“No License. A Question to be Settled in the State of New York, 19th of May, 1846… Citizens of the State of Nfw [sic] York, Look at the Following. Will You Vote License?”
On May 19, 1846, an important vote was to be held throughout New York State, as to whether or not merchants could obtain licenses to sell hard liquor. This “Extra,” printed on cloth and issued by The Journal of the American Temperance Union, urges citizens to vote “No License.”
To make their case, the broadside has four vignettes showing the ill effects caused by drinking. At top it reads:
Benjamin F. Butler, Esq., placed the yearly loss to the United States from the use of ardent spirits at, – – – – $150,000,000. Making a loss to the State of New York of, $18,000,000. What has the income from 20,000 licenses done to compensate for this? Now the rumsellers ask to do the evil to the State, and pay, – NOTHING.
Above and below cropped and photoshopped
An adjacent cartoon [above] shows a farmer carrying his “pauper” and “criminal” taxes while a licensed tavern owner and his clients look on. The farmer says “O these Rum Taxes! Rum Taxes! I can’t stand it. I’ll vote No License. 3d Tuesday in May I’ll go to the polls & vote No License.”
The tavern owner jeers: “At him boys. Ha! …You vote License and maintain my rights and your liberties.”
Other printed vignettes include “The Drunkard’s Home,” “The Liquor Dealer Shown His Victim,” and “The Town Meeting.” This final illustration depicts a dying alcoholic woman who dared to speak out at a town meeting against licenses to sell rum: “I shall soon stand before the Judgment Seat of God—I shall meet you there, you false guides, and be a witness against you all.”
The textile broadside is printed in three columns, with three poems in the center: “Who Will Vote License?” “The Ballot Muster for the 19th of May” (by Rev. P. Clark), and “Song of the Revellers. Old Song—Go Get Your License.”
The concluding words of the broadside extra are a call to action: “As goes New York on the third Tuesday of May, so goes the rest of the Nation. Remember that, temperance men. On the third Tuesday of May, be at your posts.”
Journal of The American Temperance Union, No License. A Question to be Settled in the State of New York, 19th of May, 1846… (New York: Journal of The American Temperance Union, March 25, 1846). [1]p. Illustrated “Extra” textile broadside. 23 x 18½ inches. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process
O António Maria, edited and directed by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon). Complete: Vol. 1, No. 1 (June 12, 1879) to Vol. 7, No. 3 (January 21, 1885) Ponto nos II, edited and directed by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon). Complete: Vol. 1, No. 1 (May 7, 1885) to Vol. 7, No. 293 (February 5, 1891). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process
Few artists rise to such stature that an entire museum is created in their honor. Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905) is such a talent. The Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro Museum and Library in Lisbon describe him as
“a striking figure of the Portuguese culture of the second half of the 19th century. He was born in Lisbon on Rua da Fé on March 21, 1846 [and] followed the family tradition of a life dedicated to the Arts. An enterprising and multifaceted artist, he has traveled a very personal way, dedicating himself to the graphic arts, plastic arts, ceramics, drawing of objects and decoration, producing a vast work that almost always critically reflects the daily cultural, political and social of the time in that lived.…
Pinheiro was also innovative, developing humorous design and cartoon as an artistic expression. Integrating the circle of intellectuals and artists who defined the Generation of 70 [ also called the Generation of Coimbra]… to show a true portrait of the society of that time. Conscious of the power and strength of the press, he founded several periodicals, using caricature as a vehicle for the defense of his ideals.”
The Graphic Arts Collection has acquired complete runs of two of Pinheiro’s satirical magazines, openly political and focused on changing public opinion against the corruption in the Portuguese government of that period. While extremely popular O António Maria faced opposition from various agencies and in 1884, the government passed new laws, resulting in serious limitations to freedom of the press. Publication of the magazine ended in January 1885.
After several months and a change of title, Pinheiro began once again with Ponto nos II, this time joined by his son, Miguel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro. One reviewer notes: “Ponto nos II goes beyond the erosive action of political caricature. In its pages also there is space for the news, the chronicle, literary activity, the success of exploration trips in Africa, the Portuguese representation at the Paris International Fair.”
