USA – Vulgar Army

Don’t shoot! I’ll let go!

Udo J. Keppler, Don’t shoot! I’ll let go!, Januaury 31 1914, Illus. in: Puck, v. 75, no. 1926. Reproduced from: The Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011649666/ (Accessed: 9th March 2013) The cartoon refers to the Clayton Act of 1914, which was an attempt by the Wilson Administration to tighten antitrust laws. Part of the act was to prevent corporations merging that had […]

Know your communist enemy

“I was amazed when I discovered your website because it reminded me of a picture that I found campy–but still evocative–even when I was in high school. It is something that /should/ be shared with the world, and where better than a website devoted to octopodes in politics.” [VA: …snip…] [Submitted by: Kevin Deegan-Krause (http://www.pozorblog.com)] […]

He Gathers Them In

Attwod, F.G., “He Gathers Them In: A Pacific Sketch”, in Life September 24, 1885. It shows Grover Cleveland (22nd and 24th President of the United States). Source: Period Paper (15 Aug, 2011), http://www.periodpaper.com Private collection.

Giant Squid Captured

I received a note from David Pope on Twitter, that read “Will plead guilty for this [redacted]. Will plea bargain with this [redacted]”, I will leave it up to you to decide which was guilt, and which redemption. The first is a response to the proposed mining tax in Australia (and unfortunately gutted – and I say […]

Crime Octopus

A serving of propaganda and popular culture. Here, in terse pictorial form, the panorama of Big Business in Modern Crime is presented in all its unvarnished truth. The adage “Crime does not pay” becomes a dubious slogan in the light of the authentic revelations which trace the growth of the crime octopus from petty larceny […]

“A Horrible Monster”, published in Daily Graphic, July 19th, 1880, New York. (This has been on Vulgar Army previously; this is a clearer, more detailed from Super I.T.C.H.) Cartoon criticising ‘the pollution of New York’s air by the Standard Oil plant at Hunters Point, New York. The caption reads “A Horrible Monster, whose tentacles spread poverty, disease, […]

On October 28, 1891, the Weekly Missoulian caricaturized Hammond as the “Missoula Octopus, that is undertaking to reach its slimy arms over the county and strangle the life out of it.” The following year, Hammond purchased the newspaper. For more information: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ohq/10a9.4/gordon.html Once again, the “octo” part of octopus is optional. Arms labelled: South Missoula Land Co, Delinquent […]

Cartoon by Pashtanika circa 1919. “Lavoratori! Diamo ancor forza al braccio!” (Arm reference to human arm, not any of the octopuses). Octopus is ‘Capitalism’, its arms are ‘poverty’, prostitution’, ‘war’, ‘child labor’ and ‘wage slavery’. Label on human arm refers to Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W). The note at the bottom says: “Il Proletario, an […]

Claude Marquet, ‘Fighting the Octopus’, Worker (Sydney), 12 November 1904. Reprinted p6.32 in ‘All the world over’, Dyrenfurth, Nick; Quartly, Marian, Drawing the Line 2009 1:1, 6.1-6.47 Octopus represents American Tobacco trusts with hat called ‘Greed’. It grasps a North American ‘Factory Hand’, ‘Consumer’, and ‘Retailer’ and South American ‘Planter’, and is reaching towards Australia. Sword held by Australian (farmer?) […]

“The End of the Circus Season” by William Allen Rogers published November 3, 1900, in Harper’s Weekly p.1050 Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan is pictured as a clown dejected by his impending defeat. He rides the exhausted Democratic Donkey through a driving rain storm, while carrying the symbols of his failed issues—free silver (bunco dollar), imperialism […]