For this year’s Cinco de Mayo, we have a number of cartoons that appeared in first half of 1913, in various newspapers, and from there were reprinted in Cartoons Magazine.

In the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, February & March 1913 were particularly volatile. The occupants of the National Palace changed hands several times, inspiring the James H. Donahey cartoon that appeared below, on the front cover of the April 1913 edition of Cartoons Magazine.

Above, the May 1913 issue reprints cartoonist Ole May‘s prediction of the end of President Franciso Madero.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read the text.

The U.S. had supported dictator Porfirio Diaz, whome Madero had overthrown. The above cartoon by Harry J. Westerman, suggests a return to power by Diaz.

U.S. cartoons in general — such as the one by Charles “Doc” Winner below — reflected the racist attitude of white America, which viewed all of Latin America as inferior, requiring their Uncle Sam to tell them how to behave.

Above, and in the three double-page scans that follow, we have the article “Cartoons and Cartoonists of Mexico”, written by Harry H. Dunn, formerly the news editor of the publications La Prensa, and The Daily Mexican.

Dunn’s opening paragraph about Mexican cartooning having died with the destruction of the Aztec Empire by Spanish Conquistadors (implying that their codices were merely cartoons, rather than the written language that they were), and that Mexican cartoons do not begin again until 1910, is pure hogwash (in addition to being off by at least a century — click here to view a Mexican comic book from 1801.)

However, in his description of the then-“current” situation in Mexico, and of four of its then-prominent cartoonists — S.R. de la Vega, Telas Allendez, L.R. Noriega, and F. Ariza — the article is worth reading. So long as you also keep in mind that Dunn himself, was not Mexican, anymore than Mitt Romney’s ancestors, who lived in Mexico in flight from U.S. Law, were. Dunn’s article, thus, also carries a U.S. point-of-view.

Above & below — all from April 1913 — more U.S. cartoons concerning the Mexican Revolution, including several with patronizing attitude on full display.

Above, cartoons by Lynch, James E. Murphy, and Taylor.

Cartoons above, by Nelson Harding, Bronstrup, Shonkwiler, Barnett, and Donahey, Shonkwiler & Barnett (not incorrectly, and not for their first time) suggesting that the (at thi spoint) oft-threatened U.S. intervention in the Mexican Civil War, was motivated more by protecting the investments of U.S. millionaires, than by protecting anyone or anything else.

Below, by Ben Franklin Hammond, Charles Henry Sykes, W.A. Ireland, James H. Donahey, and Robert Minor, Jr..

Doug Wheeler

Billy Ireland Focus on Cartoonists

As this year’s Women’s History Month coverage approaches its end, we have one more round of Women’s Suffrage cartoons from 1913 issues of Cartoons Magazine.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Above, from the May 1913 issue, artist Carey Orr depicts the argument of corrupt politicians who like things the way that they (were).

Below, from April 1913, cartoons by Billy DeBeck and Walker O’Loughlin.

From March 1913, above, cartoons by Terry Gilkison and Robert Satterfield.

Beneath from February 1913, cartoons from William Kemp Starrett, DeBeck, Herbert H. Perry, and H.T. Webster.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History

Although I’ve been unable to find a specific incident sparking the above cartoon by Robert Minor, Jr. (scanned from the February 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine), I imagine it possibly referencing a specific lecturer, known to readers of the time. The women depicted listening, are drawn possessing the strength of Suffragettes, fully capable of beating the crap of the diminutive, bald, bespectacled (all cues signalling weakness) speaker.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Below, on the front cover of the November 9th, 1861 issue of Vanity Fair, cartoonist Henry Louis Stephens parodies, during the American Civil War the idea of an all female battalion.

Click here to see previous Women’s History Month postings.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History

Wage Inequity between the sexes — still an issue being fought today — has likely been with us since the invention of money, though it is eye-brow raising to see that a century ago, when most women had yet to achieve even the right to vote, and when most men were receiving barely a subsistence wage from their robber baron employers, that side-by-side with those, exploitation of women in the workplace was being given attention. As seen in cartoons reprinted in issues of Cartoons Magazine, a major argument being used at that time, was how factory work paid so much less than sex-work, that women were being driven towards prostitution to provide for themselves and their families.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Above, from March 1913, cartoonists Burt Thomas and William Charles Morris, on striking women garment industry workers.

Below — from May 1913 — Robert Minor, Jr. and Will Dyson, on how poor wages encourages prostitution.

From February 1913 above, we have Barnett and William Charles Morris striking the same theme.

While Robert Minor, Jr. below (from the February 1913 issue as well), shows another reason “Why Women Want to Vote”…

You can find previous Women’s History Month postings, by clicking here.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History Financial Reforms Wall Street Frauds

From the February 1913 (above) and April 1913 (below) issues of Cartoons Magazine, Canadian male cartoonists Arthur G. Racey and Hunter chide American Suffragettes to leave Canadian women out of the struggle for equal rights, as they are happy without them… (Again, according to two male cartoonists.)

