Chapter II: Part 2

“How often all Europe goes into what we slang-loving Americans call a keniption fit over a political ‘incident!’ We don’t care to attempt an exact definition of the word ‘keniption;’ but we are quite willing to explain that an ‘incident,’ in European politics, means a small affair of great importance. A native peasant pokes his umbrella into a foreign ambassador’s eye--that is an incident. A foreign ambassador pokes his umbrella into a native peasant’s eye--that also is an incident. On such incidents the fate of nations hangs. It may be the Mortara incident, or the Benedetti incident, or, as it is now, the Schnaebeles or Schnaebele or Schnaebelé incident, (how does he spell his gallicised German name?) but no year can pass without its incident, over which the press must shriek, and diplomats must excite themselves, and quarts of honest ink and ohms of good electric force must be wasted.

* * * * *

“The incident himself--there is generally a personality to the incident--is, as a rule, a most unimportant individual. There are exceptional cases, of course. Benedetti was a man of importance. He had too much importance, mayhap. But he would never have written his name in large script upon history’s page had he not been snubbed in a public park. So is it with Schnaebeles. He is world-famous to-day, who will never do anything else in his life that will get his name in American or English newspapers. He has been arrested by Germany, he, a French official, and he is an incident. He is an incident who does not amount to much, it seems; but still he is an incident. Twenty, thirty, forty years from now, a withered, snuffy, oddly dressed old man will sit, perchance, in front of some Paris café, sipping his eau sucrée or his syruped vermouth, and the boulevardier who passes by will say to his friend; ‘That is Schnaebele.’

“‘And who is Schnaebele?’ the friend will inquire, wonderingly.

“‘Why, have you forgotten your history? The hero of the Schnaebele incident--in 1887--or ’78--which was it? When we were so near going to war with Germany.’

“‘Ah, bah!’ his friend will reply; ‘un marron glacé! Qu’est-ce que tu me donnes!’

“And that is what it is to be an incident.”--PUCK, _May 4th, 1887_.

THE SITUATION IN GERMANY.

_PUCK, February 2nd, 1887._

Elsewhere in these pages an attempt has been made to give some idea of the character and significance of “German Michel.” This cartoon, which appeared at the time of the Boulangist excitement in France, shows how Michel’s native shrewdness and stolidity rendered him proof against the ingenious, but far from ingenuous, attempts of Prince Bismarck to make capital for the War Department out of the disturbances in France. The sturdy toiler, overworked and overtaxed already, showed not only a frank unwillingness to add to his burdens, but bore himself toward the princes and potentates that were set above him with a certain self-confident freedom of attitude which had not been his wont of old time.

GOOD GRACIOUS!

_PUCK, March 19th, 1890._

“‘German Michel’ is a typical figure of which the most remarkable characteristic is that it has made itself absolutely inappropriate to its original purposes. It is a figure created by the German caricaturists--a loutish, sleepy, heavy peasant, gazing on the world with dull, uninterested eyes. It stood for the political spirit of the German people--the spirit that existed in the years between ’48 and ’70--the spirit of indifferentism, of hopeless submission to superior power, of acceptance of whatever state of affairs it might please the rulers of the land to establish. It was aptly chosen. Even the possibilities of brute force suggested by the bumpkin’s sturdy build had a deeply significant application.... But 1870 and the war changed the spiritual state of Germany, or rather, began a process of change of which we have not yet seen the end. And now for twenty years the German government has been educating Michel, and Michel has been educating himself. While the government has been teaching him to read, and he has been teaching himself various things that are useful and interesting to any good citizen and patriot, there have been plenty of people who have devoted themselves to giving him what might be called an underground education. Recent events in Germany show that this part of Michel’s education has certainly not been neglected--at least, so far as the inculcation of the beauties of socialism is concerned.... Now it is to this Michel, not to the old Michel, to the public spirit of Germany of 1850 or 1860, that the young Emperor Wilhelm is issuing his extraordinary ‘rescripts,’ in which he describes himself as the emissary of God, sent to take charge of the future of the German nation (without specifying any qualifications for the task with which the Almighty may have been pleased to endow him); announces his intention of solving at once the everlasting problem of poverty and ignorance, and offers to ‘shatter’ or ‘dash in pieces,’ all who oppose him in his plans. Surely, this young man, this inexperienced youth, the son of an Emperor who reigned only on his death-bed, the grandson of an Emperor whose best work was done before that grandson had got well used to long breeches; this immature martinet; this quaint despot with the narrow forehead and the eager, intolerant face--surely he is ill-fitted to meet the subtle, secret-minded men, conscious of their growing strength, who have taken the place of the submissive ‘Michels’ of his grandfather’s time.”--PUCK, _March 19th, 1890_.

HE BEATS BARNUM.

_PUCK, February 19th, 1890._

This is neither the place nor the time to attempt any summing up of the character of the Rev. Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. In PUCK’S earlier days the eccentricities of this clergyman and his peculiar notoriety made him the especial butt of the cartoonist; and this latter revival of a familiar figure was provoked by some uncommonly audacious performance whereby the Reverend gentleman startled most people and shocked many on his return from a European trip. It is unnecessary to recall the details: the cartoon is founded on Dr. Talmage’s own utterances.

Let us note here that through all this long period of fun-making, Dr. Talmage seems to have enjoyed the jokes upon himself even more than the general public did, and PUCK has for many years preserved a formal blessing or benediction, couched in terms of cordial regard, and sent by the clergyman in exchange for a small cash and a large advertising contribution to the re-construction of his tabernacle.

THE MURDERER’S STRAIGHT ROUTE TO HEAVEN.--BRINGING RELIGION INTO DISREPUTE.

_PUCK, June 28th, 1882._

Many who look at this cartoon to-day may well wonder what called it forth, and many others may have to be reminded that even so recently as ten years ago a morbid sympathy with criminals was so common among American clergymen that it was popularly held a reproach to the whole clerical body. It was, however, little more than a passing phase, a sort of hysterical epidemic that prevailed among people peculiarly exposed to emotional impulses. It seems to have died a natural death, and it has passed away so utterly that it is practically forgotten to-day.

We do not speak, of course, of the sympathy which every minister of God should feel for the erring and unfortunate, but of a certain maudlin enthusiasm which at one time moved many otherwise excellent and admirable members of the clerical profession, and brought about some startling exhibitions of misplaced sentiment. At the period of which we speak, namely: the decade prior to the publication of this cartoon, it was no uncommon thing to read of a clergyman, assisted by a band of female devotees, invading a prison to spend hours, day after day, in consoling, comforting, and generally coddling some red-handed murderer in whom they could have had no possible interest, and of whom they never would have heard save for the notoriety of his trial. Clergymen were found, too, to go on the gallows at the last moment, and publicly to avow their belief that the soul of the criminal about to die was purged of all earthly sin, and that his repentance with the noose around his neck had fully sufficed to fit him for heaven. Such shows as these were common enough and evil enough in their influence to justify even severer condemnation than that expressed in this vigorous cartoon.

The mania, for such we must call it, probably had its origin in the extravagant and widely advertised efforts of the Rev. Dr. Tyng, of New York, to save Foster, the “Carhook Murderer,” from the gallows. Foster, who was partially drunk at the time, wantonly killed an inoffensive stranger on the 26th of April, 1871; and, after every legal resource had been exhausted in his behalf, was hanged March 21st, 1873.

This cartoon appeared in PUCK of June 28th, 1882, and its immediate occasion was the execution of Charles Guiteau for the assassination of President Garfield, which created a most unwholesome excitement in many quarters.

“PROHIBITION IS COMING!”

_PUCK, August 4th, 1886._

“The State of Rhode Island has recently passed--to its own great surprise--a ‘prohibition law.’ The state did not really want the law. It was not passed as a matter of principle. The Republicans voted for the law to spite the Democrats; the Democrats to spite the Republicans. No one thought that the aggregate of votes thus cast would make the legal majority. But so it happened. Now, the State of Rhode Island is a small community, and, like most small communities, it is narrow, ignorant, and, save in things material, unproductive. One of the chief sources of revenue upon which it depends is its wonderful collection of Summer watering-places, which bring travel and traffic to the state and put many thousands of dollars into circulation every year. These places are supported by a civilized lot of people from the great cities--people who are accustomed to drinking wine and beer and whatever else they fancy; and, as a rule, in moderation. If they find that the new law interferes with their perfectly legitimate customs in this regard, they will leave Rhode Island for some more liberal and sensible state; and Rhode Island will be so much the poorer, and so much the wiser. No decent man will submit to be put in the category of criminals because a few hysterical women and unbalanced men think that the use of alcohol is as much a crime as its abuse.”--PUCK, _August 4th, 1886_.

FIRST ANNUAL PICNIC OF THE “KNIGHTS OF LABOR”--MORE FUN FOR THE SPECTATORS THAN FOR THE PERFORMERS.

