New biography of Thomas Nast (1840-1902)

[1] Thomas Nast, posing in the 1870s.

by Richard Samuel West

Fiona Deans Halloran, author of this new biography of Nast begins her book this way:

Thomas Nast enjoyed the knowing wink. To his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, he told a version of his early life. Another version, more complete but less charming, lay within the reach of any knowing reader. Between the two lay not only Nast’s experiences, insofar as they can be reconstructed, but also his lingering discomfort with the world that produced him.

This is right on target, except that it would have been just as correct without the adjective ‘early.’ The author understands that Paine in 1904 created an entertaining promotion, rather than an accurate biography, of the man who may always be regarded as America’s greatest political cartoonist. It would fall from this understanding then that we need once and for all a detailed and rich recounting of Nast’s great life, one that parses the story that has been handed down, separates fact from fiction, and finally gives us the real man, with all his strengths and weaknesses.

[2] The new biography, front cover.

Fiona Deans Halloran, 2012, Thomas Nast; The Father of Modern Political Cartoons; A Biography, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 366 pp., hardback with dustjacket, $35, ISBN 978-0-8078-3587-6

But those who come to this biography without much knowledge of Nast hoping to immerse themselves in Nast’s life as he lived it will find themselves scratching their heads. This book by Halloran is not so much a biography as a series of meditations on various chapters in Nast’s life, wherein the author chooses an emblematic incident or cartoon to use to discuss an entire phase of Nast’s life.

[3] Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 5, 1863 — ‘Thanksgiving-Day. The Union Altar.’

So, this is not the book we need, but rather the book Halloran has chosen to write. Fair enough. It cannot be denied that Halloran is a strong writer. The book is well-written. Moreover, the author is an impressive researcher and appears to have investigated all of the important repositories of Nast correspondence and secondary sources. Regretfully this impressive foundational work has not resulted in a reliable narrative. An error-free book is, of course, a great rarity. This new Nast biography is no exception. For example, The countries of origin for the two prize-fighters John Heenan and Tom Sayers are reversed, saying Heenan was English and Sayers American (p.47), though the author does correct herself later.

[4] Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, since Nr.1, Vol. 1, Dec. 15, 1855.

More troubling are the many misconceptions and imprecisions in the book. For example, Nast’s drawing ‘Compromise with the South’ is described as ‘a hammer blow for Lincoln and against peace’ (p.59). Not true: it was a hammer blow against a rebel peace, which meant the restoration of slavery, a big difference. The author introduces another misconception when she compares Nast’s work to that of Adalbert Volck’s, the Baltimore dentist who was a Southern sympathizer. His importance is vastly overstated with: ‘There is every reason to think that [Volck’s] cartoons were available in the South’ (p.66). Actually, there is every reason to think the opposite: that hardly anyone in the South was aware of Volck’s work during the Civil War because no evidence has been found of it — nothing in the printed press, nothing in letters. Certainly there was a small group of Baltimoreans who were familiar with his drawings and probably an even smaller group in the South that was exposed to errant copies of his cartoons, but it is hard to imagine those who knew of Volck’s work at the time numbered more than a hundred.

[5] Harper’s Weekly, Sep. 3, 1864 — Compromise with the South. Dedicated to the Chicago Convention.

Also, in this book terms of printing technologies and periodical history are used loosely. For example, a reference to ‘images in newspapers’ (p.23), implies that daily newspapers of the 1850s and 60s were illustrated, when in fact they were not. Or a reference like ‘Frank Leslie’s and papers like it’ (p.23) at a time — the mid-1850s — when there were no other papers like it, excepting perhaps Ballou’s Pictorial which, though illustrated, was not a news magazine and therefore not a competitor of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

[6] Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 3, 1866 — King Andy I. How He Will Look, What He Will Do.  

The author contends that people cut pictures out of the illustrated weeklies to pin on their walls and cites as proof of this that Frank Leslie’s would occasionally issue a warning on its cover page ‘open before cutting.’ (p.294) People surely did clip engravings they liked but Leslie’s admonition had nothing to do with that. Instead, the paper arrived in people’s hands uncut, that is as a single huge sheet of paper folded over and over. It was customary to run a letter opener along the folds in order to be able to leaf through the publication. The paper merely wanted readers to know that some of the images were so large within the issue that they ran through the folds and therefore would be cut in half if the issue was razored thoughtlessly.

[7] Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 19, 1868 — “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”

And there are the constant references to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News (a conflation I suppose of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and the New York Illustrated News). Similarly, Harper’s Weekly is almost always refered to as simply Harper’s, which is a confusing short-hand because Harper’s Monthly was just as important and just as successful during this period as was the weekly. Etcetera.

[8] Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 5, 1868 — “This is a White Man’s Government.” 

Due to the paucity of the record the first chapter on Nast’s childhood is highly speculative. In contrast to Nast’s surely unreliable sunny version of his childhood, this new biography posits a dark and threatening one, with some thug on every street corner waiting to beat up the pudgy little German boy. Well, contrary to popular mythology the streets of antebellum New York were not lurking with danger. There is every reason to believe that Nast the boy would have melted right into the teeming landscape along with all of the thousands of men, women, and children going about their daily business.

[9] Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 1871 — Under The Thumb. 

Next comes the introduction of the Edwards family, among whom Nast would find his wife Sarah. To illuminate the Edwards household the book focuses on their relationship with the Edwards family cousin James Parton and his wife Fanny Fern. It seems to me the author gets this all wrong. Like the suggestion that the Edwards were parochial and small minded in their rejection of Fanny Fern.

[10] Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 21, 1871 — The Only Thing They Respect or Fear.

Fanny, for her part, was a progressive, strong-willed, talent — the highest paid woman writer of her day. But she was also deeply suspicious, jealous, and ill-tempered. She was, in fact, not a very nice person. Disliking her was not so much a sign of a rejection of a liberated woman as it was the rejection of a manipulative and unhappy person. While Sarah the mother is accused of hypocrisy, it is not pointed out that Sarah Edwards, senior, the matriarch of the Edwards household, was herself strong-willed and a successful business woman who supported her family while her older self-effacing husband amused himself with half occupations that amounted to little more than excuses to go somewhere each day. The Edwards were a remarkable family of smart independent-minded women. Nast knew he was lucky when he won the junior Sarah’s heart; it is arguably the most fortunate event of Nast’s life.

[11] Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 23, 1871 — A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to “Blow Over”—“Let Us Prey.”

The chapters that follow have similar problems. Stating that Nast wasn’t a ‘political’ cartoonist during the war as the term is conventionally understood, simply ignores the scores of political cartoons he drew for the New York Illustrated News, Phunny Phellow and even Harper’s Weekly during this period. In fact, it disposes of the hundreds of cartoons that Nast drew for Phunny Phellow throughout the 1860s in a single paragraph. In the chapter on Nast’s later career the focus is on the admittedly important work he did for Nast’s Weekly in 1892-93, but the mountain of work he did for Time (1889-90), America (1889-90), the Illustrated American (1890-95), Collier’s Once-A-Week (1890-94), and other lesser journals is ignored.

[12] Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 11, 1871 — The Tammany Tiger Loose – “What are you going to do about it?”

The chapter on Tweed blithely retells the incident in which Nast is offered $500,000 by the Tweed Ring to study in Europe. Surely this story would have been broadcast during the campaign against Tweed, when Harper’s Weekly was throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the New York boss in an effort to prove his criminality. The truth is, the public had to wait thirty-plus years for it to be told, when all the principals were dead, making it a classic example of something to be recounted only with a heavy warning attached to it.

Furthermore, it is unfortunate that the publisher of Thomas Nast; The Father of Modern Political Cartoons chose to reproduce much of the artist’s work that illustrates this book in proportions so small that it cannot be appreciated. This practice seems to me to be contradictory — displaying a fundamental lack of respect for work that the author is trying to draw attention to.

[13] Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 30, 1871, Santa Claus’s Mail.

