- Historical Eras > Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913) (x)
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B is for Beef Trust in "Children's" Primer
This 1902 cartoon by Frederick Opper was part of a larger series of cartoons attacking corporate trusts drawn for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. In the cartoon, which mimicks the childrens' spelling primers popular at the turn of the [...]
"Showing the Light to the Filipinos"
From 1898 to 1902, the United States waged a bloody war in the Philippines. Filipinos wanted independence from centuries of Spanish colonial rule. U.S. leaders, however, saw the opportunity to control the Philippines and gain access to markets in [...]
The White(?) Man's Burden
This cartoon, published in March of 1899 in Life magazine, depicts the figures of Uncle Sam, John Bull and Kaiser Wilhelm as three heavy burdens being borne on the backs of non-white people, who are stooped over under their weight.
An American Railway Union Strike Halts Cross-Country Trade
In 1894, the American Railway Union organized a national boycott and strike against all trains hauling Pullman Cars in response to a strike called by workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company. The strike spread across the nation. Strikers were met [...]
"The Tournament of Today - A Set-to Between Labor and Monopoly"
This 1883 cartoon from the satirical magazine Puck imagines a medieval-style joust between working people and the industrialists and railroad owners who largely controlled the U.S. economy in the late nineteenth century. The spectators in the [...]
"Tee Hee" Boys: Born with a Vote and a Partial Sense of the Ridiculous
This ink and crayon drawing by John Sloan depicts a crowd of men and boys jeering at a passing parade of Suffragettes, the name given to women who were then agitating for women to be given the vote. Originally published in 1912 in Collier's Magazine [...]
Black "Exodusters" Explain their Reasons for Leaving the South
Beginning in the mid-1870s, as Northern support for Radical Reconstruction retreated, thousands of African Americans chose to leave the South in the hope of finding equality on the western frontier. Taking their cue from the Book of Exodus in the [...]
The President of the B&O Railroad Announces Wage Cuts
After the Panic of 1873 plunged the U.S. economy into a severe and lasting depression, corporations such as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company found themselves cutting costs, usually by reducing employees' wages, as this letter from the [...]
A Company Town Faces Starvation during the Pullman Strike
George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company, exemplified the paternalistic "welfare capitalist." Believing that labor unrest was caused by poor pay and living conditions, he initially paid his workers high wages and housed them in a [...]
An Immigrant Writes a Letter Home to Ireland
Mary Ann Rowe emigrated to America from Ireland in 1888 because her father promised to leave his farm to her younger sister as a marriage dowry. Her letter to a friend back home in Dunnamaggan, suggests the homesickness experienced by millions of [...]