“The Monopoly Grind”, A.B. Frost’s William Vanderbilt, 1879: Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons, Part 48
For the front page of the January 21, 2026 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic, artist Arthur Burdett Frost depicted William H. Vanderbilt as the Miller of Dee from the traditional 1762 folk song, turning it into The Monopoly Grind.
At right, people come from far away, hauling their grain for the miller to grind. We see them entering the mill, beneath a sign reading, “This is the place to be ground exceedingly small.” Exiting the mill at left, people discover that the bags of grain they brought to the miller (Vanderbilt), are now empty. They walk away, down the Road to Ruin, dead bodies, skeletons, and destroyed rival mills receding to the horizon. At the bottom, beneath the cartoon, are altered lyrics in the style of the Miller of Dee.
Click on picture, to open an enlarged version.
Click here to find prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, so long as the debate on financial reforms continues in Congress (except Mondays and holidays, during which I’d already had other material planned).
financial reform NYDailyGraphic
— Doug