_PUCK, June 21st, 1882._

The cartoon suggested by the “First Annual Picnic of the Knights of Labor” can hardly be said to belong to PUCK’S famous group of labor cartoons. Its appearance preceded by some four years the great discussion of the labor question; and it is essentially what is known to artists as a “situation” picture, aiming at nothing more than the simple presentation of a fact. But it is curious to note that it was called forth by the futile strikes in the iron mill region, and even at that early date the editorial comments accompanying the cartoon ascribed the anomalous condition of affairs principally to the inequalities of fortune engendered by the protective system. The comments close thus: “It is not extravagant wages that the workman wants, it is purchasing power with the wages he does earn.”

ARBITRATION IS THE TRUE BALANCE OF POWER.

_PUCK, March 17th, 1886._

It should be distinctly stated that this cartoon is not to be regarded as having a general or abstract application. It appeared during the first street-railway strikes in New York; and the lesson it tries to teach was addressed especially to the corporations which, acting as common carriers and holding valuable franchises, were putting the public to great loss and inconvenience in carrying on a protracted struggle with their employees, wherein there was little doubt that right and justice were entirely on the workmen’s side.

However, this was the beginning of the great labor struggle that did so much to clear the minds of the people on the great question of the inter-relation of Capital and Labor. PUCK’S forecast was almost prophetic. The editorial, which rebukes the greed of the corporations, points out that the strikes which they had precipitated could only serve to teach the workmen to abuse the right to strike; and goes on to say: “They are not more wise, more temperate, more just than their employers. The employers, having power, have misused it. They will likewise misuse power. What could be expected otherwise? Where they have the upper hand, they will tyrannize. They will strike and paralyze business, not only to enforce just demands, but to enforce unjust demands. Their employers will use the power of money to retaliate as best they may. A war, a veritable Civil War is begun, to which who can see the end?”

“FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.”

_PUCK, June 15th, 1887._

Incredible as it may seem, the hare-brained theories of Mr. Henry George as to the communistic ownership of land received at one time a most unmerited toleration from people who would not have been suspected of sympathy with such vagaries. That he and his partner McGlynn did not accomplish the mischief they set out to do was no fault of theirs. When this cartoon was drawn, June 15th, 1887, they seemed to be perilously near to attaining their end. The reason that they failed was that, as is usual in this country, Horse Sense ultimately triumphed over Hysteria.

THE POVERTY PROBLEM SOLVED.

_PUCK, May 18th, 1887._

Mr. Henry George no doubt found his account in catering to the unruly and turbulent in 1887, but it is doubtful if Father McGlynn, the Roman Catholic Priest who got such a bad attack of the George doctrine that he earned for himself several years of suspension from his priestly functions, made as much out of it as his more astute colleague. But between them they made a great deal of noise, and PUCK did what he could to counteract their influence. With this cartoon on May 18th, 1887, appeared the following editorial advice to the laboring man:

“Don’t be a laboring man--that is, labor, but as an employer rather than as an employee. You have got to serve your apprenticeship to poverty--so has everybody else, except the comparatively few who inherit large fortunes. But be diligent in your apprenticeship, and it will be mastership in the end. Work with this one idea in view--that some day you will have earned and saved enough to go into business for yourself. Then you can employ some other poor man, who would else go hungry; and you can treat him well and give him a chance to make money in his turn. That is the way of the world. It is not a bad way, if you take it bravely and cheerfully. If you refuse to take it in the right spirit, if you sulk and whine and call upon labor organizations to protect you, and cry for special legislation to right wrongs which you can’t even define--why, you will find it a pretty hard way. It is hard on shirks, idlers, skulkers, and men who do half-hearted work. But it is a way that is as old as the rising of the sun; a way that will be the same when the last sun sets on this world, and all the McGlynns and Georges and Anti-Poverty Clubs in creation will not change it. It is the good old way of duty, and it existed before Labor Leagues were thought of.”

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.’”

THE SUCKERS OF THE WORKING-MAN’S SUSTENANCE.

_PUCK, May 19th, 1886._

The labor struggle of 1886 was not far advanced before the agency of the professional agitator became apparent--to those, at least, who honestly tried to look below the surface of things. That the whole fight was got up and kept up by these false friends of the laboring man, and that they were the only gainers by the disorder of the time is well known now. But it was not so well known then, and when this cartoon was put forth it had all the interest that attaches to the bold presentation of a truth for which the public is not prepared.

