Nast, Thomas.—America’s foremost political cartoonist, originator of the Elephant, the Donkey and the Tiger as symbols for the Republican, Democratic and Tammany organizations, whom Lincoln, Grant, Mark Twain delighted to honor as their guest, the critic whose broadsides shattered the careers of hosts of political crooks and swindlers, the patriot whose faithful service won support for the cause of the country. One of the greatest fighters for truth and decency known in American history. He it was who took up the cudgel single handed against the Tweed Ring, the gang that stole four hundred millions from the New York City treasury, who answered a banker’s offer of a half million bribe with the answer: “I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars, and I am going to do it.” He did it at the peril of his life. His cartoons roused the public conscience and prodded the police into action. Boss Tweed, the looter chief, called out in despair: “Let’s stop them damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read; but, damn it, they can see pictures!” The pitiless cartooning of Nast finally broke up the gang, with most of them ending in jail. During the Civil War his cartoons roused the nation as nothing else. When Grant was asked what man in civil life had done the best work for America, he answered: “Thomas Nast. He did as much as any man to save the Union and bring the war to an end.” This he did by his cartoons in “Harper’s” that carried messages of cheer and patriotism to the humblest cottages in the prairie. Thousands of recruits were won for the Northern cause by the simple patriotism of Nast’s cartoons. His work proved a treasure trove, during the present war, for pilfering cartoonists, who lifted copies bodily from the old volumes of “Harper’s.” Nast was born in 1840 at Landau, Bavaria. His great work in the end was ill rewarded, for having been sent to fill the consulate in Ecuador, he lost his life through fever contracted in the service of his country.
National Security League.
National Security League.—An organization of active patriots who, with the American Defense Society and the American Protective League, spread rapidly to all parts of the country during the war toreport acts of disloyalty and soon became synonymous with repression and terror. It ultimately took on a political character and with its backing of men interested in war contracts and general profiteering, started in to defeat the re-election to Congress of members who had not voted “right.” At the instance of Representative Frear of Wisconsin, a special Congressional committee was appointed and the officers and members were summoned to appear before the committee to give testimony. The investigation revealed the fact that the secretary of the League had been a Washington lobbyist and that its backers comprised a group of financiers and heads of trusts who were using the organization to intimidate or defeat members of the House who did not vote as they were expected to vote on war measures. The list was a long one, but included J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Nicholas F. Grady, director of fifty large corporations interested in war profits; H. C. Frick, of the United States Steel Corporation; Arthur Custis James, of the Phelps-Dodge Company; Mortimer L. and Jacob Schiff, H. H. Rogers, of the Amalgamated and Anaconda Copper Companies; Charles Hayden, representing twenty-six corporations; the Guggenheimers, Cleveland H. Dodge, William Hamlin and Eversley Childs, W. K. and E. W. Vanderbilt, George W. Perkins, Clarence H. Mackay, T. Coleman Dupont, the powder king, and many others. Among the officers of the League were the late Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root.
Most of these names were connected with the $2,000,000 fund subscribed, contrary to the laws of the State of New York, to re-elect John Purroy Mitchel mayor of New York in November, 1917. The scandal formed the subject of an investigation by the District Attorney for the southern district of New York, and Assistant District Attorney Kilroe told the reporters that at a luncheon given by Cleveland H. Dodge during the campaign to a group of millionaires one of the participants declared: “The patriotic issue of the campaign is not doing as well as expected,” and that one member at the luncheon said: “If between that date and the election a terrible catastrophe happened to the American forces it would insure Mitchel’s election—a catastrophe such as the sinking of a transport.” Mitchel’s campaign was conducted on a purely alarmist platform, in which the Kaiser was represented as having his whole attention concentrated on whether Mitchel, the patriot, or Hylan, accused of disloyalty and pro-Germanism, would be elected; but Mitchel was buried under an avalanche of votes.
Testifying before the Congressional investigating committee, Representative Cooper, of Wisconsin, declared: “This organization is financed by corporations worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and can hire college professors and secure publication in the newspapers of articles designed to deliberately mislead public opinion,” and, referringto the denial of Elihu Root and other officials of the organization that it had engaged in politics, he said: “If they are willing to testify under oath, in public, so foolishly, there is nothing they will not do in secret to serve the great, powerful corporations which they represent.” Representative Reavis read into the record a statement that 40 per cent. of the league’s “honor roll” of forty-seven Representatives voted against measures which would have made the big interests receiving tremendous war profits bear their burden of war expenses. All of those who voted for the McLemore resolution, against war and against the Julius Kahn conscription bill were put down in a “disloyalty chart,” and large sums were expended to defeat them.
S. Stanwood Menken, an early president of the league, in his testimony stated that he favored an American navy which, combined with that of Great Britain, would “surpass any other two-power navy in the world,” but that, on the other hand, “he favored a reduction of armaments.”
The succeeding president of the league, Charles D. Orth, was forced to admit that in publishing the league’s Congressional “disloyalty chart” he had conveyed a false impression by recording the vote on the McLemore resolution as on the merits of the resolution instead of on the vote to table it. There were innumerable other counts against the league. One was that it sent its literature to 1,400 newspapers and then read what these newspapers printed in arriving at the opinion of “the great majority of the people.” In other words, they first circulated the opinion and then accepted it as that of the people. Orth was asked if there was any good sound American stock in Illinois.
“There surely is,” he answered.
“Then how do you reconcile that with the fact that the men who voted against war were returned to Congress with an overwhelming majority?” he was asked by Representative Saunders, but failed to reply.
Among the activities of this league was that of dictating the things to be taught in the public schools. In New York $50,000,000 is annually spent for the public school system, raised by taxes paid by all the people, and the schools should represent the people who pay for them. A New York paper of April 4, 1919, in an editorial, said: “It has been shown during the past few days that a course of economics has been adopted by our educators under the tutelage of an outside body. This outside body is the National Security League, an organization financed by the big war profiteers, whose political activity in connection with the last Congressional election constituted a grave scandal.”