The “Life” &

The Great Depression

(In Cartoons)

Part 1

The Stock Market Crash People are frequently comparing the current economic crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Accordingly, I thought I might begin my promised posts on vintage graphics with a look at that gloomy period. Specifically, I will be showcasing cartoons published in the American humor magazine Life, before it went under in 1936. Archelaus’s card designers — ever in search of suitable illustrations for our fine cards — have spent many hours poring over old issues of Life in the Library of Congress, and we have not been shy about scanning whatever interested us along the way. That research is the source of the illustrations for this series.

While the stock market crash of October 1929 did not cause the Great Depression, the collapse on Wall Street certainly ushered it in. With the extent of the gathering calamity not yet apparent, however, early cartoons naturally tended to focus on the crash itself.

“On Margin,” by James Montgomery Flagg, appeared on November 15, 1929. In the speculative fever of the roaring twenties, many people had made their stock investments with borrowed money. When stocks fell and creditors called in the loans, the results were ruinous.

“Just what he wanted,” by William Kemp Starrett, appeared on December 6, 1929, reflecting the false hopes many were then placing in what turned out to be a treacherous bear market rally. In fact, stocks still had a long way to fall before they would finally bottom out in 1932.

“Finis,” also by Starrett, appeared three weeks later, on December 27. It sums up how many stock investors felt about the year 1929 (and may feel today about 2008). (For those too young to remember, the machine in the background is an old-fashioned stock ticker, which printed incoming stock quotes on “ticker tape,” as shown in the foreground.)

“The long and the short of it,” by Russell Patterson, graced the cover of Life on January 24, 1930. The man on the right appears to be a beleaguered “long,” the lady on the left a triumphant “short.”

“Up three points,” by Frank Hanley, is from January 10, 1930. It plays on the popular mythology of the time, according to which bankrupt stockholders were throwing themselves from the windows of New York skyscrapers in droves.

Indeed, a number of the early cartoons focused wrily on the fate of previously well-to-do investors, now fallen on hard times. The drawing below by Ed Graham appeared on December 6, 1929.

As the Depression worsened, vast numbers of unemployed men would adopt the expedient of hopping freight trains in search of work. Relatively few, admittedly, were former shareholders.

The ruin of the rich (but apparently still privileged) is also the theme of this unsigned cartoon from December 20, 1929.

I can’t make out the signature on this cartoon from February 7, 1930, which is, in any case, more about the cattiness of wealthy women than the stock market crash, per se.

By the time the final cartoon in this grouping, signed “Trent,” appeared on July 25, 1930, the devastating effects of the crisis had spread far beyond the ranks of well-known stock-brokers. As we shall see in posts to come!

Part 2

Prosperity is just around the corner Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2009, at 4:16 pm, by Cadwalader Crabtree.

President Herbert Hoover was a great believer in individualism and self-reliance, and his approach to the economic downturn, especially at the beginning, was therefore light on government intervention and heavy on encouraging voluntary individual action. His administration, joined by many prominent business leaders and opinion-makers, tried bravely to talk up the economy. The cartoons in Life adopted an ironic tone toward such efforts, which were clearly inadequate to the task at hand.

C. W. Anderson’s “I see by the papers,” published on January 3, 1930, is a good early example.

The same artist’s “Step up and buy,” which appeared on July 11, 1930, lampoons the notion of ordinary citizens successfully taking personal responsibility for the American economy.

In this cartoon from August 22, 1930, William Kemp Starrett has other targets as well, but the administration’s empty efforts to stimulate consumption are definitely coming in for a poke.

This cartoon from October 17, 1930, takes another shot at the rhetorical approach to fixing the economy. The rural setting is noteworthy, for while the agricultural sector had already fallen on hard times well before the Wall Street crash, the cartoonists of New York-based Life generally kept their focus on urban America.

On January 9, 1931, G. B. Inwood contributed perhaps the sharpest jab on this particular theme . . .

. . . while the artist of this cartoon took a more lighthearted (if predictably sexist) view.

John Cassel’s “The Way to Prosperity,” from October 30, 1931, tartly comments on the hollowly optimistic and sometimes contradictory advice issuing from on high.

All of the cartoons, however, are rather oblique in their criticism of government policy, for Life tended to steer clear of partisan politics. “Speaking of unemployment,” Kemp Starrett’s denunciation of congressional inaction (published on September 12, 1930) seems to have been about as overtly political as the magazine was prepared to get at this time.

Kemp Starrett’s cartoon from October 17, 1930, concerning Hoover’s annual Thanksgiving Proclamation, is hardly unsympathetic to the president’s predicament. George Akerson was Hoover’s press secretary.

A year later, on November 13, 1931, Gardner Rea was willing to be a little more pointed on the same subject.

