Potent Pictures

Not this century has a presidential campaign so severely tested the talent and originality of political cartoonists as the contest between Herbert Clark Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even the best of the craft have had a hard time getting its essence down in black & white, while those below the best have sunk to new depths of routine caricature.

In 1928 cartoonists had sharp, tangible issues to work with--the Brown Derby,the Noble Experiment, the Church in Poli tics, Raddio, Two Cars in Every Garage--a Chicken in Every Pot. This year the election turns on larger but less concrete issues. At work below the surface are economic forces too abstract and complex for the average cartoonist to depict--the Gold Standard, War Debts, a Balanced Budget, 50-c- wheat, "Pork," "Panic," Credit Inflation, a Change. The Republicans are fighting a defensive battle on a Record that does not lend itself to easy lampooning. Ridicule of the Democratic attack has been mostly superficial and clumsy. The only new personality to enter the campaign is the Forgotten Man, and no cartoonist knows who he is, where he lives, what he looks like. Over the whole political scene rests the gloom of hard times, with the electorate in no laughing mood. Affected by this atmosphere cartoonists are inclined to become draftsmen of despair, replacing good-natured fun with partisan bitterness, amusing irony with glum sarcasm.

Despite such handicaps the Hoover-Roosevelt struggle has added considerably to cartoon history. In four years no new cartoonist has arisen to set enterprising editors bidding against each other for his services, but the top-notchers of 1928 have amply maintained their prestige and reputation.

One notable feature of this year's campaign is the support William Randolph Hearst is giving Governor Roosevelt in the form of cartoon criticism of President Hoover. Four years ago Publisher Hearst was on the other side of the political fence and his battery of cartoonists flayed the Democracy as a bejeweled "Diamond Lil" escorted by John Jacob Raskob. Now Mr. Hearst has a Democratic nominee for President of his own choosing and his guns are reversed upon the White House.

Chief Hearst gunman for 1932 is 75-year-old Frederick Burr Opper, creator of "Happy Hooligan." Never an art student, Cartoonist Opper worked long for oldtime Puck, joined the Hearst press in 1899, first won fame & fortune with his cartoons of theMcKinley-Bryan campaign of 1900. For 30 years Arthur Brisbane has contributed political ideas for the Opper pencil. Early in this campaign "Happy Hooligan" was allowed to lapse when Publisher Heartst put Mr. Opper to work on a daily front-page series entitled "Erbie and 'Is Playmates" * In these cartoons the President was always depicted as a fat little busy-body surrounded by "Ropy" (Europe), "Bolivar" (the G. O. P. elephant), "Taxpayer," "Minstrels" (Republican newspapers and orators), "International Bankers," "Wall Street" and other stock characters. Throughout the series as in many another Hearst cartoon, the question of War Debts played a major part, with "Ropy" loudly boasting that he would "pay nobody" and " 'Erbie" trying to still his outcries. In most of the Opper pictures, which were supplemented with an irrelevant editorial text. National Chairman Sanders could be found inanely interviewing such fabulous characters as Sherlock Holmes, Baron Munchausen and Robinson Crusoe on " 'Erbie's chances." Inferior as art, the Opper cartoons, by their absurdity and persistence, have been highly effective.

Other Hearst cartoonists hammering away at familiar Hearst themes include Walter Joseph Enright, portrayer of the "Jackass Rabbit Congressman" who refused to accept Mr. Hearst's sales tax; Winsor McCay, nightmare man; and Nelson Harding, a Pulitzer Prize-winner when on the Brooklyn Eagle.

Because most of the U. S. press is Republican, most U. S. political cartoons are antiDemocratic. But mass does not make merit. Democrats had little to fear from the stark platitudes of Boston Transcript'?, Cowan, the sketchy banalities of New York's Evening Post's Sykes. or the solemn exaggerations of Philadelphia Public Ledger's Warren.

Jay Norwood ("Ding") Darling drawing his intricate political pictures for the New York Herald Tribune from his home in Des Moines, stands out as the cartoonist most helpful to the G. O. P. Mr. Darling has managed to satirize the Roose

"Voter's Dream"

A composite view of the campaign, drawn for TIME by Artist Nat Karson (see "The Voter's Dream"), represents 33 faces, six issues. The issues: Farm Strike, Hog Prices, Maine election, the B. E. F., the Gold Dollar, the Whispering Campaign. The faces:

President Hoover Calvin Coolidge

Governor Roosevelt Al Smith Vice President Curtis Bernarr Macfadden Speaker Garner Mrs. Roosevelt & children Theodore Roosevelt William Jennings Bryan James Aloysius Farley Theodore Roosevelt Jr. William Gibbs McAdoo Samuel Instill William Randolph Hearst Senator Reed Smoot The Forgotten Man Senator Huey Long Eugene Meyer Vincent Astor Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole Eddie Dowling James John Walker Mrs. Pauline Morton Sabin Samuel Seabury John Francis Curry Secretary of Treasury Mills John H. McCooey General Douglas MacArthur Secretary of War Hurley

*The cartoons in this issue of TIME are reproduced by special permission of the publications by which they are copyrighted.

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