the book, though nothing astonishing, serves its purpose in elucidating the drawings. It tells of the well-ordered educational establishment kept by Dame Europa in which the five largest boys acted as monitors, to keep the unruly pupils in order. These boys were Louis, William, Aleck, Joseph, and John. If a dispute arose among any of the smaller boys, the monitors had to examine into its cause, and, if possible, to settle it amicably. Should it be necessary to fight the matter out, they were to see fair play, stop the encounter when it had gone far enough, and at all times to uphold justice, and to prevent tyranny and bullying. In this work Master Louis and Master John were particularly prominent. There was a tradition in the school of a terrific row in times past, when a monitor named Nicholas attacked a very dirty little boy called Constantine. John and Louis pitched in, and gave Nicholas such a thrashing that he never got over it, and soon afterward left the school. Now each of the upper boys had a little garden of his own in which he took great pride and interest. In the center of each garden there was an arbor, fitted up according to the taste and means of its owner. Louis had the prettiest arbor of all, while that of John was a mere tool-house. When the latter wished to enjoy a holiday he would punt himself across the brook and enjoy himself in the arbor of his friend Louis. By the side of Louis's domain was that of William, who, though proud of his own garden, never went to work in it without casting an envious glance on two little flower beds which now belonged to Louis, but which ought by rights he thought to belong to him. Over these flower beds he often talked with his favorite fag, a shrewd lad named Mark, full of deep tricks and dodges.

"There is only one way to do it," said Mark. "If you want the flower beds, you must fight Louis for them, and I believe you will lick him all to smash; but you must fight him alone."

"How do you mean?" replied William.

"I mean, you must take care that the other monitors don't interfere in the quarrel. If they do, they will be sure to go against you. Remember what a grudge Joseph owes you for the licking you gave him not along ago; and Aleck, though to be sure Louis took little Constantine's part against him in that great bullying row, is evidently beginning to grow jealous of your influence in the school. You see, old fellow, you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully that you are getting really quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time when you were quite a little chap!"

Thereupon the astute Mark designs a plan by which William may provoke the encounter while making Louis seem the aggressor. And so on, under the guise of fistfight between two schoolboys, Nast tells of all the events of the struggle of 1871; the outbreak of hostilities, the Baptism of Fire, Sedan, the German march on Paris, the Siege, and the different attitudes assumed by the other monitors.

CHAPTER XXV
GENERAL EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

Punch, however, is really the most satisfactory and comprehensive source for the history of political caricature during the years following the siege of Paris down to 1886. From the indefatigable pencil of Tenniel and Sambourne we get an exhaustive and pungent record of the whole period of Disraeli's ascendency, the fruits of his much-criticised foreign policy, England's attitude regarding the Suez Canal, her share in the Turco-Russian conflict, her acquisition of the island of Cyprus, the fall of Khartoum, the Fenian difficulties of 1885, and the history of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule policy.

Throughout the cartoons of this period there is no one figure which appears with more persistent regularity than that of Lord Beaconsfield, and with scarcely an exception he is uniformly treated with an air of indulgent contempt. Of course, his strongly marked features, the unmistakably Semitic cast of nose and lips, the closely curled black ringlets clustering above his ears, all offered irresistible temptation to the cartoonist, with the result that throughout the entire series, in whatever guise he is portrayed, the suggestion of charlatan, of necromancer, of mountebank, of one kind or another of the endless genus "fake," is never wholly absent. Even in Tenniel's cartoon, "New Crowns for Old," which commemorates the passage of the Royal Titles Bill, conferring upon the Queen the title of Empress of India, the scene is confessedly adapted from Aladdin, and "Dizzy" is portrayed as a slippery Oriental with an oily smile, in the act of trading a gaudy-looking piece of tinsel headgear for the more modest, but genuine, regal crown topped with the cross of Malta. The bestowal of the title of Earl of Beaconsfield upon Mr. Disraeli, which followed within a very few weeks, was too good a chance for satire for Mr. Tenniel to let pass, and he hit it off in a page entitled "One Good Turn Deserves Another," in which Victoria, with the Imperial crown of India upon her head, is conferring a coronet upon "Dizzy," kneeling obsequiously at her feet.

