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N looking backward over a century of caricature, it is interesting to ask just what it is that makes the radical difference between the cartoon of to-day and that of a hundred years ago. That there is a wide gulf between the comparative restraint of the modern cartoonist and the unbridled license of Gillray's or Rowlandson's grotesque, gargoyle types, is self-evident; that comic art, as applied to politics, is to-day more widespread, more generally appreciated, and in a quiet way more effective in moulding public opinion than ever before, needs no argument. yet, if one stops to analyse the individual cartoons, to take them apart and discover the essence of their humour, the incisive edge of their irony and satire, one finds.

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that there is nothing really new in them; that the basic principles of caricature were all understood as well in the eighteenth century as in the nineteenth, and and that, in many cases, the successful cartoon of to-day is simply the replica of an old one of a past generation, modified to fit a new set of facts. When Gilbert Stuart drew his famous "Gerrymander" cartoon, he was probably not the first artist to avail himself of the chance resemblance of the geographical contour of a state or country to some person or animal. He certainly was not the last. Again and again the map of the United States has been drawn so as to bring out some significant similarity, as recently when it was distorted into a ludicrous semblance of Mr. Cleveland, bending low in proud

MAP

UNITED STATES GROVER CLEVELAND

PUBLISHED

old as minstrels or dime museums themselves. Few leading statesmen of the past half century have not at some time in their career been portrayed as Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Richard III.; while as for the conventional use of animals and symbolic figures to represent the different nations, the British Lion and the Russian Bear, Uncle Sam and French Liberty, these belong to the raw materials of caricature, dating back to its very inception as an art. And yet, while the means used are essentially the same as in the days of Hogarth and Cruikshank, the results are radically different.

The reason for this difference may be summed up in a single word-Journal ism. The modern cartoon is essentially journalistic, both in spirit and in execution. The spasmodic single sheets of Gillray's period, huge lithographs that found their way to the public through the medium of London print shops, were long ago replaced by the weekly comic papers, while to-day these in turn find formidable rivals in the cartoons which have become a feature of most of the leading daily journals. The celerity with which a caricature is now conceived and executed, thanks to the modern mechanical improvements and the prevailing spirit of alertness, makes it possible for the cartoonist to keep pace with the news of the day, to seize upon latest political blunder, the social fad of the moment, and hit it off with a stroke of incisive irony, without fear that it will be forgotten before the drawing can appear in print. The

consequences of all this modern haste and enterprise are not wholly advantageous. Real talent is often wasted upon mediocre ideas under the compulsion of producing a daily cartoon, and again a really brilliant conception is marred by overhaste in execution, a lack of artistic finish in the detail. Besides, the tendency of a large part of contemporary cartoons is toward the local and the ephemeral. This is especially true of the caricatures which appear during an American political campaign, in which every petty blunder, every local issue, every bit of personal gossip, is magnified into a vital national principle, a world-wide scandal. And when the morning after the election dawns, and business settles down into its wonted channel, these momentous issues, and the flamboyant cartoons which proclaimed them suddenly become as trivial and as empty as a spent firecracker or roman candle.

But another change which the spirit of journalism has wrought in the contemporary cartoon, and a more vital change than any other, is due to the definite editorial policy which lies behind it. The dominant note in all the work of the great cartoonists of the past, in the English Gillray and the French Daumier, was the note of individualism. Take away the personal rancour, the almost irrational hatred of "Little Boney" from Gillray, take away Daumier's mordant irony, his fearless contempt for Louis Philippe, and the life of their work is gone. The typical cartoon of to-day is, to a large extent, not a one-man production at all. It is frequently built up, piecemeal, one detail

From New York Life.

at a time, and in the case of a journal like Punch or Judge often represents the thoughtful collaboration of the entire staff. In the case of the leading dailies, the cartoon must be in accord with the settled political policy of the paper, as much as the leading articles on the editorial page. The individual preferences of the cartoonist do not count. In fact, he may be doing daily violence to his settled convictions, or he may find means of espousing both sides at once, as was the case with Mr. Gillam, who throughout the Cleveland-Blaine campaign was impartially drawing Democratic cartoons for Puck and Republican cartoons for Judge at the same time.

From Puck.