A.B. Frost’s “What Will Become of the Bears - A Song of the Street”, 1876: Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons, Part 33
Below is the front page of the January 8, 2026 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic, by A.B. Frost. Frost’s interior image shows Jay Gould, playing solitaire in the graveyard of Wall Street, after his manipulations crashed and wiped out all his competitors. Written upon the grave upon which Gould sits and plays cards, are the words:
| “Sacred to the memory of those brokers, who, victims of misplaced confidence, depended on their own judgements and fell prey to the guile of JAY GOULD!” |
The cards with which Gould plays, have the names (mostly rail roads) of companies Gould seized control of via stock manipulations (see here prior post, Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons # 01). Behind Gould, another gravestone reads:
| “Sacred to the memory of the man who pulled down the last house in Wall Street.” |
Click on picture to see an enlarged version.
The ring of silhouetted figures framing Gould, illustrate the poem, What Will Become of the Bears. — A Song of the Street, told in a manner parodying the popular 1868 Minstrel Show song, 10 Little Injuns, by Septimus Winner, and its more popular and still further racist, 1869 derivation, Ten Little N-g-rs. If you click on the above picture, it will expand in size large enough for you to read the poem at the bottom.
Click here to find both the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, while the debate on financial reforms continues in Congress (except Mondays and holidays, on which I already had other material planned).
Doug Wheeler
financial reform
NYDailyGraphic
— Doug
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