Part 3 Hard Times

Although Life was a humor magazine, its cartoonists did not ignore the unprecedented levels of unemployment and the gut-wrenching misery that accompanied the Great Depression. The Christmas issue for 1930, published on December 5, thus included this stark Madonna and child by Charles Dana Gibson. Presumably the famous Gibson Girl of the turn of the century had never imagined that her daughter and grandchild would be reduced to such a state.

Victor C. Anderson’s cartoons for Life at this time consistently relied on pathos for their effect, as with this one from December 12, 1930.

Or this one from July 17, 1931.

Or this one from the December 1931.

On January 2, 1931, Frederick Strothmann took a somewhat more lighthearted view, albeit one that retains a certain bite.

This cartoon by Ed Graham, published on December 12, 1930, lampoons the imagined hardships of the relatively well-to-do.

Finally, this wistful effort by John Cassel appeared on July 17, 1931.

Part 4

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

The Great Depression brought forth a number of dismal economic phenomena that people still associate with it today, including bread lines, apple sellers, homelessness, and panhandling. Life published so many cartoons on these iconic topics that we can hardly reproduce more than a representative sampling. Most are fairly self-explanatory.

This cartoon by William Kemp Starrett appeared on November 28, 1930.

Many of the cartoons were little more than silly gags, like this one by Ed Graham, which appeared on December 19, 1930.

Or this one by Frank Hanley, which appeared in the same issue.

Ed Graham’s cartoon of a ruined but still-hopeful stock investor was published on January 2, 1931.

This cartoon by Richard Decker appeared on January 30, 1931.

This one signed by “Trent” dates from February 20, 1931. Note the apple seller in the background.

The spectacle of the formerly rich and powerful thrust into new circumstances was usually good for a laugh, as in this cartoon from April 10, 1931, by William Steig (author of the children’s book Shrek! [1990]).

This cartoon by Chauncey “Chon” Day appeared on April 24, 1931.

Finally, this one by Don Herold appeared on June 12, 1931.

Part 5

Business Conditions One frequent focus of Life’s cartoons during the early years of the Great Depression was the dismal state of American business. Once again, most of these cartoons should be self-explanatory.

This one by C. W. Anderson was published on December 12, 1930.

This one by Ralph Fuller appeared in the same issue.

And this one by Ed Graham is from January 16, 1931.

This unsigned cartoon appeared on February 6, 1931. Judging from the style, I suspect it was drawn by G. B. Inwood.

This cartoon by Frank Hanley was published on September 11, 1931.

This cartoon by Robert “Bo” Brown appeared on November 13, 1931. It is one of several from the summer and fall of 1931 that suggest people thought the economy might be showing signs of improvement. In fact, business conditions continued to deteriorate steadily.

This cartoon by Ralph Lane recalls the boom times of 1928 from the bitter perspective of December 1931.

Bank failures brought the Great Depression home to many middle-class Americans, for in the days before deposit insurance the collapse of the local bank could easily wipe out a family’s life savings. Oddly Life ran very few cartoons about the banks.

This one, by Chester Garde, appeared on January 30, 1931.

This one by Ralph Fuller dates from February 27, 1931.

The catastrophic wall chart is a motif that appears repeatedly in the background of business cartoons from this period (see, for example, “Directors’ Meeting – 1931,” above). This cartoon by G. B. Inwood, from July 3, 1931, takes the idea further than most. (Note also that the boss appears to have been playing solitaire when his subordinate came in.)

In this cartoon from October 23, 1931, Gluyas Williams makes the wall chart a central part of the gag . . .

. . . while in this cartoon from January 1932, Al Frueh makes a joke out of the wall chart itself.

Part 6

“Greeting Cards for the Depression”

As the chief designer for a greeting card company, I could not resist giving this cartoon, “Greeting Cards for the Depression,” by Nate Collier (and “W.W.S.”), a post all to itself. Although the cartoon appeared in Life magazine on April 17, 1931, most of its gags could scarcely be more relevant today. (As always, for a larger, more readily legible image, just click on it.)

Part 7

Miscellaneous Drawings from 1931 Up to now, I have been arranging the posts in this series thematically, but Life published so many interesting and relevant cartoons in 1931 that I cannot bring myself to omit all of those that did not happen to fit somewhere else.

There is, for example, no way I am leaving out this cartoon by William Crawford Young from July 17, 1931.

Presumably this cartoon by Chester L. Garde from January 23, 1931, did not speak to the wounded pride of stock brokers alone.

This cartoon by Ralph Fuller appeared on March 20, 1931.

The next three cartoons revisit a theme that has already surfaced here and there in earlier posts: wealthy people finding themselves in reduced circumstances. The first of them appeared on January 9, 1931. Unfortunately I cannot make out the full signature, although the last name is clearly “Roberts.”

This one by William Steig appeared on August 7, 1931 . . .

