_PUCK, April 28th, 1886._
The series of cartoons on the labor question which Mr. Keppler
contributed to PUCK during the years of 1886 and 1887 certainly
attracted more attention, and probably did more to influence public
opinion than any series of pictures that ever appeared in the paper.
They were drawn at a time of great public excitement, when fools,
fanatics and unprincipled adventurers were tempting honest laboring-men
into all manner of lawlessness and improper use of physical force. The
American public had for the first time been introduced to that ugly
thing, the “Boycott,” and the Anarchists were seizing the opportunity
afforded by the general agitation to spread their infernal doctrines
among the working-men. Of course, under such circumstances, the air was
full of the hysterical shrieks of the excitable people who thought that
all law and order were to vanish from the face of the earth. The value
of these clear and direct pictorial expositions was great indeed, in
that time of trouble, doubt and perplexity.
PUCK said of Trades-Union tyranny on April 28th, 1886: “The boycott
business is bad. But it is an extravagant, monstrous, impossible thing,
that the laws of a free country must crush out, sooner or later.
This other evil flourishes in secret and strikes at the laborer’s
self-respect. It is part of such a tyranny as no employer or body of
employers ever dared to dream of establishing. Every working-man who
wants to do something, to be something in the world--something better
than the spy-ridden slave of a secret society--should rise up to fight
it. There is no need of general organization for this purpose. Wherever
one brave man, or a handful of brave men, stands boldly up and insists
on every man’s natural right to make his own price for his labor, to
sell it for what he chooses to sell it for, a blow will be struck in
the cause of the laboring man’s independence. And it rests with the
laboring man to work out his own salvation.”
[Illustration]