An additional note comes from the dealer:
From the middle of 1889, colonial policy, within the framework of the conflict of interests between Portugal and England, is the theme that dominates weekly the pages of Ponto nos ii. In the face of the government’s vacillations before the “English arrogance,” the weekly assumes itself as the mouthpiece of national interests and calls everyone to fight. The allusions to republicans and to the Republic also grow. Political tension and popular outrage roar on every page.
On 31 January, the Republican revolt erupts in Porto, a fact the newspaper Pontos nos ii does not hesitate to analyze in the following numbers: “Cowards!” In February of the following year, the same author will present a more sober reading of the events. It is a true republican manifesto that Ponto nos ii welcomes in its pages. The price of such high courage is not unexpected: the newspaper is suspended.
Thanks to Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez, Librarian for Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies at Princeton University Library for his help with this acquisition.
Beginning in September 1904, the journalist and poet Eustaquio Pellicer (1859-1937) wrote, edited, and published the satirical weekly P.B.T. out of Buenos Aires. Subtitled “para niños de 6 a 80 años” [for children ages 6 to 80] the magazine lasted thirteen years–693 issues–and together with the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS), the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired a rare, nearly complete run.
Vol. 1, no. 1 (Sept. 24, 1904)
“The Buenos Aires of the Early Twentieth Century is Reflected in its Pages with Intelligence and Humor,” writes one advertisement. “The word ‘pebete’ in the title was a popular expression in Spain at the time to refer to a boy and which would later take root in Argentina as ‘pibe’.”
The publication was a resounding success, beginning with a print run of 5,000 and explanding to 45,000 copies. It remained true to its motto, focusing on children and adults with varied content featuring photographs and illustrations of weekly current events, stories, poems and reports, jokes, and informative advertisements.
Political satire and caricature also held a prominent place in its pages. P.B.T. was produced by some of the most renowned graphic artists and caricaturists of the time, since a primary focus was precisely the publication’s visual aspects and political caricature. Among them were Mayol, Cao, Zavattaro and Fortuny. This weekly publication, which enjoyed great popularity, contains a wealth of information for the study of Argentine society from the early 20th century to World War I. Pellicer retired in 1910, maintaining fluid contact with his publication.
Eustaquio Pellicer (1859-1937) was a Spanish journalist, poet, and humorist based in the cities of Rio de Janeiro first and Buenos Aires later. He studied high school in his hometown and in 1886 he traveled to the Río de la Plata where he worked in publications such as La unión Gallega de Montevideo and El Ferrocarril.
In the Uruguayan city of Montevideo he founded a humorous weekly called La Pellicerina and later, in 1890 he founded the magazine Caras y Caretas . Years later he settled in Buenos Aires and at the request of Bartolomé Mitre Vedia founded in that city the Argentine version of the magazine, which gained great popularity.
Eustaquio Pellicer (1859-1937 ), P.B.T.; semanario infantil ilustrado (para niños de 6 a 80 años) (Buenos Aires, 1904-1917). This collection was purchased in part with funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) and in part the Graphic Arts Collection. GAX 2018- in process.
If you are a Friend of the Princeton University Library, you should be patting yourself on the back for your connoisseurship and good judgement in providing the funds for the purchase of this amazing new volume of satirical engravings. Congratulations.
Thanks to the generosity of the Friends, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired a rare set of Dutch satirical engravings under the title (in English): Rome Perturbed or the Catholic Church in an uproar, presented in ten emblems showing how the papacy, but especially the monks, trespass against the Ten commandments… The volume holds eleven engravings with accompanying verses in Dutch. The imprint is false, ascribed tentatively to the publisher Carel Allard, Amsterdam. The author is identified on the title page by initials only “L.V.J.” for Liefhebber van Jansenius (an anonymous friend of Jansenius).
In his study Graphic Satire and Religious Change: The Dutch Republic, 1676-1707, Joke Spaans notes that Roma Perturbata was part of a media offensive against the Catholic Church, culminating in the schism between the Curia and the Dutch diocese in 1723. Apparently the book became something of a bestseller although copies are now extremely rare. This group of elaborate satirical prints focuses on Clement XI’s response to Jansenism in the Netherlands, with particular attention to Pieter Codde and his replacement Theodore de Coc.