. . . as did this one by Ralph Fuller. The extravagant theatrical revues known as the Ziegfeld Follies were famous for their chorus girls. The last production closed three months after this cartoon appeared, one more victim of the Great Depression.

Finally, this cartoon by C. W. Anderson is one I should have included in Part Two: Prosperity is just around the corner. It was published on August 7, 1931.

Part 8 Christmas 1931

Faced with declining sales, Life struggled to survive the disastrous downturn its cartoonists were so busy chronicling. In December 1931 the magazine switched from a weekly to a monthly format. Although individual issues were thicker, the net result of the change was to cut the annual page output of the magazine by approximately half. As the Depression continued, the publishers also attempted to cut costs by reducing the quality of the magazine’s paper stock (a sacrifice more lamentable today than it probably seemed at the time).

The December issue naturally included a number of cartoons on the subject of Christmas. All of them seem pretty straightforward.

Unfortunately, the signature on the first is impossible to make out.

The next two, however, are both by Ralph Fuller.

Followed by this one from Courtney Dunkel.

And finally this one by Bill Holman.

Part 9

Turning away from the problem

In 1931, Life published something like seventy cartoons on one aspect or another of the economic crisis. In 1932, that number plunged to around a dozen. Only part of this drop was due to the shift from weekly to monthly publication (the first monthly issue, in December 1931, had included no fewer than eight Depression cartoons). Instead the main reason must surely have been an editorial decision to downplay the unpleasant topic, in recognition of the fact that after two years the public was heartily sick of the Depression.

The tone would also change in 1932. Gone was the acerbic, ironic, or bitter edge that had characterized many of the earlier Depression cartoons. This one by C. W. Anderson is a clear exception, but it appeared in the January issue, and should be seen as a holdover from 1931. It speaks to the resentment many unemployed workers felt toward mechanization.

This cartoon, reflecting the public’s disenchantment with President Herbert Hoover, is another exception from January. I cannot make out the artist’s signature. Mary Pickford, of course, was a silent-movie phenomenon, who failed to make the transition to the “talkies” at just the same time as Hoover’s presidency was souring.

In February, Will B. Johnstone tried gamely to put the Depression into a longer historical perspective.

In March, Nate Collier illustrated what today we would call the “blame game.”

Cartoonists continued to use Depression-era situations as the inspiration for conventional silly gags, like this one by Bill Holman from June.

Or this one, signed “Wilkinson,” from August.

This cartoon by Ed Graham, from December, reflects the problems of unemployment and underemployment, but in a light-hearted, optimistic way.

Part 10

A New Administration in Washington Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide victory over Herbert Hoover in November 1932 and his inauguration to the presidency in March 1933 both passed unremarked in Life’s cartoons, while commentary on the Great Depression itself remained at the same low level set in 1932. There is thus not much to choose from here, which is not to say the cartoons that were published are without interest.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Life tended from the beginning to ignore the agricultural depression, which was hard and deep. This cartoon by Harold Denison from March 1933 unfairly minimizes the plight of the rural sector.

This one by Adolph Schus, from July 1933, is similarly unsympathetic to the situation of dairymen, who were protesting prices that had fallen below the cost of production.

Judging from the style, the next cartoon (which also appeared in July) appears to be by Frederic G. Cooper, but the signature doesn’t look like his. In any case, the tone is reminiscent of Life’s cartoons from the early years of the Depression. Revolving windshield stickers like this were used to regulate automobile parking before the invention and introduction of coin-operated meters.

The New Deal was Roosevelt’s ambitious attempt to reorganize and revive the American economy. The National Industrial Recovery Act of June 1933, which created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), was one of its early components. As part of the publicity campaign surrounding the NRA, businesses all over the country posted “blue eagle” signs with the slogan “We do our part.” The ubiquity of these signs was an obvious target for cartoons like this one by Gregory d’Alessio, from September 1933.

The next two cartoons, by an artist whose signature I don’t recognize, are unabashedly pro-NRA. The first is from October 1933.

The second is from November. The title, of course, is a pun on the title of Ernest Hemingway’s novel Farewell to Arms (1929).

“Thanksgiving Day in Hooverville,” by Abner Dean, also from the November issue, includes an NRA eagle on the packing crate the two men are using as a table, while a picture of Roosevelt hangs on the wall. It reflects the sense of hope the new president brought to many Americans, even as they remained mired in poverty. “Hooverville” was a popular designation for the innumerable shanty towns homeless people had erected around the country.

Finally, this cartoon by Albert Viale, from December 1933, gives a playful, holiday take on the NRA.

Part 11 F.D.R.

