From June 1912 — back in the days when baseball actually was “America’s Favorite Pastime”, and a favorite topic of America’s cartoonists — come the following Cartoons Magazine extracts. My usual “and others” for contributions by lesser cartoonists not being tracked, does not even appear today, as all the contributors are stars.

Above left, kids keeping hold of the integrity of baseball, against the adults (right), who in 1912 were embroiled in the scandal of fixed games. Warning against gambling in the sport, is Boardman Robinson, while spotlighting the kids’s view, are James H. Donahey, A.B. Chapin, and Robert Ripley, six years before his first Believe It or Not!. This is Ripley’s first appearance in Cartoons Magazine. Of possible interest is the title of the cartoon positioned next to Ripley’s — “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction”. Any chance that this might have been a subtle seed-planting moment, as the young Robert Ripley, early in his career, undoubtedly looked upon the page of his first appearance collected amongst so many other fellow cartoonists, including the one placed next to his?

Below, the Winter Coal Trust replaced with the Summer Ice Trust, in a cartoon by Billy Ireland, using baseball to take a swing at monopolies. Beneath that — slipping in here because I didn’t pay enough attention to separate this page’s cartoons by subject — is another cartoon on rigged commodity markets, this time by Frank Michael Spangler.

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

Doug Wheeler

W.A. Ireland