Back yet again with our up-to-the-century election coverage, via the October and November 1912 issues of Cartoons Magazine, from back in the days when insurgent forces inside the Republican Party split it in two, giving us a major three-way race, plus hope to minor parties that their day might finally be arriving.

Above, cartoons involving the three major candidates: Teddy Roosevelt (former President, Progressive Party, better remembered as the “Bull Moose” Party); William Howard Taft (incumbent President, Republican); and Woodrow Wilson (President-to-be, Democrat). Art by Jack Wilson, Luther D. Bradley, Robert Satterfield, and George W. French.

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

Beneath, three-time Democratic Presidential nominee (and three-time loser) William Jennings Bryan — still an influential party favorite — took on a role in the 1912 Campaign similar to Bill Clinton this year, concentrating attacks on Roosevelt in favor of Wilson. (Republican incumbent Taft was widely regarded as a sure loser — and in the end, he spectacularly was — and so was not being targetted by Bryan. Art by Ralph Everett Wilder, J.F. McPhee, and others.

Above, one of the larger of the minor parties in 1912, were the Socialists. Who in their cartoons, naturally, took shot at all three major parties. Art by Ryan Walker and Nate Collier. Plus one cartoon by Luther D. Bradley, showing both socialists and monopolists in the same bed of public ire..

Below, the fifth force in the 1912 election, was Republican Senator Robert La Follette, who like T.R. split with the G.O.P. over its favoring monopolies and corporations over the people, But who then, instead of joining with T.R., seems to have thrown a jealous fit that he was the true Progressive — not T.R. — and continued to run for President.

Art by Tyler McWhorter, Floyd Wilding Triggs, Elmer Donnell, and Albert Wilbur Steele. Steele’s cartoon is done in the style of F. Opper’s Willie and His Papa c1900, which regularly included Mark Hanna as representing “The Trusts” (here, as “Uncle Trusty”), and T.R. as a rambunctious child (here grown up as a manic adult).

Above, still more on La Follette, and his futile attempts to rain on Teddy Roosevelt, and get the public to go for himself, instead. With art by Herbert H. Perry, John Campbell Cory, Albert Steele again, and Gaar Williams.

Below, more involving the three major parties from either a Socialist perspective, or from a perspective not favorable to them. Includes a cartoon featuring Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs (who ended up with six percent of the vote) vs. T.R., by Rollin Kirby. Also, two cartoons by Neilson of the Williamsport Grit (which I don’t know was actually Socialist), and one by Art Young (who definitely was).

Beneath, more cartoons concerning William Jennings Bryan, on the campaign stump speech trail, in favor of Woodrow Wilson. The cartoonists on this page are Matthew Caine, Charles Lewis Bartholomew (“Bart”), Richard Keith Culver, and Robert Satterfield

Above, cartoons by James E. Murphy, William Kemp Starrett, Gaar Williams, R.D. Handy, Clubb, and Winner, depicting the Bull Moose Party wiping out Republicans in Vermont, in some contest. I’m guessing it involves that the Progressive Party won several seats in the State Legislature, away from Republicans that year, during the primaries???

Beneath, the opposite seemed to occur in Maine, with the G.O.P. winning. Art by Harry J. Westerman, Jack Wilson, and Charles Bowers.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics John Scott Clubb