“The Suckers of the Working-man’s Sustenance” was published in PUCK of May 19th, 1886. The three bearded men under the table have features which more or less suggest those of certain professional agitators of the hour--John Most, the editor of a dirty little paper that preached blood-and-thunder anarchy, and a couple of other scamps of the same sort.

THE MEPHISTOPHELES OF TO-DAY--HONEST LABOR’S TEMPTATION.

_PUCK, October 20th, 1886._

The part that Mr. Henry George played in the troublous days of 1886 was probably profitable to himself, and to no one else. He started in with a reputation of a sincere and high-minded philosopher somewhat in advance of his time, but the moment he got the Socialist nomination for Mayor of New York, he turned into as frank and downright a demagogue as ever tried to tempt a mob with promise of the pillage of the rich.

“We are sincerely pleased to see that Mr. Henry George has come out frankly and made his canvass on the basis of an out-and-out alliance with the Anarchists. He no longer pretends to belong among the respectable reformers; he arrays his followers squarely and honestly against the law and the established order of things. He was a sanguine theorist so long as he kept at book-making. Now that he has taken to talking, he is a thorough-going, zealous demagogue of the old-fashioned sort. ‘Vote for me,’ he cries to the lawless, the idle and the improvident, ‘and I will give you free rides and free land; and the police shall be muzzled, and all laws that you do not like shall be repealed. A contract shall no longer be sacred, and if any man has wealth, he shall share it with you. The land of the rich shall be confiscated, and you may boycott to your hearts’ content.’ It may be doubted whether this is the right way to win favor with decent citizens; but it is Mr. George’s way of going to work.”

THE BIG BOYCOTT WINDBAG.

_PUCK, April 28th, 1886._

The series of cartoons on the labor question which Mr. Keppler contributed to PUCK during the years of 1886 and 1887 certainly attracted more attention, and probably did more to influence public opinion than any series of pictures that ever appeared in the paper. They were drawn at a time of great public excitement, when fools, fanatics and unprincipled adventurers were tempting honest laboring-men into all manner of lawlessness and improper use of physical force. The American public had for the first time been introduced to that ugly thing, the “Boycott,” and the Anarchists were seizing the opportunity afforded by the general agitation to spread their infernal doctrines among the working-men. Of course, under such circumstances, the air was full of the hysterical shrieks of the excitable people who thought that all law and order were to vanish from the face of the earth. The value of these clear and direct pictorial expositions was great indeed, in that time of trouble, doubt and perplexity.

PUCK said of Trades-Union tyranny on April 28th, 1886: “The boycott business is bad. But it is an extravagant, monstrous, impossible thing, that the laws of a free country must crush out, sooner or later. This other evil flourishes in secret and strikes at the laborer’s self-respect. It is part of such a tyranny as no employer or body of employers ever dared to dream of establishing. Every working-man who wants to do something, to be something in the world--something better than the spy-ridden slave of a secret society--should rise up to fight it. There is no need of general organization for this purpose. Wherever one brave man, or a handful of brave men, stands boldly up and insists on every man’s natural right to make his own price for his labor, to sell it for what he chooses to sell it for, a blow will be struck in the cause of the laboring man’s independence. And it rests with the laboring man to work out his own salvation.”

IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE MONSTER.

_PUCK, May 28th, 1890._

Of all the disreputable schemes for illicit money-making that ever flourished in this country, the Louisiana lottery is probably the most iniquitous and inexcusable. No agency of modern times has done more to send boys to the devil, to tempt unprotected women into squandering their subsistence, and to lure decent men from their daily duty by the temptation of illegitimate gain. At the best, every public lottery is a danger to the community; but of all public lotteries of modern times, the Louisiana lottery is easily the worst and most dangerous. At no time has it enjoyed the reputation of being even what is known as a square gambling game. An honest lottery--that is, a lottery honestly conducted--may be profitable to the people who get it up. But the Louisiana lottery has never earned the name of being honestly conducted in any respect. Its only claim to respectability--and it is the thinnest sort of a claim--has lain in its employment of two ex-confederate officers, General Jubal T. Early and General P. G. T. Beauregard as the overseers of its drawings. The fact that they were ex-officers of the confederate army alone gave these men a right to consideration. Personally, such adventurers could be bought by the pound, like a side of pork, for any purpose.

This cartoon appeared at a time when the state of Louisiana was making a vigorous attempt to rid itself of this hideous disgrace. The attempt was but partially successful. Dauphin, the original agent of this infamous concern, is dead, but his successors’ advertisement is still to be found in certain public prints where everybody can see it, except the United States District Attorney.

