In 1932, three years after the start of Great Depression I — the GOP, whose policies helped destroy the world economy, were seeking to re-elect Republican President Herbert Hoover. Hoover had been in office less than a year when the Stock Market collapsed — so to blame him would not be exactly fair — it would be more appropriate to point towards his predecessor — the eight prior years under Republican President Warren G. Harding, and his Republican-controlled Congress. Unlike today’s situation, in which Republicans wrecked the economy after eight years, then instantly dumped their handiwork on a Democratic President — in 1929, we were in the ninth year of successive Republican Presidential rule, and they were stuck with the problems they had created for three more years. For three-and-a-half years (late 1929 thru early 1933), Herbert Hoover and the Republicans, got to apply their economic theories and approach — basically the same ideology and approach they today say will get us out of the current Republican-caused Great Depression II - and the result of following their ideas, was that the Depression got even worse.

Despite their obvious failure, when it came to the Presidential Campaign of 1932Republicans attempted to push their same old/current old ideas as being the solution (that the majority saw through it, was not because Americans were smarter than, but because Republicans then hadn’t escaped their mess by quickly handing it off to the Democrats, so they weren’t able to play on the short memories and attention spans of the masses).

Below, old Puck magazine cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper — still yet active — parodied Herbert Hoover’s and the GOP’s campaign strategy, in a series of single panel cartoons titled ‘Erbie and ‘Is Playmates, which ran in the New York American newspaper. The New York Democratic Committee collected several of Opper’s cartoons, into a cartoon campaign pamphlet, also published by the New York American. In below’s example from that booklet, Hoover is shown giving the marching orders to the Republican press, speakers, and campaign managers, to all tell the same story (if you thought “political spin” was a recent invention — sorry). Hoover tells them to “…use the old ballyhoo of four years ago! It might fool the Country again!” (Does this sound familiar??)

Click on the below cartoon, to open a larger version.

This past Spring and Summer, I wrote some previous posts involving Herbert Hoover and cartoons from his period. Rather than re-hash or re-post them for those who might not have seen them, I am below providing links to those articles. To access these articles, click on the below pictures.

Click on the below left picture - the cover of the 1928 Republican Presidential Campaign cartoon booklet, Pictorial History of the Department of Commerce under Herbert Hoover, by artist Robert Satterfield — to view several interior pages.

Click on the below right April 1929 cartoon by M. Talburt — titled All Right - Let’s See It Work — for an article showing a number of pre and post Stock Market Crash cartoons, involving Hoover’s handling of the economy.

In the Summer of 1932, unemployed WW I veterans camped outside Washington, D.C. (calling their camps “Hoovervilles”), rallying and protesting for a promised veterans’ bonus payment to be paid early, as they and their families needed the money. Hoover had the Army — using tanks, bayonets, and tear gas — drive the protesting veterans away. Click on the below three pictures to access Parts 1 thru 3, showing Hoover-era cartoons from pamphlets sold by unemployed WW I veterans to earn money in lieu of begging. Each part also contains links to Parts 1 thru 3 of the documentary film, March of the Bonus Army, detailing events of the veterans’ protest.

Click here to find prior postings involving Election Cartoons.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionCartoons