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RD-DD1843 [2017-02-28 00:26:05 +0000 UTC]

Another cartoon from the Taft period.  Interesting one too.  The idea is that Uncle Sam is being wined and dined by various corrupt figures in politics and business, and made drunk, so they can plunder the country.  There are three figures who I recognize here - "stand-patters" or Republican Conservatives rather than progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, or Robert Lafollette.  The ones who are shown as diminutive figures pouring more wine into Uncle Sam's goblet is are the Republican Speaker of the House Joseph "Uncle Joe" or "Czar" Cannon, who had not been enthralled by many of T.R.'s reforms, and had helped slow down his pace of reform from 1907 to 1909. He is assisted by a top-hatted, mustachioed figure who is Republican Senator from Rhode Island, and Senate Majority Leader Nelson Aldrich.  Aldrich was known as the "Boss of the Senate", and like Cannon felt T.R. had done enough reforming for a generation.  Interestingly enough, in 1913 Aldrich retired from politics - he knew the Constitution would have an amendment that had direct election of U.S. Senators from now on, and this was something he couldn't win (up till 1913 the Constitution had made state legislatures the center of electing the U.S. Senators).  Aldrich was a wealthy man, and his daughter married John D. Rockefeller Jr. (or the Second), son of the founder of Standard Oil.  Their third son (out of five sons and a daughter) was future New York Governor and U.S. Vice President, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.

In the back on the picture's right side is a smirking, balding, be -specktickled figure.  It is former U.S. Congressman from Utica, New York, now Taft's Vice President, James Schoolcraft Sherman.  While in the House of Representatives, Sherman had been notable as an assistant to Cannon. 

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