THE OPENING OF THE CONGRESSIONAL SESSION.

_PUCK, December 7th, 1887._

There is a marvelous pregnancy of significance in this cartoon; as we can not but see when we think that, at the re-assembling of Congress in December, 1887, one of the first questions it had to confront was the question of the Surplus. The revenues of the government, especially those coming from customs duties, were so vast that an enormous, useless, cumbersome and dangerous surplus was steadily piling itself up in the United States Treasury. It was the expectation of the people that Congress would pass laws reducing the customs duties. But the only tariff legislation made by Congress between that date and the appearance of this book has tended to increase rather than to lower these duties. And yet, as these pages go to press, the latest report of the Secretary of the Treasury announces that this surplus is so nearly wiped out that, unless the new administration takes measures to the contrary, there will be a deficit within a year. This is a curious, definitive accounting of a four years’ test of a peculiar latter-day theory of political economy. It is not wonderful that a practical people insisted on the abandonment of the experiment.

RESTLESS NIGHTS.

_PUCK, March 16th, 1887._

That Mr. Cleveland during his first term was the object of more newspaper criticism than a President usually receives was due to a combination of circumstances. He was the first Democratic President elected in a quarter of a century; he was elected in part by Republican or Independent votes, and he had incurred the enmity of a faction of his own party. Nor were his ideas of the duties and responsibilities of government calculated to please a certain numerous and noisy class of Democratic politicians who were “out for the spoils.” On March 16th, 1887, PUCK commented thus upon the situation:

“It is pretty hard for a practical politician and a strict party-man to toil away, day after day, editing a great paper and moulding public opinion at two or three cents per daily mould, and to see public opinion doing its own moulding all the time, in just the way it should not. It is disheartening--it is hard on a truly great editor. And yet to such misery are some of our most prominent moulders subjected. They toil unceasingly to show to President Cleveland the error of his ways--giving the public an incidental glimpse--and the more they show it to him, the less he sees it--and the less the public sees it. He goes on and does his work as he promised to do it, and the public seems to be thoroughly well pleased with him. But it is hard on the moulders.”

NAPOLEON’S RETREAT.

_PUCK, November 19th, 1890._

Subsequent events have proved that there was no mistake made in attributing the Republican defeat of 1890 to the effect of the McKinley Bill. PUCK of November 19th, in enumerating various possible causes for the turn-over, says to the Republicans: “Do not distress yourselves to decide which sort of cake gave you the stomach-ache. You have eaten all the sorts that there were. Any one would have been enough.” Further, the editorial tells the leaders of the defeated party that they have passed “a bill, the like of which could not be drawn up elsewhere, unless it were in Bedlam, than in the Fifty-first Congress. It is called the McKinley Bill; but it ought to be called ‘A Bill to Raise Prices and to Make Life Harder for Everybody except a Few Prosperous Manufacturers.’ So mad a production was this bill that it actually put a tariff tax on tin-plates--something that every man, woman and child uses--not because any tin-plates are made in this country, but because some day, some man, somewhere, might wish to think of making them! And on top of all that, to add gratuitous insult to wanton injury, you raise the price of tobacco, so that every man can have a daily reminder that you don’t care how hard you make life for him. Do you think of anything calculated to irritate and enrage the citizen which you have forgotten to treat him to? Do you wonder that you will sit in the next House with a total representation hardly more than half the size of the Democrats’ clear majority? Nobody else wonders. If the Democrats, after they have been long in power, become half as arrogant, selfish and neglectful of duty as you became, they will be turned out of their places, too, if the people have to fill their seats with Farmers’ Alliance candidates.”

THEY HATE THE LIGHT, BUT THEY CAN’T ESCAPE IT.

_PUCK, March 26th, 1890._

The Senate of the United States has been called the pleasantest club in the country, and perhaps it is. It is certainly a very pleasant club, and it is not unfair to say that very large entrance fees have been collected in certain State legislatures from gentlemen whose wealth constituted their only claim to be admitted to it. But, in view of the fact that the people of the United States pay the members of this delightful club reasonably generous salaries for belonging to it, it may be questioned whether it does not exceed its privileges in keeping up its indulgence in what are known as “Executive Sessions.” There was a time in the dim and distant past when Executive Sessions were rarely secret, and had some excuse in reason and common-sense. But it is many years now since there has been an Executive Session that was not promptly and fully reported in every paper that would give space to its generally unimportant doings. It is, no doubt, a pleasant thing for a Senator to have the doors of the Senate-Chamber closed, and to smoke his cigar in lazy comfort while the reading clerk monotonously and perfunctorily, but as unobtrusively as possible, drones through the thousand and one articles of the treaty to which the law-maker is supposed to be giving his statesman-like attention in spite of the fact that its acceptance or rejection has been decided upon in party caucus weeks or months before. But the people of the United States pay the Senator, and the people of the United States built the gallery in the Senate Chamber, and they really have a right to sit there at all times during his business hours. It is a right that they will sooner or later insist upon. We do not know, however, that there is any serious objection to letting the Senator smoke while they look at him.