Halloran’s best chapter focuses on Nast’s work during the campaign of 1872. It succeeds in part because it covers such a short period of time. The delineation of and meditation on Nast’s evolving relationship with Curtis treated against a backdrop of the political events of the year makes for compelling and persuasive reading. This polished essay amid a multitude of meandering meditations only reminds us of how good a book this might have been. Alas, this new biography must be approached with great skepticism and a firm grasp of Nast’s story so the reader himself can discern the good that is here from the bad.

[14] Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 30, 1871 — The American River Ganges. The Priests and the Children.

A personal presentation of the book by Fiona Deans Halloran given to The Filson Historical Society on March 12, 2013 — 38 minutes long — is HERE. A radio interview — intro at 03:00 and start at 05:00 mins. — can be heard HERE. 

[15] Harper’s Weekly, April 13, 1872 — The Republic is Not Ungrateful.

•¡•

Richard Samuel West’s latest book, Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling, can be purchased HERE.

Joseph Keppler, political cartoonist, at 175

[1] A dashing Keppler in Vienna, 1867.

by Richard Samuel West

Today, February 1, marks the 175th birthday of Joseph Keppler, the Austrian-American cartoonist who was the driving creative force behind Puck (1876-1918), America’s first successful humor magazine. Incidentally, this date also marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of my biography of Keppler, Satire on Stone (University of Illinois, 1988).

[2] Keppler painting scenery at the Apollo Theater in St. Louis, 1870.

The world of research has undergone a revolution in the last 25 years. I will give you one example from my own experience. When I was researching Satire on Stone, I tried to pin down the exact date of Keppler’s arrival in the United States. It was generally known to have been in 1867 but no more precise date had ever been given. I was living near Philadelphia then. I took the train to Washington, DC, and spent six or seven hours searching microfilm records (anyone who has done this knows how much fun that is!) of the manifests of ships traveling in 1867 from Germany to New Orleans, Keppler’s purported port of entry. I found nothing. In my book, Keppler’s date of arrival remained vague.

[3] Keppler, now the famous cartoonist, in New York, c. 1880.

Flash forward seventeen years. While doing research on the San Francisco Wasp, which would become my second book, I decided to employ the resources of Ancestry.com to see if I could turn up anything new on Keppler. Within a minute or two, right before my eyes on my home computer, was a picture of the passenger manifest for the recently built S.S. Cimbria of the Hamburg-American Packet Line, which sailed from Hamburg in early December and made port in New York City on December 24, 1867. The log contained the names of Keppler, his wife Minna (mistakenly recorded as “Anna”), and Keppler’s brother, Karl. What had been an expensive fruitless search in 1986 required a simple click of the mouse in 2003.

[4] Keppler late in life, c. 1892.

In Satire on Stone I quoted from a 19th century St. Louis source that said Keppler had arrived with Minna and her brother Harry. Now the story changed. Harry may have already been in St. Louis, awaiting their arrival, or maybe he came later, but they did not travel together. I already knew that brother Karl did not settle with Keppler in St. Louis; he chose to reside with their father, who had become a leading citizen of the little German-American town of New Frankfort, Mo. — located in northern Missouri, not southern Missouri as I said in Satire on Stone. (My error is perhaps understandable in light of the fact that the town no longer exists and finding information on it pre-computers was difficult.) There is still much to learn about Keppler. The facts are out there and they will eventually be unearthed, especially now that we are living in the digital age. Part of me is happy to have answered my simple question of so many years ago; part of me grinds my teeth over the laborious inefficiencies of the past.

[5] The front printer’s proof of the Liederkranz admission ticket, 1876

The internet also led me to several books and articles I did know existed in the 1980s. The first is a memoir published in 1910 by the Princess Helen von Racowitza, who was a friend of the Kepplers in the 1870s. The Princess provides us with a rare glimpse into Keppler’s home life. She became acquainted with Keppler and his wife Pauline in 1876, when she came to New York to perform the role of Clotilde in Sardou’s Fernande in a German-American theatre there. Later in the decade, after Puck’s success, the princess visited them in their grand home in Inwood Park on the northern tip of Manhattan. She recalls Keppler’s “dear little wife” saying to her: “Oh, Goldche” (she called me this in her strong Swabian dialect), “I often think all this glory is a dream; it can’t be true. I shall wake up one morning and find myself in my little house [of old].”

