Why They dislike Him.
By courtesy of the Puck Company.
The First "Tattooed Man" Cartoon.
By courtesy of the Puck Company.
The most terrible and effective series of cartoons published during the Cleveland-Blaine campaign was that in which the Republican candidate appeared as the Tattooed Man in the political show. For many weeks during the summer and autumn of 1884 Mr. Blaine was assailed through this figure in the pages of Puck. The story of the origin of this historic cartoon is as follows: Mr. Bernard Gillam, the artist, had conceived the idea of a cartoon in which each of the Presidential possibilities should appear as some sort of freak in a political side-show. One of these freaks was to be the Tattooed Man, but Mr. Gillam at first hit upon David Davis as the person to be so represented. He was describing the proposed cartoon one day in the office of Puck when Mr. Bunner, who was at that time the editor, turned suddenly and said: "David Davis? Nonsense! Blaine is the man for that." The cartoon so conceived was splendidly executed, and became one of the great pictorial factors in turning the scale of the election. It stirred Mr. Blaine himself to a point where he resolved to prosecute the publishers of Puck, and was persuaded from this course only by the very strongest pressure. The tattoo marks which were most obnoxious to him were those which spelled out the word "Bribery." A curious feature of this series was that Mr. Bernard Gillam was an ardent Republican, voting for Mr. Blaine on election day, and at the same time that he was executing the Tattooed Man cartoon in Puck was suggesting equally vindictive caricatures of Mr. Cleveland and the Democratic party for the rival pages of Judge.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE INFLUENCE OF JOURNALISM