At this time the one international question which bade fair to assume any considerable importance was that of Russia's attitude in the Balkan peninsula. Already in June, 1886, we find Punch portraying the Czar of Russia as a master of the hounds, just ready to let slip the leash from his "dogs of war." Servia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, in pursuit of the unsuspecting Sultan of Turkey, while John Bull in the guise of a policeman, is cautiously peering from behind a fence, evidently wondering whether this is a case which calls for active interference. It is only a few days later that the outbreak of an insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina hastens a decision on the part of Europe to "keep the Ring" and let the Sultan ward off the "dogs of war" single-handed—an incident duly commemorated in Punch on June 19. The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, however, aroused public sentiment throughout the Continent to such a degree that the Powers united in demanding an armistice. Tenniel's interpretation of this incident takes the form of a sick-chamber, in which the Sick Man of Europe is surrounded by a corps of illustrious physicians, Drs. Bull, William I., Francis Joseph and Company, who are firmly insisting that their patient shall swallow a huge pill labeled "Armistice"—"or else there's no knowing what might happen!" The protocol on Turkish affairs which soon after this was proposed by Russia and supported by Disraeli, forms the subject of two suggestive cartoons in Punch. The first, entitled "Pons Asinorum," depicts the protocol as a make-shift bridge supported on the docile shoulders of John Bull and the other European Powers, and spanning a lagoon entitled "Eastern Question." Over this bridge the Russian bear is stealthily crawling to his desired goal, his eye half closed in a sly wink, his sides bristling like a veritable arsenal with weapons. The second cartoon, alluding to the Porte's rejection of the protocol, represents Disraeli looking disconsolately upon a smoldering pile of powder kegs and ammunition, over which he has placed the protocol, twisted into the shape of a candle-snuffer. "Confound the thing! It is all ablaze!" he ejaculates, while Lord Hartington reminds him, "Ah, my dear D., paper will burn, you know!"

The next significant caricature in the Punch series belongs to the period of actual hostilities between Turkey and Russia, after Plevna had been completely invested and the Turks were at all points being steadily beaten back. This caricature, entitled "Tightening the Grip," showing the struggling Turk being slowly crushed to death in the relentless hug of the gigantic bear, may safely be left to speak for itself without further description. Meanwhile, England was watching with growing disquiet Russia's actions in the Balkans. In one cartoon of this period, Mr. Bull is bluntly refusing to be drawn into a game of "Blind Hookey" with the other European Powers. "Now then, Mr. Bull, we're only waiting for you," says Russia; and John Bull rejoins: "Thank you, I don't like the game. I like to see the cards!" Prince Bismarck at this time was doing his best to bring about an understanding between England and Russia, but the difficulties of the situation threatened to prove too much even for that veteran diplomat. Punch cleverly hit off the situation by representing Bismarck Æolus, the wind-god, struggling desperately with an unmanageable wind-bag, which is swelling threateningly in the direction of the East and assuming the form of a dangerous war-cloud. Eventually all misunderstandings were peacefully smoothed away at the Berlin Congress, which Tenniel commemorates with a cartoon showing "Dizzy" in the guise of a tight-rope performer triumphantly carrying the Sultan on his shoulders along a rope labeled "Congress," his inherent double-dealing being suggested by his balancing pole, which he sways back and forth indifferently, and the opposite ends of which are labeled "peace" and "war."

Comparatively few cartoons of this period touch upon American matters. All the more noteworthy is the one which Mr. Tenniel dedicated to the memory of President Garfield at the time of the latter's assassination. It is a worthy example of the artist's most serious manner, at once dignified and impressive. It bears the inscription, "A Common Sorrow," and shows a weeping Columbia clasped closely in the arms of a sorrowing and sympathetic Britannia.

M. Gambetta seldom received attention at the hands of English caricaturists; but in 1881, when the resignation of Jules Ferry and his colleagues resulted in the formation of a new ministry with Gambetta at the head, and both English and German newspapers were sarcastically saying that "the Gambetta Cabinet represented only himself," Punch had to have his little fling at the French statesman, portraying him as beaming with self-complacence, and striking an attitude in front of a statue of Louis XIV., while he echoes the latter's famous dictum, "L'État c'est moi!"