[6] The back printer’s proof of the Liederkranz admission ticket, 1876.

The second internet find was a tour of the Kepplers’ second home, a brownstone on East 79th Street, conducted in 1897 by the now widowed Mrs. Keppler for the New York Times (July 11, 1897). It provides us with a peek at Keppler’s lavish lifestyle: “Though portieres of sage velvet, brocaded with gold in French heraldic design, one passes into the parquetry-floored drawing room, embellished after the period of Louis Seize. The gold furniture is upholstered in Beauvais tapestry, and the walls are hung with shrimp pink and gold brocade, the frames of numerous oil paintings by Verestschagin, Kobalsky, Henner, Stiler, Rau, Kaulbach, with a life portrait of Wagner, by Gaul, blending into the background upon which they hang without a self-assertive shine. Some admirable examples of Italian statuary occupy pedestals places at effective points, and rival attention with that one cannot fail to give to a few wonderful colored terra-cotta figures by Strauss — an Arabian water carrier and a Japanese being full of life and expression. Two notable cabinets in this room, of antique Spanish fabrication, combine ebony, tortoise shell, and brass, skillfully intermingled, and are paneled with water colors executed by some deftly handled brush of a century or more ago. The grand piano, across which is thrown a fine specimen of embroidered silk, was especially constructed to harmonize with the decorative motif employed in this apartment and the second drawing room, which adjoins it.”

[7] The cover of the Liederkranz programme, 1876.

The third find was The History of the Liederkranz of the City of New York 1847-1947 (1948). (I committed the unforgiveable mistake in Satire on Stone of repeatedly misspelling the name of the society.) This book provided me with a better understanding of the centrality that this German singing and fraternal organization played in the lives of immigrants like Keppler. Keppler thrived on his connection with it. From at least 1876 to as late as 1889, Keppler played a leading role in the production of the Liederkranz annual masked ball. I have reproduced here his artistic efforts in support of the 1876 ball, including artist proofs of the elaborate ticket of admission, the cover and centerpread of the evening’s program, and the cover of the dinner menu. Clearly, this was a labor of love for him. His ties were so great to the club that he joined with other Liederkranz members around 1890 to build a cluster of vacation homes on a mountain top in the Catskills. I noted this in the book; what I did not say is now head-slappingly obvious to me: they named the community Elka Park after their beloved club (L-K, get it?).

[8] The centerspread of the Liederkranz programme, 1876.

So, in the intervening years since Satire on Stone was published, I have learned many intriguing bits and pieces about Keppler that add color to the story of his life. What has not changed for me are the big truths about Keppler. His work continues to astonish me with its polish and wit, and I still consider him the greatest draughtsman among 19th century American political cartoonists. I have however come to regard the work of his son Keppler Jr. in a new light, believing him to be superior to his great father as a political commentator. But that is a topic for another day.

[9] The cover of the Liederkranz dinner menu, 1876.

As for now, Happy Birthday, Joe. To all who wish to honor Keppler today, I suggest you indulge in a pastime close to his heart: slaking your thirst with a good German beer.

* Richard Samuel West’s latest book ‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.

Max Bachmann, Political Cartoonist in Clay – 1896

Leslie’s Weekly, June 18, 1896. [#1] Hon. Thomas Platt: “Weighed and Found Wanting.”

by Richard Samuel West

 

Max Bachmann was born in Brunswick, Germany, in 1862, emigrated with his family to New England, and was living in New York by the mid-1890s, the city he would call home for the rest of his life. Somewhere along the line, he received training in the sculpting arts. Though some of his pieces had been displayed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, he was little known in 1896 when he began contributing political cartoon sculptures to Leslie’s Weekly Illustrated, which printed them large scale on the front page.

While we know the sculptures were made of clay and then photographed, and that they were so hastily done that the backs of the sculptures remained unfinished, we do not know anything about their size. Were they one foot high? Four feet high? Leslie’s Weekly never says. Bachmann’s contribution was special. Political cartoon sculptures were never a featured part of an American political campaign before Max Bachmann’s work and have never been a featured part since.