The collected engravings went through two editions, one in 1706 consisting of eleven plates [now at Princeton], and an expanded edition with thirteen plates in 1707. Spaans writes
These ‘editions’ are not the fixed entities suggested by this term: the individual plates exist in several versions and the extant copies of the series show some variation in composition. This means that individual plates circulated independently before the series was conceived. The Allard firm collected these prints, altered them as and where they saw fit, and fleshed out the collection with other suitable material they had at hand.
They added a title page, on the reverse side of which they printed ten four-line stanzas that provide the reader with what amounts to a reasoned table of contents. This rhymed table interprets each of the emblems in turn within the wider context of the justification of Codde, the praise of the States of Holland for their support of the Clergy, and the vilification of DeCock, the Jesuits and the Pope and loosely connects them with the Ten Commandments, as referred to in the title of the series.
Spaans also notes that while there were many satirical pamphlets and broadside at this time of dubious quality, “all those in Roma Perturbata were intelligently made, and seem to have been destined for an audience of connoisseurs.”
Roma perturbata, ofte ‘t Beroerde Romen, vertoond door x zinnebeelden, toegepast op de x Geboden, door die van ‘t Pausdom … doorgaans meest overtreeden, gelijk nu in de historien van P. Codde, en T. de Kok; waar in de hoogmoedigheid van de Paus … en zyn onmacht om ‘t gewaande recht uit te voeren … voor oogen gesteld worden. By een gesteld door L.V.J. en zijn medehelpers, etc. (Loven [Amsterdam?]: gedrukt ten koste van de Groote Compagnie [Carel Allard?], 1706).
Small folio, 314 x 185 mm, bound in contemporary Dutch speckled calf. Provenance: Bibliotheca Abbatiae Vallis-Dei (Abbot of Gottesthal?), with their ex-libris on front pastedown and stamp of same on front and rear endpaper verso. Purchased with funds donated by the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Given the rarity and uniqueness of each copy, the potential for new research is enormous. OCLC lists only six complete paper copies of the 1706 Roma Perturbata in public collections and none in North America. With current online records and limited published research, it is impossible to know which copies differ and to what extent. Since many of these prints are altered from the original, if in fact an original is known, the study of each impression is not only valuable but essential.
In his catalogue raisonné, Frederik Muller lists the plates of the 1707 publication under numbers 3410 a and b, 1-13, as follows:
Title page: letterpress, kept with the present print
Plate 1: Three medallions, Chronogram 1705
Plate 2: “De niewe Roomse kerktrophee”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 3: “Door Munneke jagt, wordt Babel verkracht”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 4: “Zinnebeeldig pourtret v.d. Ew.Hr. Theodorus de Coc”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 5: “Jansenisten en Munneken zeef”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 6: “Coddige droom van de smalle en brede weg”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 7: “Een Jansenist smeedt met zijn knapen…”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 8: “‘t Rooms Hollands Recht”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 9: “De Rooms Hollandse Tongeslijper”, Chronogram 1705
Plate 10: “‘t Roomse Rad van Avontuur”, Chronogram 1706
Plate 11: “Coddig nachtgezicht”
Plate 12: “De Roomse Kerken-Visiteerder of de Ridder…” Chronogram 1706
Plate 13: “Sic itur ad astra scilicet”; “Rooms Cocceaans Munnike…”
However, these titles vary from the collection catalogue of the British Museum, which also gives lengthy visual descriptions of each plate, suggesting earlier versions and or variations on each theme. Until a compendium of all the extent copies can be attempted, each rare copy of Roma Perturbata in a public collection adds to the scholarship not only of the individual engravings but also to the publication history of the set.
Maurice-Georges-Elie Lalau (1881-1961), Les quinze joyes de mariage … Edition conforme au manuscript de la Bibliothèque de Rouen avec un glossaire publié par Jules Meynial… (Paris, 1928). Copy 45 of 150. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
[left] Antoine de La Sale (born 1388?), The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage [Quinze joyes de mariage] ([London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1509]). [right] Les quinze joyes de mariage: ouvrage tres̀ ancien, auquel on a joint le Blason des fausses amours, le Loyer des folles amours, & le Triomphe des muses contre amour. Le tout enrichi de remarques & de diverses leçons (A La Haye: Chez A. De Rogissart, 1726). Rare Books 2004-0836N
In 1926, Maurice Lalau and the bibliophile/publisher Jules Meynial formed a partnership to create a deluxe edition using innovative printing techniques. For their text, they chose Les quinze joyes, a Medieval satire on the tricks wives play on their husbands, sexual and otherwise.