The tragedy of Khartoum formed the subject of several grim and forceful pages. "Mirage" was almost prophetic in its conception, representing General Gordon gazing across the desert, where, by the tantalizing refraction of the air, he can plainly see the advancing British hosts, which in reality are destined to arrive too late. "Too late," in fact, are the very words which serve as a caption of the next cartoon. Khartoum has fallen, and Britannia, having come upon a fruitless mission, stands a picture of despair, her face buried upon her arm, her useless shield lying neglected upon the ground.

CHAPTER XXVI
THOMAS NAST

It was not until late in the '60's, when Thomas Nast began his pictorial campaign in the pages of Harper's Weekly against the Ring which held New York in its clutches, that American caricature could claim a pencil which entitled it to any sort of consideration from the artistic point of view. Some of the cartoons which have been reproduced in earlier papers of this series have possessed unquestionable cleverness of invention and idea; for instance, many of those dealing with President Jackson's administration and his relations with the United States Bank, and some of the purely allegorical cartoons treating of slavery and of the Civil War. But in all these there was so much lacking; so many artistic shortcomings were covered up by the convenient loops. The artists felt themselves free from any obligation to give expression to the countenances of their subjects so long as the fundamental idea was there, and the loops offered an easy vehicle for the utterance of thoughts and feelings which a modern artist would feel obliged to express in the drawing itself—by a skillful quirk of the pencil, an added line, an exaggerated smile or frown. It was a thoroughly wooden school of caricature, in which one can find no trace of the splendid suggestion which the caricaturists should at that time have been drawing from contemporary masters of the art in France and England.

Although during the years of his fecundity Thomas Nast drew many cartoons bearing on events of international importance, his name will always be remembered, first of all, in connection with the series through which he held up the extravagances and iniquities of the Tweed Ring in the pillory of public opinion. He had decided convictions on other subjects. To the end of his life it was his nature to feel intensely, even in small matters. But his scorn and hatred of the corrupt organization that was looting New York became a positive mania, which was reflected in the cartoons which he literally hurled week after week against Tweed and his satellites. "I don't care what they write about me," said Tweed, "but can't you stop those terrible cartoons?" and in the end they, more than anything else, led to his downfall, his flight and his capture in Spain, where he was recognized by the police through the likeness Nast had drawn of him as a kidnaper. But in recognizing Nast's services in behalf of New York City it is not fair to overlook his work as a political caricaturist on broader issues. To him we owe also the Gratz Brown tag to Greeley's coat in the campaign of 1872, the "Rag Baby of Inflation," the Jackass as emblematic of the Democratic Party, the Labor Cap and the Full Dinner Pail, which in later years were so much developed by the cartoonists of Judge. And if to-day, at the beginning of the twentieth century, we have a school of caricature which for scope and craftsmanship is equal, if not superior, to that of any nation of Europe, it is only just to recognize that it was Thomas Nast who first gave American caricature a dignity and a meaning.

The earliest Presidential election which falls within the scope of the present chapter, that of 1872, antedates the establishment of American comic weeklies. The central figure in the few caricatures which have survived from that year was, of course, Horace Greeley, whose candidacy at one time was thought seriously to threaten the fortunes of the Republican Party. The caricatures themselves, with the exception of those drawn by Thomas Nast, show little improvement over the caricatures which were executed during the Civil War. The artists relied entirely upon the traditional loops to make them intelligible to the public, and the features of the political characters portrayed were expressionless and wooden. One of the best of this series was drawn in support of the Horace Greeley candidacy. Uncle Sam is represented as a landlord and President Grant as his tenant, a shiftless widow with a dog at her heels and a bottle of rum in the basket on her arm. The Widow Grant has come to ask for a new lease. "Well, Uncle Sam," she says, "I've called to see if you will let me have the White House for four years longer, as I find the place suits me very well." "No, Marm Grant," retorts Uncle Sam, shaking his head, "I reckon I'll do no such thing. I've had too many complaints about you from the neighbors during the last four years. I'm just sick of you and your tobacco smoke and bull pups, so I've given the lease to Honest Horace Greeley, who will take better care of the place than you have."

