THE MEN OF TO-DAY
With the Spanish-American War, the _Affaire Dreyfus_ in France, and
England's long struggle for supremacy in the Transvaal, the period
arbitrarily chosen as the scope of this book comes to a brilliant and
dramatic close. But the cartoonist's work is never done. Nimble pencils
are still busy, as in the days of Rowlandson and Gillray, in recording
and in influencing the trend of history. And although, now and again
during the past century, there has been some individual cartoonist whose
work has stood out more boldly and prominently than the work of any one
of our contemporaries in Europe or in this country stands out to-day,
there has never been a time in the whole history of comic art when
Caricature has held such sway and maintained such dignity, and has
enlisted in her service so many workers of the first talent and rank.
Without alluding to the men of France and England, what an array it is
that contemporary American caricature presents! C. G. Bush of the New
York _World_, Charles Nelan of the New York _Herald_, Frederick Burr
Opper and Homer Davenport of the New York _American and Journal_,
Mahoney of the Washington _Star_, Bradley of the Chicago _Evening-News_,
May of the Detroit _Journal_, "Bart" of the Minneapolis _Journal_,
Mayfield of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, Victor Gillam, carrying on
the traditions of his brother--Rogers, Walker, Hedrick, Bowman,
McCutcheon, Lambdin, Wallace, Leipziger, Berryman, Holme, Bartholemew,
Carter, Steele, Powers, Barritt--and to name these men does not nearly
exhaust the list of those artists whose clever work has amused and
unconsciously influenced hundreds of thousands of thinking American men
and women.
[Illustration: C. G. Bush of "The World." The Dean of Active American
Cartoonists.]
[Illustration: Willie and his Papa.
"What on earth are you doing in there, Willie?"
"Teddy put me in. He says it's the best place for me during the
campaign."]
There are interest and significance in the fact that a majority of the
ablest caricaturists of to-day are devoting their talents almost
exclusively to the daily press. It is an exacting sort of work,
exhaustive both physically and mentally. The mere idea of producing a
single daily cartoon, week in and week out,--thirty cartoons a month,
three hundred and sixty-five cartoons a year, with the regularity of a
machine,--is in itself appalling. And yet a steadily growing number of
artists are turning to this class of work, and one reason for this is
that they realize that through the medium of the daily press their
influence is more far-reaching than it possibly can be in the pages
of the comic weeklies, and that at the same time the exigencies of
journalism allow more scope for individuality than do the carefully
planned cartoons of papers like _Puck_ or _Judge_. Speed and
originality are the two prime requisites of the successful newspaper
cartoon of to-day, a maximum of thought expressed in a minimum of
lines, apposite, clear-cut, and incisive, like a well-written
editorial. Indeed, our leading cartoonists regard their art as simply
another and especially telling medium for giving expression to
editorial opinion. Mr. Bush, "the dean of American caricaturists," may
be said to have spoken for them all when he said, in a recent
interview, that he looks upon a cartoon as an editorial pure and
simple.
"To be a success it should point a moral. Exaggeration and a keen
sense of humor are only adjuncts of the cartoonist, for he must deal
with real people. He must also be a student. I am obliged not only to
use my pencil, but to study hard, and read everything I can lay my
hands on. The features of Roosevelt, Bryan, Hanna, and Croker may be
familiar to me, but I must know what these men are doing. I must also
know what the masses behind these popular characters think and
believe."
[Illustration: Homer Davenport, of the "New York American and
Journal."]
Another direct result of the influence of journalism upon caricature,
in addition to that of compelling the artist to keep in closer touch
than ever before with contemporary history, is the growing popularity
of the series method--a method which dates back to the Macaire of
Philipon and the Mayeux of Travies, and which consists in portraying
day by day the same more or less grotesque types, ever undergoing some
new and absurd adventure. It is a method which suits the needs of
artist and public alike. To the former, his growing familiarity with
every line and detail of the features and forms of his pictorial
puppets minimizes his daily task, while the public, even that part of
the public which is opposed to comic art in general, or is out of
sympathy with the political attitude of a certain series in
particular, finds itself gradually becoming familiar with the series,
through fugitive and unexpected glimpses, and ends by following the
series with amusement and interest and a growing curiosity as to what
new and absurd complications the artist will next introduce. This
employment of the series idea is as successful in social as political
satire. Mr. Outcault's "Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown," Mr. Opper's
"Happy Hooligan" and "Alphonse and Gaston," Gene Carr's "Lady
Bountiful," and Carl Schultze's "Foxy Grandpa" are types that have won
friends throughout the breadth of the continent. In the domain of
strictly political caricature, however, there is no series that has
attracted more attention than Homer Davenport's familiar conception of
the Trusts, symbolized as a bulky, overgrown, uncouth figure, a
primordial giant from the Stone Age. And since there have been a
number of apocryphal stories regarding the source of Mr. Davenport's
inspiration, it will not be without interest to print the artist's own
statement. "As a matter of fact," he says, "I got the idea in St.
Mark's Square in Venice. Seeing a flock of pigeons flying about in
that neighborhood I immediately, with my love of birds and beasts,
determined by fair means or foul to purloin a pair. I watched them fly
hither and thither, and in following them came across a statue of
Samson throwing some man or other--I forget his name--to the ground.
The abnormal size of the muscles of the figure struck me at once, and
turning round to my wife, who was with me, I said with a sudden
inspired thought, 'The Trusts!'"
[Illustration: Davenport's Conception of the Trusts.]
Of equal importance are the various series in lighter vein through
which Mr. Opper aims to lead people to the same way of thinking
politically as the paper which he serves. Long years of labor and
constant production do not seem to have in any way drained his power
of invention, for no sooner has one series done its work, and before
the public has become sated with it, than an entirely new line of
cartoons is introduced. Mr. Opper, as well as Mr. Davenport, has had
his fling at and drawn his figure of the Trusts, and to place the two
figures side by side is to contrast the methods and work of the men.
Mr. Opper's purpose seems to be, first of all, to excite your mirth,
and consequently he never fails to produce a certain effect. When you
take up one of his cartoons in which the various stout, sturdy, and
well-fed gentlemen typifying the different Trusts are engaged in some
pleasant game the object of which is the robbing, or abusing of the
pitiable, dwarfish figure representative of the Common People, your
first impulse is a desire to laugh at the ludicrous contrast. It is
only afterwards that you begin to think seriously how badly the abject
little victim is being treated, and what a claim he has upon your
sympathy and indignation. In those series which are designed entirely
along party lines, such as "Willie and his Papa," this method is even
more effective, since it begins by disarming party opposition.
Of such men, and the younger draughtsmen of to-day, much more might be
written with sympathetic understanding and enthusiasm. But most of
them belong rather to the century that has just begun rather than that
which has lately closed, and a hundred years from now, whoever
attempts to do for the twentieth century a service analogous to that
which has here been undertaken for the nineteenth, will find an
infinitely ampler and richer store of material, thanks to this group
of younger satirists in the full flood of their enthusiasm, who are
valiantly carrying on the traditions of the men of the past--of Leech
and Tenniel, of Daumier, and Philipon, and Cham and Andre Gill, of
Nast and Keppler and Gillam, and who have already begun to record with
trenchant pencil the events that are ushering in the dawn of the new
century.
THE END