After ignoring the newly inaugurated Franklin Roosevelt almost entirely in 1933, Life suddenly embraced the Democratic president in 1934 with several openly admiring cartoons. But as its editorial line shifted in a conservative direction in 1935, the magazine mostly ignored him again, only to launch into a run of implacably hostile cartoons in 1936. At the same time, 1934 and 1935 marked new lows in the output of cartoons related, even indirectly, to the Depression, while 1936 saw a slight uptick, as the magazine lit into Roosevelt and the New Deal.

The first cartoon, by the same unidentified artist [update: Clive Weed] who drew two of the pro-National Recovery Administration cartoons in our last installment, could scarcely be more pro-Roosevelt. It appeared in January 1934.

At first glance, this cartoon by Gregor Duncan, from April 1934, might appear critical of the president, as he casually strews billions of dollars around, but such an interpretation ignores the necessary role sowing plays in making the harvest possible. Similarly, the belching smokestacks in the background, which might appear ominous to a twentieth-first-century eye, represent instead a badly needed renewal of economic activity. (The artistic reference is to the iconic painting The Sower by the nineteenth-century French artist Jean-François Millet.)

This further cartoon by Duncan, from May 1934, confirms that the cartoonist was in Roosevelt’s corner (although, as we shall see, he was not to remain there). Duncan had been hired as Life’s editorial cartoonist in 1933.

This cartoon by the great George Price alludes to Roosevelt’s “fireside chat” radio broadcasts. It appeared in August 1934.

The next cartoon, by John Cook, dates from October of the following year and offers a fine commentary on the partisan press, even as Life itself was switching from one side of the partisan divide to the other.

In “The Washington Monument,” from January 1936, Gregor Duncan mocks the Roosevelt’s expansion of the federal bureaucracy. Shown with Roosevelt is Jim Farley, who was simultaneously his postmaster general and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. As this cartoon suggests, Farley used his influence to dispense political patronage.

“Democratic Odyssey,” from April 1936, illustrates Duncan’s thorough-going disillusionment with the Roosevelt administration. The NIRA was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, a major component of the New Deal that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in May 1935. The Townsend Plan was a proposed public pension scheme that attracted much attention prior to passage of the Social Security Act in August 1935. (As always, you may click on the cartoon for a larger version.)

The next cartoon, by Ben Martin, is also from April 1936. It represents another take on Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” The joke here, of course, is that the well-heeled men depicted were Roosevelt’s bitter enemies.

In May 1936, Duncan began a series of full-color anti-Roosevelt cartoons based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books. Accompanying each cartoon was a verse by Arthur L. Lippmann. The series continued until Life’s final issue in November. Reproduced below are three representative examples (to see the verses, as well, click for the larger version).

The first, “A Mad Tea Party” from May, depicts “Alice Public,” together with Farley as the March Hare, Congress as the sleepy Dormouse, and Roosevelt as the Mad Hatter. The teacups on the table are labeled with the acronyms of various New Deal programs: the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), WPA (Works Progress Administration), TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), and ABC (a satirical reference to the New Deal propensity to set up “alphabet agencies”).

The second cartoon in the series, from June, reproaches Roosevelt for not being faithful to his campaign promises of 1932.

Finally, Duncan’s cartoon from September shows Roosevelt as the Cook, Farley as the Duchess, and Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon as the Cheshire Cat. The squalling infant is labeled “Administration Mistakes.”

Part 12

Opposing the New Deal

As I noted last time, Life’s editorial line began to turn against Roosevelt in 1935 and became more strident in 1936. Inevitably, the same was true of Life’s attitude toward Roosevelt’s New Deal.

“Ol’ Rockin’ Chair,” by Gregor Duncan, appeared in March 1935, as various old-age pension plans were under discussion in Washington, leading up to the passage of the Social Security Act in August.

The next cartoon, by George Shellhase, appeared in June 1935. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933, the government sought to curb overproduction in part by paying farmers to destroy crops.

This cartoon, by Robert Day, appeared in September 1935. The key to the gag is that the speaker seemingly can no longer afford to maintain her enormous yard, fill her swimming pool, or repair her crumbling walls and front gate.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored a great deal of public art during the Depression. As this cartoon by George Price from February 1936 suggests, not all of it was to everyone’s taste.

The next cartoon, by Robert Day, also from February 1936, mocks public-sector work creation. The sign on the right identifies the site as a WPA project.

This Gregor Duncan cartoon from May 1936 is a typical right-wing critique of the New Deal.

Another effort by Duncan, this one from July 1936, mocks the administration’s on-going difficulties with the conservative Supreme Court, which repeatedly struck down New Deal legislation as unconstitutional. Note that the windmill has nine sails, one for each member of the court.

Finally, one last Robert Day cartoon, from October 1936, expresses the indignation of affluent conservatives at government spending.

Life ceased publication as a humor magazine in November 1936, when Henry Luce bought it, sold off everything but the name, and launched his groundbreaking experiment in photojournalism.