The “Pick Up the Club” cartoon by Russell Henderson was published in the American Issue – a Anti-Saloon League paper ¹ -  on January 4, 1919. The caption refers to the club with “American Anti-Saloon Methods” inscribed on it, and was aimed at “The [rest of the] World”. The World has “The Liquor Octopus”, and its tentacles of ‘crime’, ‘poverty’, ‘debauchery’, ‘waste’ and ‘disease’. I am not sure what the World is supposed to do with the club in order to dislodge the octopus: hit itself in the head with it? No wonder he looks bewildered.

Image Source:http://www.wpl.lib.oh.us/AntiSaloon/pmaterial/cartoons/ (Accessed: 15 Mar 2009)

Footnotes:

1. “American Issue Publishing House”, Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Issue_Publishing_House(Accessed: 19th Mar 2009)

“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:

1. 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.
2. Victor Hugo again.