PUCK’S SAMPLE SPEAKERS OF THE PARTY OF MORAL IDEAS.

_PUCK, March 5th, 1890._

It is a curious fact, to which PUCK has called attention more than once, that the important post of Speaker of the House of Representatives has been peculiarly unlucky for members of the Republican party. Between 1863 and 1890, when this cartoon appeared, four Republicans and three Democrats had occupied the chair. The three Democrats, Michael C. Kerr, Samuel J. Randall and John G. Carlisle, were all men of unblemished reputation, popular in their party and well liked and thoroughly respected on the other side of the House. They all performed their duties creditably, and retired with honor. But to the four Republicans it proved to be a position fraught with misfortune. The first, Schuyler Colfax, was forced into retirement by the discovery of his connection with the terrible Crédit Mobilier iniquity. The second Republican speaker was Mr. Blaine, and it was while he was in the chair that he became involved in the Little Rock and Fort Smith transaction, which, more than anything else, caused his defeat for the Presidency in 1884. The next Republican speaker was Mr. John W. Keifer--but it is really unfair and insulting to the Republican party to call Keifer a Republican. Of Keifer the best thing that can be said is that he was an accident and that he did not happen again. The fourth speaker of the Republican party was Mr. Thomas B. Reed, a gentleman of fine parts and high character, who was misled by his natural strength of will into adopting a policy of tyrannical unfairness toward his political opponents, which earned for him the nick-name of “Czar Reed,” and probably contributed largely to the revulsion of feeling which produced the famous “turn-over” of November, 1890.

CONSISTENCY.

_PUCK, January 21st, 1891._

The talk of the hour often renders editorial comment unnecessary at the time a cartoon is published, though its republication may make it necessary to accompany it with a word or two of elucidation. It seems proper to say that this picture is not meant for an outright arraignment of the Indian policy of our government, but as a reminder that there was no consistency in lavishing money and care upon foreign objects while far more pressing necessities much nearer home fail to receive proper attention. There is no doubt that for a long time our Indian Agencies have stood in need of a thorough overhauling; and our neglect in this matter was emphasized at the time of the publication of this cartoon, (January 21st, 1891,) by the extraordinary activity of the philanthropists who sought to express their sympathy with famine-stricken Russia by making Uncle Sam go down into his pocket for a relief-fund.

IT ISN’T THE COWL THAT MAKES THE MONK.

_PUCK, August 28th, 1889._

The first attempt of the Tammany Hall organization to swing into line with the national democracy, and to put municipal government in New York on a business-like basis, was received with a general incredulity that was natural enough under the circumstances. In a sense it was a most unfortunate thing that Tammany’s sincerity in the purpose of self-improvement was not more readily recognized by those whose opposition to Tammany rule was based on a broad-minded and reasonable distrust of factional control of party power. When Tammany Hall began to expel objectionable members and to put only able and trustworthy men in charge of public affairs, that powerful organization removed what had hitherto been the chief reproach against it. Yet the corruption and inefficiency which had characterized Tammany’s management in the past were but an accident of factional rule and not an organic element. This most obvious objection to the Tammany organization being removed, the average citizen was quite willing to accept the idea of Tammany Hall’s supremacy without reflecting at all upon the danger of allowing a part of a party to substitute its will for that of the majority.

Unhappily--if government by faction is a dangerous and objectionable scheme, as PUCK has always contended--the most earnest and conspicuous opponents of Tammany Hall were rather theorists than practical folk. They were not in touch with the people, and had little knowledge of plain work-a-day life. In the common phrase, they meant well, but they didn’t know. In the face of a most striking and remarkable advance in efficient and economical municipal government they continued their fight against Tammany on the same lines upon which they had begun it years before, when the organization was undoubtedly open to the charge of gross malfeasance in office. This was a mistake, tactically--that it was also a mistake, practically, time may show. Tammany had little difficulty in showing that, whatever she might have done in the past, she had now taken to governing New York uncommonly well and uncommonly cheaply. That was enough to satisfy the minds of most citizens as to the advisability of renewing the contract with Tammany; and in 1890 and in 1892 Tammany riveted her rule upon New York as tight as a collar on a steamboat shaft. No matter what that rule may be, good, bad or indifferent, it is factional rule, and as such, to PUCK’S thinking, dangerous and founded on injustice. If it ever brings mischief to New York, we must not forget that the responsibility lies with the theorists who made opposition hopeless by persistently conducting it upon untenable grounds.

