Above, held until now, from the January 1912 issue One of Cartoons Magazine, a page on the effort of cities trying to get the Democratic National Convention (and its business) to be held in their city. At this point, the Republicans has already decided upon Chicago. The cartoons from the Chicago Daily News (top left) and Chicago Inter Ocean (bottom right), both propose (unsurprisingly), why not hold both conventions in Chicago. The Robert Minor, Jr. cartoon (bottom left), from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, proposes that St. Louis hold the Convention. And the cartoon from the Baltimore American newspaper, urges that Baltimoreans(??) have a $100,000 fund to lure the Convention there, but are asleep on the job, and if they don’t wake up, St. Louis might get the Convention instead.

As we know, Baltimore ended up with the 1912 Convention.

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

The remainder of the pages shown today, are from Cartoons Magazine‘s August 1912 issue.

Below, while the 2012 Election’s “Dog Controversies” involve that when Barack Obama was nine years old, adults gave him dog meat to eat, and he ate it! (A controversy, because of course we know that young children have the right to refuse what adults tell them to do, yet he committed the sin of obeying his elders!) Plus also, that Mitt Romney (fully adult, and by Mormon Male Patriarchical Tradition, the family ruler) was in the habit of strapping the family dog (in a cage) atop the roof of his car for family cross-country highway trips. (And the relevance to ability to govern in either of these cases, is???…)

Below, 1912′s Dog Nonsense involved the hound dog of Woodrow Wilson’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Champ Clark. Precisely what the nonsense was about (was Clark saying to vote for him, because of his dog?? Anyway, that’s the explanation behind the below two pages of cartoons: showing Champ Clark holding his hound, and asking, “Anybody want to buy a dog?” (by which cartoonist John Campbell Cory meant Clark himself); artist Robert Minor, Jr. showing the Clark’s hound crying alongside the Tammany Tiger (Clark was aligned with the corrupt NYC Tammany Hall organization/party); Charles Bowers showing the Democratic Donkey (after breaking the “Unit Rule”/Democratic Party Boss Control) sitting atop the hound; Bowers again, showing Clark’s dog on the run, his tail (that he can’t escape) tied to Tammany; and, by Frank Michael Spangler, Clark’s “houn’ dawg” on the hunt, peeking out of a log, spotting rabbit Wilson, but unable to get him, in “Stuck!”.

Above, references to the length of the Democratic nomination battle (46 ballots until enough delegates agreed on the nominee). Champ Clark had actually been in the lead coming in, but when the corrupt Tammany Hall declared Clark their man, prior nominee William Jennings Bryan threw his political support to Wilson, as best chance that reformists in the party had.

Beneath, cartoons involving the nomation battle, and recovery to focus on their chief foe for the Presidency, the Bull Moose/Progressive Party (the G.O.P. — for 1912 — fading from power). Cartoons by Billy DeBeck, Charles Bowers, Nelson Harding, E.A. Bushnell, and others.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics