Ruination & Despair

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 . . .)

Faced with declining sales, Life struggled to survive the disastrous downturn its cartoonists were so busy chronicling. In December 1931 the magazine switched from a weekly to a monthly format. Although individual issues were thicker, the net result of the change was to cut the annual page output of the magazine by approximately half. As the Depression continued, the publishers also attempted to cut costs by reducing the quality of the magazine’s paper stock (a sacrifice more lamentable today than it probably seemed at the time).  (Continue reading . . .)

Up to now, I have been arranging the posts in this series thematically, but Life published so many interesting and relevant cartoons in 1931 that I cannot bring myself to omit all of those that did not happen to fit somewhere else. (Continue reading . . .)

As the chief designer for a greeting card company, I could not resist giving this cartoon, “Greeting Cards for the Depression,” by Nate Collier (and “W.W.S.”), a post all to itself. Although the cartoon appeared in Life magazine on April 17, 1931, most of its gags could scarcely be more relevant today. (As always, for a larger, more readily legible image, just click on it.)

Don’t overlook the rest of our series on Life’s cartoons from the Great Depression! And there’s much more to come!

One frequent focus of Life’s cartoons during the early years of the Great Depression was the dismal state of American business. Once again, most of these cartoons should be self-explanatory. (Continue reading . . .)

The Great Depression brought forth a number of dismal economic phenomena that people still associate with it today, including bread lines, apple sellers, homelessness, and panhandling. Life published so many cartoons on these iconic topics that we can hardly reproduce more than a representative sampling. Most are fairly self-explanatory. (Continue reading . . .)

Although Life was a humor magazine, its cartoonists did not ignore the unprecedented levels of unemployment and the gut-wrenching misery that accompanied the Great Depression. The Christmas issue for 1930, published on December 5, thus included this stark Madonna and child by Charles Dana Gibson. Presumably the famous Gibson Girl of the turn of the century had never imagined that her daughter and grandchild would be reduced to such a state. (Continue reading . . .)

President Herbert Hoover was a great believer in individualism and self-reliance, and his approach to the economic downturn, especially at the beginning, was therefore light on government intervention and heavy on encouraging voluntary individual action. His administration, joined by many prominent business leaders and opinion-makers, tried bravely to talk up the economy. The cartoons in Life adopted an ironic tone toward such efforts, which were clearly inadequate to the task at hand. (Continue reading . . .)

People are frequently comparing the current economic crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Accordingly, I thought I might begin my promised posts on vintage graphics with a look at that gloomy period. Specifically, I will be showcasing cartoons published in the American humor magazine Life, before it went under in 1936. Archelaus’s card designers — ever in search of suitable illustrations for our fine cards — have spent many hours poring over old issues of Life in the Library of Congress, and we have not been shy about scanning whatever interested us along the way. That research is the source of the illustrations for this series. (Continue reading . . .)