A Cartoon History
of
Roosevelt's Career
Illustrated by Six Hundred and Thirty Contemporary Cartoons and Many Other Pictures
By Albert Shaw
New York:
The Review of Reviews Company
Publishers

Copyright. 1910, by THE-REVIEW  OF  REVIEWS  COMPANY

PREFACE
_I
T has long been my custom to make note of political cartoons and caricatures in the press of various countries.    It requires, perhaps, some understanding of political questions and personages, and some acquaintance with the types and symbols used in caricature, to appreciate altogether the meaning and value of that kind of work.    But when one has acquired  a  certain  amount  of knowledge  and familiarity in this field, he is sure to find the  current  cartoons very enlightening as well as amusing.    The cartoonists, indeed, reflect more faithfully the changing phases of the public mind than do the writers of editorial articles.
The political writer must exercise a certain dignity and restraint. But the cartoonist is a privileged character, who may tell the plain, homely truth as people see it and feel it, very much as the court jester in olden times was expected to take liberties with those in higii places and—under the guise of quip and fling and witticism—tell the king a bit of direct and wholesome truth. Thus I have not hesitated to make constant use, in reproduced form, of American and foreign cartoons from month to month in the Review of Reviews, not merely because they are diverting, but chiefly because they frequently express so much of fact and sentiment and point of view, in such telling and convincing ways.
For a long time there were mechanical difficulties in the way of the large use of illustration in daily newspapers. Pictorial matter of all kinds was chiefly confined to the weekly and monthly illustrated publications. The large and influential use of cartoons was, therefore, confined to a set of weekly periodicals, not very numerous, that made a specialty of political subjects. Of all these, it is needless to say the most famous has been Punch, of London. In this country Harper's and Leslie's weeklies, followed by Puck and Judge, have been the most famous and influential of the weekly papers making use of cartoons in such a manner as to express and influence political opinion throughout the country.
In all the European countries, political cartoons have for many years been used with great effect. In Germany the publishers of papers using cartoons have at times been subjected to a rather severe censorship; but in the main throughout Europe there is permitted an extreme freedom of expression to cartoonists that would not be tolerated in political writers. And there is a fierceness of satire, and a malignancy of attack, in many of these European cartoons that would not accord with the kindlier and more humorous tone of American cartoon work.
The very rapid growth, during recent years, of the use of cartoons in the daily newspapers of the United, States has been due to the improvement of photo-engrav-
VII

ing methods which permit the very rapid making of a zinc-etched block in reproduction of a pen drawing. Thus the cartoon as drawn this afternoon in illustration of the latest political incident, may be as readily printed in to-morrow morning's paper as the letter-press itself that reports the news. There are few people who realize the extent to which inventions of this kind are changing the methods and character of the press.
It is hardly less remarkable, however, that the use of photo-engraving in newspaper offices should have been followed so quickly by the development of a great number of clever American cartoonists. It had seemed at one time that John Ten-niel, afterwards knighted in recognition of the importance of his cartoon work in Punch, could have no successor worthy of the name. But Punch keeps its hold, and England has several very clever political cartoonists at this moment. And it had seemed at one time that the political cartoon could have no future in America, after Nast and his two or three contemporaries. But then came the school of Keppler and Gillam, whose marvelous work, printed in colors by lithography, made Puck a power in the land, interpreting—perhaps better than any other newspaper or periodical—the aims and achievements of President Cleveland. It was cartoonists of this same school and method who, with similar ability, represented the Republican point of view in the weekly paper called Judge.
Then came the rise to influence and power of the cartoonists of the daily press, the foremost of these being the late Charles G. Bush, for several years on the New York Herald and then for many years on the New York World. One is tempted to run over the list of remarkable men who within the past fifteen or twenty years have been drawing cartoons for the American newspapers and periodicals. But this volume—which is chiefly theirs rather than mine—shows well enough my estimate of their wit, their humor, their kindliness, and, above all, their remarkable instinct for politics.
Their drawing has had to be done under great pressure; and some of the most influential and effective of them all are quite defective when judged from the standpoint of draughtsmanship. But where their drawing is often greatly at fault when compared, for example, with such a piece of work as that of Bernard Partridge of Punch on page 75 of this volume, their cartoons have been redeemed by the skill with which they expressed their ideas. The artists of Punch, drawing perhaps only one finished cartoon a week, have a much better opportunity to do good technical work than the newspaper cartoonists who often draw an effective cartoon each day for weeks together.
Of all the political personages who have become familiar in cartoons, no one in recent years has figured as frequently as Mr. Roosevelt. And we have no other public man whose career has been illustrated in contemporary cartoons so continuously, or for such a long time. Mr. Nast's cartoons were drawn on the blocks which were laboriously tooled by the wood-engravers. He did not waste much effort 011 minor personages. And Mr. Nast's tributes to Roosevelt give fine testimony to the impression the young reformer in the New York Legislature was making upon public opinion in State and nation.
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As our readers will discover, we have been able to find striking cartoons that bear witness, in each successive phase of Roosevelt's career, to the recognition accorded him at the moment as a man of energy and leadership who was taking hold of essential problems rather than giving his energy to lesser things. I believe, therefore, that these cartoons, brought together in such a way as to bear upon successive episodes or periods in Mr. Roosevelt's public life, will be found useful as a contribution to the political history of our own time.
Very much of the material assembled here is of a nature so ephemeral that its assembling has not been a very easy task. For example, although the Verdict ran its brief but brilliant career of two or three years as recently as 1899-1900, my own office file had disappeared, and it was not easy to obtain access to the copies in which Roosevelt as'Governor and Vice-Presidential nominee was so strikingly presented, until Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis, who had been its editor, generously lent his own personal file. Thus thanks are also due to the Columbia College Library, the Astor Library, and to the editors and proprietors of Puck, of Judge, of Harper's Weekly, of Leslie's, of Collier's, and of several other periodicals. I am much indebted also to several members of my own office staff for toilsome search in the files of newspapers.
Recognition is due in this place to Mr. William Menkel, of the editorial office of the Review of Reviews, more than to any one else, for co-operation without which the assembling and arrangement of so much pictorial matter would have been very laborious and difficult. There is such a thing as making one cartoon add to the effectiveness of another by the manner of their grouping on the same page. This is also true of the contrasts or the cumulative impressions produced in arrangement of facing pages. To Mr. Menkel I am much indebted for help in all this,— which, if it may seem easy in the result, was more difficult than anything else in the actual doing.
I have tri^d to make the simple text of this volume a clear and honest interpretation of what Mr. Roosevelt has tried to do as a public man, and the spirit he has shown throughout his career. I have had some advantages of intimate knowledge of most of the period I present in these cursory pages; and this has included acquaintance not only with the hero of the play but with most of the other people who have been prominently associated with him upon our political stage. I hope, therefore, that the collection of cartoons and other pictures, with the thread of text that binds them together, may find some modest place with the materials that a historian like Air. James Ford Rhodes, for example, would some day like to vise-as helping him to throw into true historical perspective the political period in which Mr. Roosevelt has been so notable and dominant a figure.
ALBERT   SHAW. NEW YORK, August 22, 1910.
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