Leslie’s Weekly, June 25, 1896. [#2] William McKinley: A Man Wanted and Found. / Leslie’s Weekly, July 2, 1896. [#3] Mr. Cleveland and his Boom.

His first sculpture, depicting New York Republican boss Thomas Platt, appeared on the cover of the June 18, 1896, issue. Thereafter followed twenty-three cartoon statues, one every week. Three depicted a heroic Republican presidential nominee William McKinley, but many more (a total of fifteen) were reserved for demonizing or belittling the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.

Leslie’s Weekly, July 23, 1896. [#6] The New [Not the True] Democracy Unmasked. / Leslie’s Weekly, August 6, 1896. [#8] A Hopeless Case.

Bachmann’s broadsides were a major part of a much larger campaign conducted by almost the entire journalism community (Hearst’s New York Journal was the only powerful exception) to paint Bryan and his followers in the most extreme light and frighten undecided voters away from the Democratic party. Bachmann’s sculptures and the larger effort were successful. McKinley won in a landslide. Bachmann’s work was recognized as groundbreaking by the press of the day. 

Leslie’s Weekly, August 20, 1896. [#10] A Modern St. George and the Dragon. / Leslie’s Weekly, September 3, 1896. [#12] A Sure Winner if Bryan is Elected.

The New York Mail and Express wrote: “Leslie’s Weekly’s unique and telling statuary groups on its first page have proved a novel and valuable contribution to modern campaigning.” 

The New York Tribune said, “Perhaps the most novel feature of this year’s caricature has been its expression in sculpture… While many of [Bachmann’s sculptural] arguments have been self-evident, they have doubtless had a considerable influence by their effect of sculptured permanence; as if, after each week’s puzzling argument in the daily papers, some clear voice rose above the clatter and said in a downright way: “But the fact remains!” 

Leslie’s Weekly, September 17, 1896. [#14] Thou Shalt Not Kill. The Vain Attempt of the Popocratic Presidential Candidate to Kill the Bird that Lays the Golden Egg. / Leslie’s Weekly, October 1, 1896. [#16] United for the National Honor.

As a coda to the campaign, Bachmann contributed one last cartoon sculpture in December on the plight of Cuba under Spain’s harsh rule. It would prove to be the starting gun in the next great contest: the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Leslie’s Weekly, December 10, 1896. Another Spanish Victory.

After his stint with Leslie’s Weekly, Bachmann gained a reputation as an architectural sculptor. In 1899 Joseph Pulitzer commissioned him to design allegorical figures representing the seven continents for the Pulitzer building on Park Row. His busts of an American Indian (1902) and of Lincoln (1905) are still widely celebrated. From the earliest days of filmmaking he was called on to supply work for the movies. In the midst of an active and successful career, he died of pneumonia in January 1921 at the age of 58.

Leslie’s Weekly, October 15, 1896. [#18] Cutting the Dinner Pail in Two. / Leslie’s Weekly, November 5, 1896. [#21] Little Billy Bryan and the Tantalizing Bee. (The bee is labeled Palmer, a reference to John Palmer, the presidential nominee of the Gold Democrats who bolted the party.)

* Richard Samuel West’s latest book ‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.

America’s First Color Newspaper Supplement (1892)

1 [1892] Cover of the first issue of  
The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement, 
 ‘Grover Cleveland,’ June 23.

by Richard Samuel West

Comic strip historians credit H.H. Kohlsaat as the grandfather of the Sunday comic supplement. Though he was not involved in the launch of the Sunday comic supplement, his brainchild — The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement — inspired it. Kohlsaat was in his late forties when he bought a controlling interest in the Chicago based Inter Ocean newspaper in 1891. The son of German and English immigrants, he had made his money in the bakery trade. As a life-long Republican, he wanted to use his wealth to influence national affairs and, especially, to push the political prospects of William McKinley of Ohio, who had recently lost his House seat but was maneuvering to run for governor of his home state and had his eye on the presidency.

2 [1892] Explanatory article in the first issue, 
‘An American Color Bearer,’ June 23.