THE RAVEN.

_PUCK, August 13th, 1890._

President Garfield had the opportunity of choosing for his Secretary of State the man who, in the national convention, had worked hard and almost successfully to secure the nomination of another candidate. But Mr. Garfield declined Mr. Conkling’s assistance, and lived to see his course receive the emphatic approval of his party. He chose for his “next friend” Mr. James G. Blaine, with whom he was entirely in accord, although Mr. Blaine had for many years been a candidate for the nomination. Four years later Mr. Blaine got the nomination and was defeated at the polls. Four years after that, again Mr. Blaine yielded the nomination to Mr. Harrison; and, when Mr. Harrison was elected, became Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine made no pretence of personal regard for Mr. Harrison or of devotion to his interests; in fact, during the last two years of Mr. Harrison’s term of office the probability of Mr. Blaine’s opposition in the next national convention was a constant menace to Mr. Harrison, who earnestly desired a re-nomination. Mr. Blaine’s health, however, was far from good; and he delayed putting himself forward as a candidate until it was entirely too late to obtain the support which he might normally have counted upon. The cartoon shows Mr. Blaine in the gloomy and depressing character of Poe’s “Raven,” croaking unfriendly discouragement to Mr. Harrison’s fond dreams of future success. In a rough parody of the famous poem, PUCK, on August 13th, 1890, represented President Harrison as saying of the Blaine raven “perched above his chamber door:”

“Then this ebony bird beguiling
My sad fancy into smiling,
By its manner strange suggesting
Little Rock and Arkan_sor_,
‘Though thy plumes are not Elysian,’
Said I, ‘tell me with precision,
Art a jimblaine or a vision?
Art thou here for peace or war?
Tell me, is it peace between us?
Shall an end be made of war?’
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’

“Much I marveled this confounded
Fowl the question thus propounded
With veracity to answer--
Which was not his wont of yore.
‘But,’ I thought, ‘he is but thinking
Of his own hopes, shipwrecked, sinking,
As he sits there, blankly blinking,
Dreaming still of ’84,
Dreaming of his matchless tumble,
In the year of ’84--’
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’

“‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil!
Prophet, if you are a _dee_vil--
Whether Reed gets left, or whether
Poor McKinley goes ashore--
Tell me, am I Fate’s selection
For a glorious re-election--
Shall I join a freak collection--
Shall I serve my first term o’er--
_Must_ I go to Injinap’lis?
Can’t I tide two termlets o’er?’
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’”

THE WAR OF THE OPERAS.

Italian Opera will succeed German at the Metropolitan.

--_Daily Papers._

_PUCK, February 11th, 1891._

DIE GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.

TENOR.

Juchheia! Hoja! Tuba! Toobahd!
Geh’ ich. Ich gehe. Gingend’weise geh’ ich!
Italienische Nonsensikalische
Knocken mich aus.
Alles is up mit true music.
Of Donizetti the day dawns.
Wagner has waggled his wag.
Vogner has voggled his vog.

CHORUS.

Juchheia! Hoja!

Ahdehr![A]
Stehdehr!
Muhvahn!

_Orchestra_ _Embdy-iss-der-Gradle motif._

SOPRANO.

But for the baseborn barbarians,
Tinkling triumphantly tunes,
Scornfullest scorn,
Spurnfullest spurning is ours.

_Orchestra_ _Gondempt motif._

CONTRALTO.

Look at the long-haired loon!
Limp is his ten-pound libretto!
Time with his foot beats he no longer!
Howling his hisses
Louder than laughterful boxes!
Homeless is he! Hoja! Where shall he go?

VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN GUMBOIL.

What’s the bacillus on Bloomingdale?

_Orchestra_ _Daemd-outraitch motif._

BASSO PROFUNDO.

Who has a Weinhandlung handy?
Moozeek is dead.

[_Dead motif._]

Who has a Weinhandlung to sell?
Moozeek is dead.

[_Deader motif._]

Not too far from Dairt’ Ayvennoo!
Moozeek is dead.

[_Slightly-decomposed motif._]

Vogner has voggled his vog.

