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PUCK MAGAZINE
In 1876 a cartoonist named Joseph Keppler founded an American satirical/political magazine called Puck. The name
came from the character in Shakespeare's "Midsummer's Night Dream" and Keppler's drawing of Puck, along
with a key line from the Shakespeare play, graced the masthead of the magazine for many years.
Keppler originally founded the magazine (in New York City) as a German language publication, but the following
year he started publishing an English-language version as well. Keppler, a talented cartoonist and illustrator,
had done editorial cartoons and drawings for Frank Leslie's Illustrated--a successful newsmagazine of the era.
Puck was, to some degree, modeled on the older English publication, Punch, which had been published in London since
1841.
The signature of Puck was its lavishly illustrated color cover editorial cartoon and secondary cartoons in the
middle and back pages of the 16-page magazine. The cover cartoon was typically on political themes and the back-page
cartoon on social issues, although sometimes either theme could appear on either page. Some of the most creative,
and biting, satire of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era appeared in the pages of Puck.
Keppler's politics and attitudes are not easy to categorize. He was anti-suffrage and generally antagonistic to
trade unions; he crusaded against political corruption; savaged hypocrisy in public life; and had a mix of particular
politicians and issues which got his literary dander up. On the national stage he criticized Ulysses Grant, depicting
him as a drunkard and puppet of vested interests. Yet he also belittled Rutherford B. Hayes for his bluenose decision
to ban alcohol from the White House. In the presidential election of 1884 Puck made a crusade against James G.
Blaine, and the magazine is credited with having some influence in helping swing the election to Grover Cleveland.
Much of Puck's editorializing concerned New York politics--both City and State.
Keppler was especially harsh on what he viewed as religious hypocrisy--frequently
attacking both the Catholic Church and such Protestants as Henry
Ward Beecher. Keppler also attacked his fellow publishers, with
Joseph Pulitzer being a favorite target (Pulitzer tried unsuccessfully
to buy the magazine to silence Keppler.) Puck was generally pro-immigrant
(Keppler himself being a German immigrant); it was critical of American
imperialist adventures abroad, especially those of Teddy Roosevelt;
and was not above depicting African Americans in terms of the common
racial stereotypes of the day.
After Keppler's death in 1894, his son, Joseph Keppler, Jr., took over the magazine and continued the family tradition.
Keppler Jr. opposed Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential
campaign. In 1917 publisher William Randolph Hearst bought out Puck, and, after running it briefly with a new editorial
focus, folded the magazine in 1918.
PUCK ON CIVIL WAR PENSIONS
In keeping with its oft-sounded theme of opposing corruption in public offices and public programs, Puck saw the
Civil War Pension system as a classic example of political corruption. Many issues of Puck at the end of the century
editorialized on the topic of Civil War Pensions.
The first issue reproduced in part here, from December 1882, features a powerful editorial cartoon on the cover,
whose meaning is pretty much self-evident, along with some observations from the editors on the inside front cover
of the issue. The cartoon features a gluttonous, multi-armed, veteran feeding voraciously from the U. S. Treasury.
The second cartoon was featured on the cover of Puck in the May 29, 1889 issue. This editorial features a golden
Horn of Plenty reaching into the U. S. Treasury and pouring forth, through the Pension Bureau, unlimited money
upon the up-reaching greedy hands of the public. The figure holding the Horn, labeled Tanner, was the director
of the Pension Bureau during this time. The caption for the cartoon suggests that the Pension Bureau will exhaust
any surplus in the Treasury before the election of 1892. This was an issue of the day because the outgoing President
in 1889, Grover Cleveland, had left a sizable budget surplus at the end of his term and the editors of Puck (who
were Cleveland supporters) feared that the new Republican President, Benjamin Harrison, would squander the surplus
through extravagant pensions for veterans.
The issue of veterans pensions also had special importance for the contest between Cleveland and Harrison in that
Cleveland had made taking a hard-line against expansion of the system of Civil War pensions one of the major policies
of his first Administration. In fact, Cleveland was the first postbellum President to actually veto a private bill
from the Congress awarding a pension to a particular individual--he vetoed several hundred such bills. His vetoes
of private bills led to the creation of a political organization of Civil War veterans, known as the Grand Army
of the Republic, to push for a broader and more generous general pension bill, which Cleveland also vetoed and
which was a factor in his defeat in the election of 1888.
The third cartoon, from 1893, shows that the issue of pensions was
still in political play following the election of 1892 in which
Cleveland defeated Harrison and reclaimed the Presidency. After
Cleveland took office in 1893 Harrison began the old attacks on
the pension issue. At a GAR rally in Indianapolis he made the remark
quoted in the caption of the cartoon. Harrison was complaining that
Civil War pensions were not generous enough. The cartoonist is belittling
this remark by Harrison and depicting Civil War pensions as an outmoded
burden on the nation.
We are also featuring three sets of editorial commentaries on the Civil War Pensions: the first is from the same
issue as the first cartoon; the second was published in 1889, although not in the same issue as the second editorial
cartoon; and the third is a commentary on the cover cartoon, which appeared in the same issue. |
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