A 1726 edition [above] has notes by le Duchat, who describes it as a favorite of ‘jeunes Courtisans François’ of the mid-fifteenth century. The work has been attributed to Antoine de la Sale and various dates have been suggested for its composition; le Duchat comes down in favor of the late fourteenth century. Wynkyn de Worde published a translation in English verse, The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage, at least as early as 1507, a fragment of that survives and a single complete copy of a 1509 reprint. STC 15257.5-15258
Lalau called his printing process, first seen with this volume, Graphichromie: “un moyen nouveau d’impression des illustrations en couleurs.” He designed and printed the edition of 150 copies, each with 37 plates, which means hand-printing 5,550 multi-color plates. The project took Lalau two years to complete. In addition, this copy has 37 single leaves, reproducing the illustrations in grey ink only (the initial color in the process).
Their book was the subject of an article in the January 1929 issue of Le Gaulois artistique, [above and left] in which the author laments the suppression of traditional illustration processes in favor of newer mechanical techniques:
“L’emploi de découvertes techniques, améliorées et perfectionées sans cesse, ont éliminé presque définitivement ces traducteurs. La photographie, la photogravure, la similigravure, l’héliogravure, la phototype et, plus récemment, la rotogravure, sont cause de la suppression, dans la domaine du livre, des graveurs au burin, des aquafortistes, des xylographes et des lithographes.
Néanmoins, ces applications mécaniques de la reproduction, excellentes pour les publications à grand tirage, resente insuffisantes, quelque soin que l’on puisse apporter à leur execution, quand il s’agit du livre du luxe.”
Although the author disdains mechanical processes, in general, he praises Lalau’s technique for its insistence on intimacy between artist and workman:
“Il n’est plus question d’interprétation indirecte à laquelle l’artiste ne peut prendre part, mais au contraire d’une union constante entre lui et l’ouvrier chargé du tirage de ses planches.”
In addition, he compliments Lalau’s ability to convey the spirit of the Middle Ages through modern mechanical means: “Elle fait le plus grand honneur à l’artiste qui en est l’inventeur et à l’éditeur qui a réalisé le difficile problème de conserver son caractère à un ouvrage du moyen âge, en employant pour l’éditer des proceeds modernes.”
This post was directed to our friends in Great Britain who were asked to answer the question: “What are mems?” Happily, the answer came in minutes from Simon Beattie, citing the OED:
mem, v.
Pronunciation:
Brit. /mɛm/
U.S. /mɛm/
Frequency (in current use):
Origin: Formed within English, by conversion. Etymon: mem. n.1
Etymology: < mem. n.1
nonce-word.
transitive. To note or write down as a memorandum.
1915 W. J. Locke Jaffery v. 61 Once having ‘mem-ed’ an unpleasant thing in my diary, the matter is over.
The term appears in such book titles as: A Paper, of Tobacco: Treating of The Rise, Progress, Pleasures, and Advantages of Smoking: With Anecdotes of Distinguished Smokers, Mems on Pipes and Tobacco-Boxes, and a Tritical Essay on Snuff (London 1839)
Pickwick In America! . . . : and the Sayings, Doings, and Mems of the Facetious Sam Weller (London 1839)
Mems of America, and Reminiscences At Home and Abroad (London 1839)
This advertisement [above] in Willings Press Guide includes Theatrical mems, as does the print at the top from The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, April 6, 1878.
Harry Furniss (1854-1925) was an artist, whose first job as an illustrator was for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, and later for The Illustrated London News and The Graphic. His most famous humorous drawings were published in Punch, for which he started working in 1880.
Furniss moved to New Jersey where he worked for Thomas Edison making animated cartoons.
Interesting but no mention of mems:
Harry Furniss (1854-1925), My Bohemian Days, with illustrations by the author (New York: Stokes, [1919]). ReCAP 30104.372
Harry Furniss (1854-1925), Harry Furniss At Home (London: T. F. Unwin, 1904). Forrestal Annex NC1320 .F98
Harry Furniss (1854-1925), The Confessions of a Caricaturist (New York: Harper and brothers, 1902). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RCPXG-6703038
Princeton University class “Caricature and Modernity: 1776-1914” (ART 453/ECS 453) visited the Graphic Arts Collection this week to view prints and watercolors by James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and other British caricaturists.