Prior to taking control of The Inter Ocean in Chicago Kolhsaat had traveled to Europe where he learned that the widely read Paris daily Le Petit Journal was issuing an illustrated weekly supplement in color, something he had never seen before. Sure, he was familiar with Puck and Judge and Chicago’s Light, all of whom sported full color lithographs in each weekly issue, but this newspaper supplement was different — its color was produced mechanically on a perfecting press, a press that prints on both sides of the paper at once — which made it more efficient and less expensive than chromolithography. Kohlsaat was intrigued by the supplement and the printing process. He sought out the inventor of the press, one of the owners of the Journal, Hippolyte Maranoni, and ordered one for the offices of The Inter Ocean.

3-4 [1892] Top: June 23, ‘The Democratic 
Convention Wigwam.’ Bottom: September 4. 
‘Let Uncle Sam be the Arbitrator,’ 
illustrated by Art Young.

On Thursday, June 23, 1892, Kohlsaat launched The Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement, an eight page tabloid sporting a full color front and back cover, with news features, fiction, and miscellany filling up the black and white interior. It was the first color newspaper Supplement issued in America. In the early issues, the color was a bit grainy and pallid. The illustrations were prosaic, mainly portraits of men in the news, street scenes, or buildings, usually drawn by Charles O. Jones of the Inter Ocean art department. In September of ’92, however, the Illustrated Supplement took on renewed vigor.

5-6 [1892] Left: October 16. ‘Hon. John C. Spooner,’ 
cover illustrated by Art Young. 
Right: October 22, ‘Rip van Winkle Dazzled by 
the World’s Fair,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast.

Art Young, a Midwesterner who had come to Chicago in 1884 to study at the arts student league, had jumped from one Chicago daily to another during the latter half of the 1880s. After a stint in Paris, he returned to his adopted city and began working for the Inter Ocean at the beginning of 1892. He was the paper’s daily political cartoonist. With the September 4 issue, he began contributing political cartoons to the back covers of the Illustrated Supplement and then caricature portraits to the front covers.

7-8 [1892] Left: October 30, ‘Defeat,’ 
cover illustrated by Art Young. 
Right: October 30, JOHN BULL – 
“I say, Uncle Sam, how you have grown. 
Is it PROTECTION?” U.S. – “Well, 
I should smile.” Illustrated by Thomas Nast.

In October, during the homestretch of the 1892 presidential campaign, he was joined briefly by Thomas Nast, usually with Young drawing the cover art and Nast contributing a cartoon to the back.  Nast had come to Chicago at Kohlsaat’s request to judge a contest to select the best graphic representation of the city of Chicago. From then on, his work appeared sporadically in the pages of The Inter Ocean. (In 1894, Kohlsaat commissioned Nast to paint what has become his best known oil painting, “Peace in Union” which depicts Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Kolhsaat paid Nast $10,000 for the painting and then donated it to his hometown library in Galena, Illinois, also the hometown of Ulysses S. Grant.)

9-10 [1893] Left: January 28 cover, ‘Blaine.’ 
Right: March 5, ‘Another Hand Takes the 
Reins of Government,’ illustrated by Art Young.

Of course the big event in Chicago during this period was the World’s Columbian Exposition, which though originally scheduled for 1892, was delayed a year and ran from May to October of 1893. From June 1892 through April 1893, the Illustrated Supplement almost always accompanied the Sunday paper, but in a few instances it was issued on another day instead. With the advent of the Fair, the Illustrated Supplement stepped up publication to twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. Young continued as the main artist for the supplement with assistance from another art department staffer named Williamson. In July, The Inter Ocean hired Charles Saalburg, formerly of the San Francisco Wasp, to head the art department; he also became a major contributor to the Illustrated Supplement. Saalburg’s polished work was a nice compliment to Young’s homegrown efforts and Williamson’s illustrations.

11-12 [1893] Left: April 16, ‘A Few Old Sketches 
Re-Touched,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast. 
Right: April 30 front cover, ‘I Will be Queen 
of the May,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast.

