Ruination & Despair

We had hoped to release this highly pertinent cartoon by Frederick G. Cooper (1883-1962) as a postcard, but unfortunately the reduction from full-page to postcard-size resulted in an unacceptable loss of print quality (click on the image for a better view). The original appeared in Life on November 30, 1911.

Aware of my professional interest in unsavory things of this kind, Dr. Hurlbutt has kindly lent me his copy of Das perfide Albion, a German propaganda pamphlet from the First World War. Written by a minor pan-German activist named Alfred Geiser (1868-1937), this work dates from approximately 1915 and includes a number of fiercely anti-British cartoons, some of which seem worth reproducing here for their historical and artistic interest. (Continue reading . . .)

Although Life’s cartoonists traded freely in offensive ethnic, racial, and religious stereotypes, they could set these aside when necessary to go after bigger game, such as contemporary women’s fashion.

This tartly observed cartoon by “M.C.G.” appeared on December 7, 1899.

This cartoon may have appeared 92 years ago, but it seems more timely now than it possibly could have then. Drawn by Leo Birchansky (1887-1949), it was published in Life on July 5, 1917.

Everyone is familiar with Wall Street’s bulls and bears, but how many of us remember that this iconography used to include a third animal? In the early decades of the last century, cartoonists regularly drew lambs to depict the small investors who were (at best) fleeced, or (at worst) slaughtered, by their larger and fiercer competitors. Presumably this was too unflattering a view of our titans of finance to be allowed to survive.

Below is one of the best of the many cartoons published on this theme. Drawn by Edwin George Lutz (1868-?), it appeared in Life on July 21, 1910. Note the use of stock-ticker tape to suspend the lamb.

Most of the humor that Life magazine’s cartoonists attempted to extract from the women’s suffrage movement is predictable, misogynistic, and tiresome. This cartoon by R. M. Crosby (1876-1945) seems to me a worthwhile exception that relies instead upon social incongruity for its effect.

The cartoon appeared on January 13, 1910, at a time when many of the mostly upper-class members of Britain’s militant suffrage movement were actively trying to get themselves arrested as a protest tactic.

Alethea has been hinting at decidedly unpleasant consequences if I don’t produce some saleable new cards in pretty short order.

In the hope of mollifying her, I have decided to resurrect the fine cartoon on the left, first published in Life on May Day, 1931. Unfortunately the work is unsigned, and I cannot readily identify the cartoonist. It is clearly the same individual, however, who drew the no less diverting cartoon below, dating from July 4, 1930.

Given the success our series on the cartoons of the Great Depression has enjoyed in these difficult times, I thought our readership might also wish to see this mordant work by Rodney F. Thomson (1878-1941) from Life magazine, February 6, 1913.

As I noted last time, Life’s editorial line began to turn against Roosevelt in 1935 and became more strident in 1936. Inevitably, the same was true of Life’s attitude toward Roosevelt’s New Deal. (Continue reading . . .)

After ignoring the newly inaugurated Franklin Roosevelt almost entirely in 1933, Life suddenly embraced the Democratic president in 1934 with several openly admiring cartoons. But as its editorial line shifted in a conservative direction in 1935, the magazine mostly ignored him again, only to launch into a run of implacably hostile cartoons in 1936. At the same time, 1934 and 1935 marked new lows in the output of cartoons related, even indirectly, to the Depression, while 1936 saw a slight uptick, as the magazine lit into Roosevelt and the New Deal. (Continue reading . . .)

Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide victory over Herbert Hoover in November 1932 and his inauguration to the presidency in March 1933 both passed unremarked in Life’s cartoons, while commentary on the Great Depression itself remained at the same low level set in 1932. There is thus not much to choose from here, which is not to say the cartoons that were published are without interest. (Continue reading . . .)

In 1931, Life published something like seventy cartoons on one aspect or another of the economic crisis. In 1932, that number plunged to around a dozen. Only part of this drop was due to the shift from weekly to monthly publication (the first monthly issue, in December 1931, had included no fewer than eight Depression cartoons). Instead the main reason must surely have been an editorial decision to downplay the unpleasant topic, in recognition of the fact that after two years the public was heartily sick of the Depression. (Continue reading . . .)