With frequent bursts of laughter, the class looked primarily at the collection of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895, who donated several thousand prints, drawings, and illustrated books to the Princeton University Library.
“Caricature, based on the distortion of the human face for comic effect, challenged the ideally beautiful,” reads the class description, “and the academic art training that developed in Western Europe after the Renaissance. This course will examine the explosion of caricatural prints and comic illustrated books in France, Great Britain, and the United States from the revolutions of 1776 and 1789 to World War I. Topics will include the political role of satire in the newly defined public sphere; the influence of physiognomy and racial theories on caricatural depictions; the invention of the comic strip; and the origins of Dada and Cubism in comic illustration.”
The invention of laughing gas is celebrated below:
Reports were prepared on Gillray’s Tom Paine’s Nightly Pest (1792); King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver (1803); Matrimonial Harmonics (1805); and Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses! (1818). In addition, they studied Rowlandson’s Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset House (1808); A Nincompoop or Henpecked Husband (1807); The Anatomist (1811); and Breaking up the Bluestocking Club (1815), among many others.
Next week they move on to Paris and Charles Philipon’s La Caricature with Daumier, Grandville, and other French caricaturists.
Attributed to Henry William Bunbury (1750–1811), The Long Minuet as Danced at Bath (after 1787).
Inside a box of unprocessed material, this small group of “Nickel Weeklies” (a cheaper version of the Dime Novels) turned up. Some of the major series titles are included here, Work and Win: An Interesting Weekly for Young America (featuring Fred Fearnot), Pluck and Luck, and Tip Top Weekly: An Ideal Publication for the American Youth (featuring Dick Merriwell). Each sold for 5 cents, with a full color cover. There were 732 stories about Fearnot over 14 years written by Harvey K. Shackleford, under the pseudonym Hal Standish, until his death in 1906, and then by George W. Goode using the same penname.
The January 13, 1905 issue of Work and Win features a story about Fred Fearnot with the subtitle “The Longest Purse in Wall Street” meaning the richest man. The saying “the longest purse wins” was featured prominently in a cartoon by William Newman published in the March 1, 1864 issue of Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, in which Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln try to settle their disputes with enormous purses.
…In 1841, he was invited “to join a new, superior, three penny weekly to be called Punch.” Newman’s primary role at Punch was to provide small cuts, while on occasion he did some large cuts. By 1850, he had left Punch and had taken up work as a bookseller. He returned to journalism in 1854 as a cartoonist for Diogenes. In the winter of 1860, struggling to make ends meet for his growing family and wife, Newman was offered a job that offered more stability. The position was the “chief cartoonist for a new humor magazine, to be called Momus, which would cause him to relocate across the ocean in New York (Brown and West 158). While “all cartoons in Momus by Newman have previously been ascribed to William North,” a myth that was perpetuated by Frank Luther, scholars Jane Brown and Richard Samuel West have disproven such a notion. As they demonstrate, “North had committed suicide on November 14, 1854,” so it would have been impossible for North to have completed this work. With the demise of Momus in sight, “Newman found work on Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, the best of the American comic monthlies. …During the Civil War, Newman also “became part of the corps of artists bringing scenes of the war into the parlors of North homes” with contributions to both the New York Illustrated News and Harper’s Weekly. In the fall of 1862, he began to contribute work again to one of Leslie’s publications, Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, which continued relatively consistently for the next eight years. According to biographers Brown and West, “after the War, Newman paid less attention to national politics and more to American foreign policy and international affairs,” especially the relations between the United States and England and France.
The Cotsen Collection holds Work and Win no.1-1382; 1896-1924. ReCAP – Cotsen Library Off-Site Storage Work and win 151026
In this rare 1798 edition of political caricatures, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection, five classes of Republicans are pictured and described. The humor of the texts, written and possibly also drawn by Antoine Joseph, comte de, Barruel-Beauvert (1756-1817)–cousin of Rivarol, editor in 1791 of the monarchical newspaper Acts of Apostles–is not easily translated but presents: l’Indépendant, l’Acheté, l’Enrichi, l’Exclusif, le Systématique.
