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Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
During the 1904 presidential contest, Democrats complained that wealthy corporate donors were bankrolling the election campaign of President Theodore Roosevelt. Furthermore, they charged that GOP fundraising success among wealthy business executives was due to blackmail, offering not to institute antitrust lawsuits and other favorable treatment in return for large contributions. The charges were never substantiated, and the Roosevelt administration later sued some of the biggest GOP donors of 1904 for antitrust violations. In the meantime, Republicans countered with two arguments: Democrats were disgruntled only because they had failed in their own bid to solicit funds from prosperous businessmen, and the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Alton B. Parker was itself beholden to corporate tycoons, particularly August Belmont Jr. and Thomas Fortune Ryan.
Here, Belmont, who was Parker’s campaign treasurer, appears on a Democratic trading stamp. He had taken over the multimillion-dollar family firm, August Belmont & Co., when his father died in 1890, and ten years later founded the Interborough Rapid Transit Construction Company. The four Democratic leaders in the cartoon’s corners are (clockwise from upper-left): David B. Hill, Parker’s campaign manager; candidate Alton B. Parker; William Jennings Bryan, the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in 1896 and 1900; and Senator Arthur Pue Gorman of Delaware. |
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1860