In another of this series Horace Greeley is represented as the entering wedge that is splitting the rock of the Republican Party. Greeley, with a paper hearing the words "Free Trade" in one hand and one bearing "Protection" in the other, is being hammered into the cleft in the Republican rock by a huge mallet—Democratic Nomination—wielded by Carl Schurz. "This is rather a novel position for a stanch old Republican like me," he says. "I begin to feel as if I was in a tight place." President Grant, with a cigar in his hand, is looking on complacently. "My friend," he calls out to Schurz, "you've got a soft thing on your wedge, but your mallet will kill the man." To which Schurz replies: "I don't care who's killed, if we succeed in defeating your election." Below, creeping furtively about the rock, are the figures of Dana, Sumner, Gratz Brown, Trumbull, Hall, Sweeny, Tweed, and Hoffman of the Ring. "Anything to beat Grant!" is the cry of these conspirators. "Honesty is the word to shout, there are so many rogues about," mutters Tweed. "Oh, how freely we'll win with Greeley," says Hall. "Anything to beat Grant. He wouldn't make me Collector for New York," are the words of Dana. The cartoon is a belated specimen of the school of American caricature which was in vogue in the days of President Jackson.

As that year was an important one in American history, these numbers can by no means he ignored, and despite their crude appearance when contrasted with the Puck of later days, they contain some of Keppler's most admirable work. For instance, there is the figure of the tattooed Columbia, the precursor of Gillam's famous Tattooed Man. This figure appeared in November, 1876, and was the idea of Charles Hauser, a member of the first editorial staff of the young weekly. The artist's idea of the unhappy condition of our nation is shown in the hideous tattooed designs with which Columbia's body is scarred from head to foot. We can read "Whisky Ring," "Black Friday," "Secession," "Tammany," "Election Frauds," "Corruption," "Civil War," "Credit Mobilier," and "Taxes." The figure is as repulsive as that which eight years later drove Mr. Blaine to frenzy.

A familiar device in the caricature of the later '70's was that of representing political figures as being headless and placing their heads in another part of the picture, so that you might adjust them to suit yourself. In this way the artist did not commit himself to prophecy and was enabled to please both parties. For instance, an excellent example of this is shown in the cartoon called "You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice," drawn by Keppler during the campaign of 1876. Of the two headless figures one is seated in the window of the White House gesticulating derisively at his beaten opponent. The other, thoroughly crushed and with a nose of frightfully exaggerated length—both Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hayes were rather large-nosed men—is leaning helplessly against the wall of the cold outside. At the bottom of the picture are the heads of the two candidates, which one might cut out and adjust as pleased himself.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS OF 1880 AND 1884

Probably no cartoon dealing with the Garfield-Hancock campaign of 1880 was more widely discussed than that called "Forbidding the Banns," drawn for Puck by Keppler. It was a cartoon which an American comic paper would publish to-day only after considerable hesitation, for there was in it the spirit of a less delicate age, a coarseness which was pardonable only when the genuine strength and humor of the complete work are taken into consideration. "Forbidding the Banns" shows a political wedding party at the altar with Uncle Sam as the reluctant and uncomfortable groom, General Garfield as the eager bride, and the figure of the ballot box as the officiating clergyman. The bridesmaids are Mr. Whitelaw Reid and Carl Schurz, with Murat Halstead bringing up the rear. The ceremony is well along and the contracting parties are about to be united when W. H. Barnum, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, rushes in shouting, "I forbid the banns!" and waving frantically the figure of a little baby marked "Credit Mobilier." The faces of all the bridal party show consternation at the unexpected interruption, while the bride protests coyly: "But it was such a little one."

The defeat of General Hancock in 1880 was commemorated by Keppler in Puck with the cartoon called "The Wake over the Remains of the Democratic Party." The ludicrous corpse of the defunct is stretched on a rough board and covered with a loose sheet. The lighted candles at the four corners protrude from the necks of bottles, and the mourners are indulging in a protracted carouse which seems destined to end in a free fight. In the center of the picture Kelly, with Ben Butler as a partner, is doing a dance in the most approved manner of Donnybrook Fair. All about there is the general atmosphere of turmoil and unnatural excitement, but the figures of Hewitt, Davis, Belmont, and English are stretched out in a manner indicating that the festivities of the night have proved too much for them.

