The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.) 1899-1947, November 06, 1905, Night Edition

Arm Labels:  Electric Power, Suburban Freight Trains, Electric Light, Politics, Real Estate, Street Car Lines, Wood Yards, Renton Coal Mines

Octopus: Puget Sound National Bank

A CALL TO ARMS

Like a Mighty Octopus, Sucking Life-Blood From the City

Are the people of Seattle under the influence of opiates or are they hopelessly and literally dead?
Is it possible they do not know or do not care whether their most sacred rights and interests are treacherously sold or given outright to greedy and unscrupulous corporations, or reserved for them and their posterity?
At the meeting of the council this very Monday night, a franchise privilege worth millions of dollars will certainly be tossed over to the Seattle
Electric company, unless the people wake up and present themselves at the council chamber with a protest that cannot be misunderstood.
It is proposed to deliberately give away to the Seattle Electric company, whose owners live in Boston, and have not a vestige of interest in Seattle, except the money which they can extract from the people and carry away with them—-
It is proposed to hand over to this company, which calmly ignores the petitions and pleadings of the people of this city for more car lines and better service, the only possible outlet over which a competing or even a city car line can in the future be built from the business section to the north end of the city.
This privilege is worth millions.
It effectually and forever gives the death blow, to the possibility of a municipal car service.
Can you trust your city council to protect the interests of the people against the dark lantern methods of this foreign corporation?
Could the people of Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis or Philadelphia trust their councils?
There is but one way to save the city from the treacherous game of give-away that is being played between the council and the electric octopus, and that is to appear in person at the council chamber and enter a protest against this business of selling out you and your posterity which these juggling aldermen can comprehend.
THIS CRIME OF SELLING OUT THE RIGHTS OF POSTERITY IS THE MOST PERFIDIOUS THAT MEN CAN PERPETRATE. THE ORDINARY ROBBER MEETS YOU ON THE HIGHWAY AND TELLS YOU TO STAND AND DELIVER. HE DOES NOT MORTGAGE YOUR FUTURE LABOR OR THAT OF YOUR CHILDREN. BUT THE FRANCHISE GRABBER STRETCHES HIS FELONIOUS FINGERS FAR INTO THE FUTURE AND STEALS THE INHERITANCE OF THE CHILD WHOSE FATHER IS YET UNBORN.
There are 100,000 people living north of Pike street. Are the rights and interests of such a vast community to be thrown away forever?
Is the sole means of access to this great and growing district to be handed over to Mr. Furth and his foreign backers in response to some silent and hypnotic influence which he seems able to exert?

DROP YOUR BUSINESS FOR AN HOUR AND TURN OUT FOR YOURSELVES THIS MONDAY NIGHT FOR POSTERITY AND FOR THE CITY’S WELFARE.

“The English Octopus: It feeds on nothing but gold” by (or published by) William “Coin” Hope Harvey was published in Coin’s Financial School 1894. It shows the “Rothschild” octopus either squatting on or replacing the UK. It has dendritic limbs that stretch over the globe/map¹ into gold producing areas which also show national debts amongst other figures. A caption that appeared under the cartoon: “‘The Rothschilds own 1,600,000,000² in gold’- Chicago Daily News. This is nearly over half the gold in the Chicago wheat pit.”³. William Harvey was a colleague of William Jennings Bryan⁴. Both were for bimetallism, and against using the gold standard alone. Bernstein notes that “[p]opular opinion among the Americans held that the gold standard was a devilish concoction of foreigners, especially the hated British and British Jews in particular.”⁵. IMAGE SOURCE: http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/larouche-rothschild.pdf

Footnotes:

1. Interesting geography: no defined countries in Africa except Egypt and South Africa (Cape Colony) or Asia except China, India and Japan, and Australia did not exist yet: it is a collection of colonies (Federation formalised 1 January 1901).
2. Ah, valueless numbers. I am not sure what this refers to: money?
3. Bernstein, P.L. (2000): The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession, John Wiley and Sons, p. 261 http://books.google.com/books?id=53zTrfaIqSEC (Accessed: 1st Feb 2009)
4. Bryan has appeared with octopuses in ‘Hunting the Octopus’, and an (antitrust, monopoly) octopus featured on one of his election posters in 1900.
5. Bernstein, The Power of Gold

The Puzzled Citizen (Bradley, 1909)

“Before the Trojan horse is admitted the puzzled citizen will have to be shown a little more fully” by Luther Daniels Bradley, along with “Hunting the Octopus”, is a personal favourite. It is a play on the Trojan Horse, obviously, with the octopus contorting itself into the shape of a horse. Published in the Chicago Daily News, 3 February 1909.

The cartoon relates to the State of Missouri suing Standard Oil for operating as a monopoly in violation of state laws¹ in 1905. This cartoon appeared in 1909, after Standard Oil proposed that the State of Missouri form a partnership with them to administers its subsidiaries in Missouri².

Footnotes

1. More information on Standard Oil and Antitrust
2. “the image of the OCTOPUS: six cartoons, 1882-1909″, http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/power/text1/octopusimages.pdf (Accessed: 19th Jan 2009).