Comic Books Restore / Davenport
Discover the Cartoon’s Davenport, edited and new Layout by Comic Books Restore!From original 1898. - Black and white edition- 58 pages- Format: 8’x 10’The drawings come from William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and cover the period leading up to the 1896 elections. By 1896, most Democratic newspapers - including Pulitzer’s mighty New York World - had dropped their support for the party and its radical populist candidate William Jennings Bryan, leaving Hearst the only major Eastern newspaper publisher to promote the Democratic ticket (although Hearst didn’t believe in free money either). Davenport/Hearst’s most important target was not Republican presidential candidate (and president since 1897) William McKinley, but his would-be comptroller, industrialist and politician Senator Mark Hanna. McKinley is often portrayed as a tiny figure, dominated by Hanna and his allies, the big financial and industrial interests - the trusts. Hanna is always depicted wearing clothes covered in dollar signs, the supposedly all-powerful leader of these moneyed interests often accused of exploiting and crushing the American people. The image of Mark Hanna of Davenport, with his clothes covered in dollars, has become ubiquitous. In reality, Hanna was in many ways a rather good man, although he was certainly a fervent political advocate of plutocratic big business, which he, like many others, saw as essential to widespread prosperity.