As has already been pointed out, the political caricature commemorating the Cleveland-Blaine campaign of 1884 was chiefly remarkable for its extraordinary rancor. There was little, if any, really good-natured satire underlying these cartoons; they were designed and executed vindictively, and their main object was to hurt. Mr. Cleveland's official record in Buffalo, and as Governor of New York, had been such as to cause many of the more liberal Republicans to support his candidacy and offered little to the political cartoonist, so the opponents of Republican caricature found it expedient to base their attacks on matters of purely personal nature.

Even in later years the cartoonist did not entirely refrain from this method of belittling Mr. Cleveland's capabilities. It was sneeringly said that much of the success of his administration was due to the charm, the tact, and the personal magnetism of Mrs. Cleveland, and this idea was the inspiration of a number of cartoons which were far from being in the best of taste. One of these which was not particularly offensive was that entitled "Mr. Cleveland's Best Card." It was simply a huge playing card bearing the picture of Mrs. Cleveland. Another much more obnoxious was a curious imitation of the famous French cartoon "Partant pour la Syrie," which was published in Paris after the flight of the Empress Eugénie.

The Democratic cartoonists, besides their use of the Tattooed Man idea and the alleged scandals in Mr. Blaine's political career, made a strong point of the soundness and cleanness of Mr. Cleveland's official record. A typical caricature of this nature was that drawn by Gillam called "Why They Dislike Him." It represents Mr. Cleveland as a lion lying on the rock of Civil Service Reform. Perched on the limb of a tree overhead are a group of chattering monkeys, his political enemies, who are hurling at him imprecations and abuse because he will not consent to serve as the cats-paw to pluck the chestnuts for them out of the political fire. Familiar faces among the group of noisy bandar-log are those of Croker, Butler, and Dana. Prostrate and helpless under the paw of the lion is a monkey with the face of Grady.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE INFLUENCE OF JOURNALISM

In looking backward over a century of caricature, it is interesting to ask just what it is that makes the radical difference between the cartoon of to-day and that of a hundred years ago. That there is a wide gulf between the comparative restraint of the modern cartoonist and the unbridled license of Gillray's or Rowlandson's grotesque, gargoyle types, is self-evident; that comic art, as applied to politics, is to-day more widespread, more generally appreciated, and in a quiet way more effective in molding public opinion than ever before, needs no argument. And yet, if one stops to analyze the individual cartoons, to take them apart and discover the essence of their humor, the incisive edge of their irony and satire, one finds that there is nothing really new in them; that the basic principles of caricature were all understood as well in the eighteenth century as in the nineteenth, and that, in many cases, the successful cartoon of to-day is simply the replica of an old one of a past generation, modified to fit a new set of facts. When Gilbert Stuart drew his famous "Gerrymander" cartoon, he was probably not the first artist to avail himself of the chance resemblance of the geographical contour of a state or country to some person or animal. He certainly was not the last. Again and again the map of the United States has been drawn so as to bring out some significant similarity, as recently when it was distorted into a ludicrous semblance of Mr. Cleveland, bending low in proud humility, the living embodiment of the principle, L'État c'est Moi; or again, just before our war with Spain, when it was so drawn as to present a capital likeness of Uncle Sam, the Atlantic and Gulf States forming his nose and mouth, the latter suggestively opened to take in Cuba, which is swimming dangerously near. Puck's famous "Tattooed Man" was only a new application of an idea that had been used before; while the representation of a group of leading politicians as members of a freak show, a circus, or a minstrel troop, is as old as minstrels or dime museums themselves. Few leading statesmen of the past half century have not at some time in their career been portrayed as Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Richard III.; while as for the conventional use of animals and symbolic figures to represent the different nations, the British Lion and the Russian Bear, Uncle Sam and French Liberty, these belong to the raw materials of caricature, dating back to its very inception as an art. And yet, while the means used are essentially the same as in the days of Hogarth and Cruikshank, the results are radically different.