CHORUS.

Vait till the vind of the Vinter,
Vistling through Verdi’s viskers,
Vailfully vails for Vogner,
Vailing in vain!

TRIONFO DA MONK’.

CHORUS.

Strewing flow’rs along the way,
Strewing flow’rs along the way,
Thus the Duca della Monka-
Tanka-Shina-Fivacenta
Comes unto these halls to-day.

THE DUKE. [_recitativo._]

From these halls a long space of period banished,
I return like a wanderer,
To the mansion vacated by the ignoble Teuton.
Heavens! are these the portraits of my ancestors?
Ha! vengeance I swear it!
On this sword!
By the waists of the ladies I perceive,
And I observe by the anatomy of the gentlemen,
The Teuton has desecrated my ancestral domain.

SOPRANO.

.................
.................
.................
.................
.................Oh, my heart!
Oh, my heart! Oh, my heart,
Oh-oh-oh-oh! my heart! my
heart, my hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
hah
ha-a-a-AHT!!!

CHORUS.

Let us all
Happy be!
Here again
Once more are we!

THE PUBLIC.

Two front seats for dollars three!

CURTAIN.

[A] Tutelary deities of the Nibelungen.

--PUCK, _February 11th, 1891_.

WITH “HEALTH AND WEALTH AND LUCK TO ALL!” PUCK HAILS HIS READERS GREAT AND SMALL.

_PUCK, December 5th, 1888._

The necessary ingredients of a Christmas punch are typified in this cartoon by four female forms. The verses that accompanied it in the Christmas PUCK for 1888 were as follows:

“These forms divine
Must in one combine
For the Punch that PUCK is preparing--
And the dark-eyed form
Is the spirit warm,
With the wild Bacchante bearing.

“The sweet-faced fair
Puts the sugar there,
Like Charity bland and placid.
And Satire’s the jade
Who lends lemon aid
For a dash of the needful acid.

“Calm Wisdom, too,
May water the brew
To temper, not quench, your laughter--
Yet water comes best--
With the keenest zest--
PUCK thinks, on the morning after.”

Page
A Harmless Explosion 27
A Humiliating Spectacle 67
A Little Change; or, Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows 3
A Merry Christmas to All 47
A Midsummer Day’s Dream 103
An Attack on our Outer Ramparts 15
Arbitration is the True Balance of Power 155
A Russian Nocturne 107
“A Sail! A Sail!” 51
At Last! 95
Between Slavery and Starvation 167
Blaine Leaving the Capitol--“I Go--But I return” 79
Consistency 207
Consolidated 11
First Annual Picnic of the “Knights of Labor” 151
“For Whatsoever a Man Soweth, that Shall He also Reap” 159
Frederick III. of Germany--The End of a Brave Life 123
Good Gracious! 135
He Beats Barnum 139
Helping the Rascals In 83
In Memoriam Emperor William I. 115
In the Clutches of the Monster 183
It isn’t the Cowl that Makes the Monk 211
Just the Difference 43
Let us have Peace, now a President’s Elected 59
Napoleon’s Retreat 195
On the Road 63
Opening a Little Campaign all by Himself 75
Positively Last Awakening of the Democratic Rip Van Winkle 39
“Prohibition is Coming!” 147
Puck’s Political Hunting Ground 31
Puck’s Sample Speakers of Moral Ideas 203
Quality Counts 87
Restless Nights 191
Samuel J. Tilden 55
“Shake!” 127
Siegfried, The Fearless, In the Political Dismal Swamp 99
The Big Boycott Wind-bag 179
The Carol of the “Waits” 91
The Cinderella of the Republican Party and her Haughty Sisters 23
The Democ-rats Caught in the Presidential Trap 7
The European Equilibrist 119
The Mephistopheles of To-day--Honest Labor’s Temptation 175
The Murderer’s Straight Route to Heaven 143
The Opening of the Congressional Session 187
The Political “Army of Salvation” 19
The Poverty Problem Solved 163
The Raven 215
The Reign of Peace.--The Mouse is Safe While the Moon Shines 111
The Situation in Germany 131
The Suckers of the Working-man’s Sustenance 171
The Universal Church of the Future 35
The War of the Operas 219
They hate the Light, but They can’t Escape it 199
Uncle Sam’s Lodging House 71
With “Health and Wealth and Luck to All!” 223

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling inconsistencies were were not changed by Transcriber.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

On the Title page, the copy number “92” was hand-written.

You can see the cartoons in the HTML version of this eBook at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org).