Ink & Non-repo Pencil Drawing. While Henry Ford is best known for founding the Ford Motor Company, introducing the Model T automobile, and developing the assembly line, this cartoon refers to the industrialist’s less well-known role in politics. Between 1916 and 1924, there was strong grassroots support for Ford as a candidate for president. At the time, Ford was associated with pacifism and known for giving his workers a salary more than twice what most other companies offered. Today, it is hard to imagine Ford as a popular candidate for president, since he is often associated with anti-Semitism and resistance to unionization.
From the collection of Anthony J. Mourek
Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections
Ink & non-repo pencil drawing published in On My Way: Being the Book of Art Young in Text and Picture. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928, p. 14. This is an illustration from Young’s first autobiography. It depicts an afternoon during which Young and his neighbor Martin went for a walk in the woods. At Martin’s prompting, Young performed a speech in the style of a Southern congressman, extolling the passage of the income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the Underwood tariff. Young states that his observation of Washington politicians and his experience as a Socialist party nominee campaigning unsuccessfully for the New York State Senate in 1918 familiarized him with “the platitudes, the postures and the eloquent bunk that are the equipment of our so-called statesmen.”
Ink drawing. Sitting President Theodore Roosevelt refused to run for reelection in 1909, instead selecting William Howard Taft as his successor for the Republican nomination. Taft served as president from 1908 to 1912, but his presidency was marred by impressions that he was indecisive and weak-willed. Unhappy with Taft’s administration, Roosevelt tried to obtain the Republican nomination in 1912. This created a deep rift in the Republican Party, and ultimately Roosevelt started the “Bull Moose Party” and ran for president as a Progressive, drawing many of the more progressive Republicans with him and allowing Woodrow Wilson to win the election. To illustrate the split, Young depicts Taft as an abandoned woman. Taft is surrounded by photographs of the people who once supported him, including Roosevelt, and holds notes from radical Republicans who have deserted him for being too conservative and conservative Republicans who have deserted him for being too radical. Young plays into gender stereotypes of the time by depicting Taft as a woman in order to show Taft’s indecisiveness and passivity.
You're a Liar—I Didn't Eat No Wahtermelon—Deed I Didn't
Ink & Non-repo Pencil Drawing published in Puck. While Young was progressive in many things, cartoons like this one show that, whatever his personal attitudes may have been, he was willing to play to the attitudes of his audience with extremely racist imagery. Young depicts former President Theodore Roosevelt as an African American man surrounded by half-eaten watermelons labeled “campaign expenses.” This cartoon probably refers to the controversy that emerged in 1912 over campaign funds Roosevelt had received in 1904. The fact that Young has used a racist stereotype to comment on Roosevelt’s behavior reveals how pervasive these stereotypes were at the time.
Ink drawing published in The Coming Nation. In this cartoon, Young shows President Theodore Roosevelt stealing thunder from the socialist cause by giving in to some of the socialists’ immediate demands. Roosevelt’s position, however, was more moderate than the socialist Young probably would have liked, so Young has shown him weakening the socialist position by supporting some reforms while leaving the basic structure of capitalism intact. By this point Young’s sympathies were with the socialists and this cartoon was published in a socialist periodical. While this cartoon deals with the political issues of the day, Young’s broader focus on the conflict between socialism and capitalism is increasingly visible.
Ink drawing. Robert Ingersoll, a politician and famous agnostic who was mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses, was a controversial figure in American public life known for his fiery speeches promoting agnosticism. In February 1894, the Salvation Army sent a “summons” to Ingersoll, whom they called the “Prince of Paganism,” requesting that he appear as a witness for the defense in a mock trial the group had organized in Chicago to try the devil. Ingersoll declined. This cartoon signed by “Currier” was owned by Art Young and pictures the young artist with a sketch pad on the far right. Young drew a cartoon illustration of Ingersoll “from life” for the February 5, 1894 issue of the Chicago Inter-Ocean. This cartoon may be a gift from a friendly cartoonist or a self-promoting cartoon drawn by Young but signed Currier, a nod to Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives. What do you think?
Emigration and immigration--United States
Ink drawing published in Chicago Inter-Ocean. In 1892 a cholera epidemic raged in Europe, making some of the ships arriving in the United States a public health hazard. Republican president Benjamin Harrison approved a quarantine of several ships that arrived in New York carrying the disease, and in this cartoon from early in his career, Young depicts Harrison as a heroic figure, holding the ships at bay. This cartoon was published during an election year while Young was still “a Republican employed by a Republican paper;” he would rarely present any person in power so uncritically in his later years. Young does, however, attack the steamship companies for their greed, foreshadowing some of his later views.
Ink drawing. This early drawing signed with initials is something of a mystery. We know it came out of a large collection of drawings owned by Young, we know it was pinned to his studio wall, we know it is in his early style and that it is about Dr. Bell selling “Chicago breeze.”
Ink drawing. Here, Young makes use of themes that had been popularized by the cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose Christmas illustrations of Santa Claus and children had become iconic images of the holiday. In Young’s drawing, the children with stockings hung by the fire are hardened Chicago politicians seeking the mayoralty while the city prepared for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Sleeping in the bed is the incumbent mayor, Republican Hempstead Washburne. Washburne had attended the October 21, 1892 dedication of The World’s Columbian Exposition, but after nearly three years of preparation, the fair grounds were not completed and the fair was not going to open in 1892. Believing he would not be reelected, Mayor Washburne chose not to seek another term in 1893, and the Republican nomination instead went to Samuel Allerton. Sitting on the bed expectantly are two politicians vying for the Democratic nomination: former mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. and the owner of the German-language newspaper Illinois Staats-Zeitung Washington Hesing. Harrison would receive the nomination, become mayor in April 1893, and open the Columbian Exposition on May 1, 1893.
Ink drawing. Published in Chicago Inter-Ocean