The  Illustrated Supplement created something of a sensation in the newspaper publishing world. In May of 1893, The World in New York, inspired by Kohlsaat’s innovation, brought out the first color comic supplement, using the same press model Kohlsaat had imported from Europe. After the fair ended in October, the Illustrated Supplement returned to a Sunday-only publishing schedule. Though it was downsized at the end of the year, it contained the same amount of color because an interior doublespread was added. 

13-15 [1893] Left: July 16 front cover, ‘He Rules 
the Roost,’ illustrated by Charles Saalburg. 
Centre: September 6 front cover, ‘Maine 
State Building at the World’s Fair.’ 
Right: September 10 front cover, ‘Ohio’s 
Strong Man,’ illustrated by Charles Saalburg.

Kohlsaat, Young, and Saalburg all left The Inter Ocean in 1894. Kohlsaat sold out his interest in the paper and moved on to other projects (though he bought back the Inter Ocean nearly twenty years later). Young eventually made his way to New York and enjoyed fifty more active years in the profession. At Pulitzer’s invitation, Saalburg became head of The World’s art department in New York. He went on to a long career in pictorial journalism and was a highly respected printing arts technician, eventually even patenting several color printing processes. 

16-17 [1893] Left: November 21 cover, 
‘Our Uncle Grover – As Usual, the Inter 
Ocean Was Right.’ Right: December 17 cover, 
‘The Song That Did (Not) Reach His Heart.’ 
Both illustrated by Charles Saalburg.

No one has determined the exact date that the Illustrated Supplement was discontinued. I have an Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement from 1900, but it does not contain any original art (just reprinted cartoons from Judge) and I have been unable to determine whether or not the title was published continuously during the intervening years. Reprinted here is a generous sampling of cover art from this pioneering publication.

18 [1894] January 7, Front plus back-cover sheet, 

‘The Modern Paul and Virginia’ and ‘Looking 

Backward,’ both illustrated by Charles Saalburg. 

Please note that the final image reads 1893 on the 

title bar of the issue itself, but it’s actually from 

1894 (the issue was misdated when published).

Richard West’s new book ‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.

The Masses 1911 to 1917 – America’s Great Arts and Politics Magazine

February 1916, Frank Walts illustration

  by Richard Samuel West

The handful of years leading up to America’s entry into World War I was Socialism’s glorious moment in America, its high-water mark of energy and promise. This pregnant moment in time was the result of decades of ferment, indeed more than 100 years of growing agitation to curb the excesses of American capitalism, beginning with Jefferson’s warnings about the deleterious effects of urbanized culture, and proceeding through the painful dislocation of the emerging industrial economy, the excesses of speculation during the Civil War, the rise of the robber barons, the suppression of labor unions, the exploitation of immigrant labor, through to the exposes of the muckrakers. By the decade of the ‘teens,’ the evils of capitalism were widely acknowledged, even by champions of the system.

Socialism became capitalism’s logical alternative and the rallying point for the disenchanted.  It was, of course, merely a vision, largely untested. But that is exactly why the socialist movement was so formidable. The artists and writers of The Masses didn’t need to defend socialism when Rockefeller’s henchmen were gunning down mine workers and their families in Ludlow, Colorado. Eventually, the American socialist movement would shatter on the rocks of the Russian revolution, when it was finally confronted with the reality of a socialist state, but that story comes later. The time of The Masses was a magical moment in the history of the American left, when it was resolute in its fight against evil and pregnant with glorious possibility. During these heady days, The Masses was the movement’s flagship.

Janary 1911, First issue cover of Piet Vlag’s Masses

By all measures except the most mundane (profitability, advertising pages, circulation figures), The Masses was a great magazine: beautiful, intelligent, surprising, deadly serious, laugh-out-loud funny, hard-edged and frivolous.  Nothing like it had ever been seen in America before. It was an arts and letters magazine that thoroughly embraced a political agenda of radical reform and pacifism. And it managed to do this, unlike all of its predecessors in the field of political thought and opinion, with wit and style. The result was then and remains today a joy to behold, an ever-evolving experiment in publishing and a supremely entertaining intellectual high-wire act.