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

To find prior Women’s History Month postings, click here.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History

For today’s Women’s History Month posting, we present My Wife Turned Bloomer, a rare fold-out comic strip book by British comic artist Watts Phillips, published likely no earlier than 1850, and definitely no later than 1852. The term “bloomer” refers both to a style of women’s pants, and to the women who wore them, as women wearing pants was a radical political statement, by those women who strove for equal rights with men!

This short little booklet by Phillips, manages to pack in just about every joke on the subject, with Mr. Peregrine Perkes coming home after a few weeks absence, to find the entire household (including the dog!) wearing bloomers, women smoking tobacco in every panel, his wife — under the influence of a militant American Womans Righter — taken over his library/den, women learning martial arts, driving carriages, giving political speeches, and subjugating the men to perform what had been their chores! All of it perfectly horrible to any British (or American) male!

Later this month we’ll see some of these same jokes, still in vogue fifty years later in the 1890s! And, I’ll note, many of them were still being made during the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s! (Example, in the weekly “Sonny & Cher” variety show, whose most popular ongoing sketch involved Sonny as the househusband and Cher as the family wage earner.)

Enjoy!

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read the captions beneath them.

Doug Wheeler

It’s back to the American Women’s Suffrage Movement, for today’s Women’s History posting. Above, from the January 1913 edition of Cartoons Magazine, artists Fred C. Nash, James E. Murphy, and Billy DeBeck, on attitudes involving the movement.

Beneath, from December 1912, cartoonist Fontaine Fox, displaying another attitude.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Above, H.T. Webster, De Beck, and Ralph Everett Wilder, on the advance of women into other arenas viewed as the purview of men.

Below, the increasing power of women, necessarily leading to the reduction of the male, according to cartoonists Burt Thomas, Wilder, and Terry Gilkison.

Both the above & below pages, are from December 1912.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History

While American Suffragettes were parading and demonstrating, their British counter-parts were adapting more radical tactics, such as throwing bricks through shop windows. What percent of British Suffragettes actually engaged in violent or destructive protest, versus non-violent demonstration, I don’t know. But even if just a small number, the anti-suffrage crowd on both sides of the Atlantic quickly seized upon that image, painting all in the movement as dangerous anarchists.

Note here in this posting, how the majority of cartoons in this posting — scanned from various issues of Cartoons Magazine — were created mostly by Americans. And all but one of them drawn by men.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Above, from April 1913, British Women’s Suffrage as depicted by Oscar Cesare.

Beneath, Ole May and Harold Heaton depicting the troubles in Britain. (From the March 1913 issue.)

Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling and Ralph Everett Wilder, above (March 1913), with more British problems.

Below, an actual British cartoon on the subject, by Bernard Partridge in Punch magazine, and reprinted in the February 1913 Cartoons Magazine. The reason for showing this one, seems more to poke fun at Americans’ long-standing view of Punch — that it was so ridiculously subtle, as to be unfunny, with the points it was trying to make, incomprehensible to American readers, even at the time…

Above, from May 1913, American cartoonists Guy Spencer, Harry J. Westerman, and Nelson Harding.

Below, the other Brit in this posting, and the only one by a woman — Mabel Lucie Attwell. Reprinted from The Tatler, in the February 1913 Cartoons Magazine.

To close, still more American cartoons on the struggle in Britain, from February 1913, Milton R. Halladay, Paul A. Plaschke, and W.A. Ireland

To find prior postings on Women’s History Month, click here.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History BritPunch Billy Ireland

March 4th, 1913 — President Wilson’s Inauguration Day — was also farewell day to the exiting President, William Howard Taft.

Above, from the April 1913 edition of Cartoons Magazine, are cartoons on that subject, by artists Harold Heaton, Oscar Cesare, James H. Donahey, William Kemp Starrett, Charles Bowers, and Matthew Caine.

Click on the above page, to view its cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionCartoons

On March 3rd, 1913 — the day prior to Woodrow Wilson’s Inauguration Parade — the National American Woman Suffrage Association staged their own parade along the next day’s route in support of Women’s Suffrage. During the parade, some women were attacked by male onlookers, while the police present did nothing or joined in.

Above & below, from the March 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine, are a pair of cartoons which had originally been published prior to the parade, satirizing what its cartoonists anticipate the parade might involve. Attitudes such as Fontaine Fox‘s above, playfully suggesting ways to harass the paraders, might conceivably have had a role in encouraging the later actual harassment that did occur.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Beneath, two pages of cartoons about the Parade from the April 1913 issue — all of them drawn by men. The cartoonists are: Clifford K. Berryman, Robert Satterfield, James H. Donahey, John Scott Clubb, Walker O’Loughlin, Ralph Everett Wilder, and Guy Spencer.

To find prior Women’s History postings, click here.

Doug Wheeler

— Doug