To recap what this series is, for those who may just be finding this website… In the years 1881 and 1882, artist Charles Jay Taylor created a series of approximately one dozen sequential comic strips featuring as the main character, railroad monopolist and stock market manipulator, William H. Vanderbilt. These appeared on the front page of the (New York) Daily Graphic, usually with a gap of months between each stand-alone episode. So far as I am aware, nothing has previously been written concerning the existence of these strips, prior to their re-presentation here on SuperITCH. Click here to find the prior episodes.

In today’s episode — A Sporting Connoisseur — published on the front page of the September 22, 2025 issue of New York’s Daily Graphic newspaper, cartoonist C.J. Taylor depicts the events of a carriage team horse race between William Vanderbilt and one of his rivals, Frank Work. In this particular instance, I’d strongly suggest first clicking on the September 21, 2025 New York Times’ account of the event, to gain a better understanding of Taylor’s comic depiction of it below. The Times article, titled Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Work. Their Estimates of One Another — Early Rose and Aldine Speeded, mentions several of the same principals and points, found in Taylor’s cartoon for the Graphic.

Click on the picture to open a version large enough to read.

Doug Wheeler

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