In 1904 Puck published an iconic cartoon “Next!”. It shows an oil tank/octopus hybrid with the name “Standard Oil” on the Tank. The octopus has arms “wrapped around the steel, copper, and shipping industries, as well as a state house, the U.S. Capitol, and one tentacle reaching for the White House.”
Keppler, Udo J. (1904), “Next!” Puck, v. 56, no. 1436 (N.Y. : J. Ottmann Lith, Co.) 1904 Sept. 7.
Image source: LOC, Accessed 1st June 2009
![Frenzied Lawson “Darn your big stick! Get a meat Ax!!” (ca 1906).
[Thomas W.] Lawson’s public feud with the “Standard Oil crowd” won him a reputation as a reformer. … Denver Post cartoon shows him battling an octopus with the head of John D. Rockefeller, even though John D. had had nothing to do with Bay State Gas, Amalgamated Copper, or Lawson’s other dealings with Henry Rogers.
Plazak, D. (2007), ‘Thomas Lawson‘ (Accessed: 1st June 2009)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxv6mwDI7u1qb50y9o1_500.gif)
Frenzied Lawson “Darn your big stick! Get a meat Ax!!” (ca 1906).
[Thomas W.] Lawson’s public feud with the “Standard Oil crowd” won him a reputation as a reformer. … Denver Post cartoon shows him battling an octopus with the head of John D. Rockefeller, even though John D. had had nothing to do with Bay State Gas, Amalgamated Copper, or Lawson’s other dealings with Henry Rogers.Plazak, D. (2007), ‘Thomas Lawson‘ (Accessed: 1st June 2009)
Boer War postcard (1899/1900)
Postcard from series ‘La Guerre du Transvaal’. Depicts Transvaal lion as biting British octopus. All other colonies in thrall to the octopus and entangled in its arms.
The caption says: ‘Tu as cette fois Albion, En face de toi un Lion’ (You have this time Albion, in front of you a Lion.)
“The Yellow Peril” published in the “New Zealand Truth” on the 16th of February 1907. The arms are labelled “greed”, “licentiousness”, “opium traffic”, “brutality” and “evil habits”. The cartoon shows a Chinese octopus reaching out of a cave across water to New Zealand and entangling a Maori woman.
Image Source: “The Yellow Peril” (1907) Te Papa – Tai Awatea (Accessed: 21st May 2009)
“Quel Appetit! (What Appetite!) by A. Lemot1. It refer to a scandal in France circa 1904-1905 “L’Affaire des Fiches de délation” or “the affair of the cards of denunciation”2.
L’Affaire des Fiches de délation (“affair of the cards of denunciation”) was a political scandal in France in 1904-1905 in which it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Emile Combes, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on a huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with a view to preventing their promotions. Both Combes and André were Freemasons, and much of the information had been collected by the Masonic Grand Orient de France. Discovery of this by the media undermined the government3.
‘Rue Cadet’ written on the cave, with the pillar holding up the entrance, refers to a masonic temple is located on Rue Cadet, street in Paris4. The pot (casserole) on the octopuses head is a common anti-Masonic symbol from the period5.
Footnotes
![“The Modern Devil Fish” was (re)published July1 1925 in the Chicago Tribune. The is a caption beneath the cartoon that reads ‘”The tentacles of the Devil Fish cannot be destroyed unless the HEAD, the source of their sustaining power, is destroyed.” – Victor Hugo “Toilers of the Sea”‘2. The cartoon is an incitement to vote (the knife) for the Prohibition Party (the arm). The head of the octopus is the ’saloon’, and the arms are ‘political corruption’, ‘defiance of law’, ‘partnership with thieves’, ‘traffic in girls’ and ‘gambling’.
The date of July 1925 may be a reprint date. This cartoon (unconfirmed) appeared in “Prohibition Cartoons” by Donald Farquharson Stewart and Henry W. Wilbur with the blurb: “The cartoons in this volume originally appeared in the Defender [publishing company] during the campaign of 1904″.
Image Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00492/Cartoons.htm (Accessed: 15 Mar 2009)
Footnotes:
Might have been late June, the date is derived from a letter to the editor from an edition published in July 1925, that refers to the cartoon appearing in the Chicago Tribune a week before. I don’t have access to back issues of the paper to confirm this.
Victor Hugo again.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxtdepCN9V1qb50y9o1_500.jpg)
“The Modern Devil Fish” was (re)published July1 1925 in the Chicago Tribune. The is a caption beneath the cartoon that reads ‘”The tentacles of the Devil Fish cannot be destroyed unless the HEAD, the source of their sustaining power, is destroyed.” – Victor Hugo “Toilers of the Sea”‘2. The cartoon is an incitement to vote (the knife) for the Prohibition Party (the arm). The head of the octopus is the ’saloon’, and the arms are ‘political corruption’, ‘defiance of law’, ‘partnership with thieves’, ‘traffic in girls’ and ‘gambling’.
The date of July 1925 may be a reprint date. This cartoon (unconfirmed) appeared in “Prohibition Cartoons” by Donald Farquharson Stewart and Henry W. Wilbur with the blurb: “The cartoons in this volume originally appeared in the Defender [publishing company] during the campaign of 1904″.
Image Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00492/Cartoons.htm (Accessed: 15 Mar 2009)
Footnotes:
Vulgar Army by Michelle Farran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