November 1913, John Sloan illustration

It was founded in 1911 by Piet Vlag, a Dutch immigrant, to promote the cooperative movement. Nearly every issue in The Masses’ early days contained an article or editorial explaining the merits of business- or consumer-owned and run cooperatives. The magazine was earnest and attractive, enlivened by cartoons by Art Young and John Sloan and illustrations by Charles and Alice Winter. But by August 1912, Vlag’s vision had run its course and the magazine folded. Though Vlag had given up on the magazine and left for the south, Art Young was not yet ready to follow suit. He rallied Sloan, the Winters, and others, and they corralled Max Eastman, a doctoral candidate at Columbia who was a leader in the suffrage movement, to edit the magazine. A brighter, more vibrant Masses reappeared in December 1912.

December 1913, Art Young illustration

In the pages of this second Masses, art predominated. It was not an adornment or mere illustration used to break up fields of gray type. Artwork in The Masses appeared, well printed and large, on its own terms. This explains why some of America’s finest talents – Young, Sloan, and the Winters, soon joined by George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Frank Walts, among many — contributed art to The Masses for no remuneration. While The Masses was a child of America’s leading political satire magazines, Puck, Judge, and Life, in that it built on the visual and comedic vocabulary they had popularized, it was more interested in subverting tradition than on extending it. For that task, The Masses artists drew their inspiration from the leading satire magazines of Europe, Simplicissimus and L’Assiette au Beurre, and succeeded in bringing the visual bravura of those unconventional publications to America.

February 1914, Cornelia Barns illustration

The Masses letterpress was a happy jumble of essays, short stories, poetry, and humor. Max Eastman contributed rousing and lucid editorials that set forth one of the most radical agendas of the day. Floyd Dell conducted what was arguably the finest review of the arts in the American press. Except for excerpts of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, The Masses fiction was not particularly distinguished. The poetry, on the other hand, was of a fairly high caliber at a time when American poets were shaking off the 19th century and letting their words fly.

March 1914, Frank Walts illustration

The war complicated The Masses’ mission. It brought a new urgency to the magazine’s pages, with Eastman’s passionate editorials against the war leading the way. Some of the contributors objected to this new increasingly strident tone. Others, like Art Young, championed it. Old allies fell apart. Founders such as Sloan and the Winters left the magazine. New contributors such as Robert Minor and Hugo Gellert took their places.

April 1914, John Sloan illustration

The magazine came to an end at the hands of the US post office when it refused to mail the August 1917 issue forcing that issue and the remaining three issues of that year to be distributed only on newsstands. By then, Eastman, Young, and others were charged with treason for having through the pages of the magazine “obstructed the recruiting and enlistment of the US military.” Two trials ensued, dragging on throughout 1918. Both ended in deadlocked juries. Though the men of The Masses were free of legal prosecution, the magazine that had championed their causes was now long gone.

June 1914, John Sloan illustration

If you want to learn more about this amazing periodical, there are many valuable books to consult. The best are Rebecca Zurier’s Art For The Masses (1988), a cogent and well-illustrated scholarly assessment of the magazine and William O’Neill’s Echoes of Revolt (1966), which collects much of the best from the magazine’s pages. My personal favorite is Richard Fitzgerald’s Art and Politics (1973), a vigorous and surprisingly opinionated appraisal of the men and women who created the magazine’s graphics. I believe that the more we examine The Masses in all of its splendor the more certain we will become that this David of the magazine world was the Socialist movement’s greatest tangible gift to American culture.

August 1914, Maurice Becker illustration

January 1915, Stuart Davis illustration

February 1915, Frank Walts illustration

March 1915, George Bellows illustration

July 1915, K.R. Chamberlain illustration

August 1915, Robert Minor illustration

September 1915, Cornelia Barns illustration

December 1915, Ilonka Karasz illustration

January 1916, Frank Walts illustration

May 1916, Maurice Becker illustration

June 1916, Will Hope illustration

July 1916, Robert Minor illustration

December 1916, Frank Walts illustration

January 1917, Frank Walts illustration

March 1917, Frank Walts illustration

May 1917, Frank Walts illustration

June 1917, Hugo Gellert illustration

July 1917, Carlo Leonetti illustration

September 1917, Carlo Leonetti illustration

* Richard Samuel West’s new book 

‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.