Note that in 1850, Barruel-Beauvert is described as an author of political pamphlets of no merit:
BARRUEL-BEAUVERT, (Antoine Joseph, comte de,) born at the castle of Beauvert, in Languedoc, in 1756, of a family of Scottish origin, was by profession a soldier, and rendered himself in some little degree remarkable by his loyalty during the French revolution, but much more so by his vanity and selfconceit. Although constantly on the list of persons proscribed, he still contrived to remain in Paris undiscovered by the police till 1800, when he was imprisoned, but obtained his liberty in 1802. After the restoration, his disappointment at not receiving the rewards and honours which he imagined to be his due, led him to publish several pamphlets, for which he was obliged to leave Paris, and went to Italy. He died at Turin 1817. He was the author of many political pamphlets, of no merit. (Biog. Univ. Suppl.)
–Hugh James Rose, New General Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 3 (1850).
Riez-en si vous voulez…, mais surtout ne vous en fâchez point = Laugh at it, if you want… but don’t forget the point.
Antoine Joseph, comte de Barruel-Beauvert (1756-1817), Caricatures politiques ([Paris?], an VI [i.e. 1798]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Carl Browne (1849-1914), Carl Browne’s Illustrated Open Letter (San Francisco, Calif.: C. Browne, [1800s]). January 16, 1887 issue composed of multiple sheets, entirely hand drawn and printed, with masthead also hand drawn. Cover design includes “a copy of an etching by Th. Nast of himself and presented by the Great Caricaturist of Harper’s Weekly to Carl Browne, ‘The Nast of the Pacific Coast.'” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Carl Browne was an American cattle rancher, cartoonist, journalist, and politician. A former close political associate of controversial San Francisco politician Denis Kearney, Browne is best remembered as a top leader of the Coxey’s Army protest movement of 1894.
Carl Browne was a hulking ex-con, an itinerant labor leader and a mesmerizing speaker. A guest at Coxey’s farm and oddly dressed in fringed buckskin suit, he’d marched around, pronouncing that Coxey had been Andrew Jackson in a past life. Browne considered himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and asked that admirers call him “Humble Carl.” His eye for spectacle also made him a brilliant promoter. Together with Coxey, he planned a pilgrimage to Capitol Hill to present their Good Roads Bill, a $500 million Federal jobs plan.
Browne was born July 4, 1849 in Newton, Iowa, and worked a variety of jobs during his younger years, including time as a printer, a painter, a cattle rancher, a cartoonist, and a journalist. He moved to San Francisco and became active in politics as an active member there of the Workingmen’s Party. Browne was recognized for his commitment to the organization and served as personal secretary to Denis Kearney, a politician who championed exclusion of the Chinese people from the United States.
While in San Francisco, Browne launched a radical weekly newspaper, which he edited and for which he drew political cartoons, The Open Letter. In a 1929 monograph, historian Donald L. McMurry described the colorful Browne in the following manner: “Browne’s picturesque appearance made him a conspicuous figure wherever he went. Tall, heavy, and bearded, his unkempt hair streaked with gray, he added to the effect by wearing an exaggerated Western costume. It consisted of a buckskin coat with fringes, and buttons made of Mexican silver half-dollars, high boots, a sombrero, a fur cloak when weather permitted, and around his neck, instead of a collar, a string of amber beads, the gift of his dying wife…. Closer inspection revealed the reason why his men called him ‘Old Greasy. It was suggested that he would have been a more pleasant companion if he had bathed oftener.”
At a Chicago convention of advocates of free silver held in August 1893, Browne made the acquaintance of Ohio politician Jacob Coxey, who saw in the charismatic labor agitator Browne a potential popularizer of his proposed governmental reforms. Browne had become well-known in Chicago as an exceptional public speaker, addressing a series of public meetings at Lake Front Park on the problem of unemployment and its possible solution — one means of which, he is said to have suggested, would be a march of unemployed workers on the nation’s capital.
Impressed with the charismatic Browne’s effectiveness and intellectual proximity to his own ideas, Coxey convinced Browne to join his campaign for the Good Roads Bill — a plan for putting the unemployed to work improving the transportation infrastructure of the United States. Browne obliged, both speaking in its behalf and drawing a series of cartoons illustrating the dysfunctional nature of the current economic system and depicting the benefits to be obtained by society through passage of the Coxey plan.
Coxey was pleased with Browne’s commitment to the cause of labor reform and persuaded him to stay with him at his home in Massillon, Ohio through the winter of 1893-94, a grim time when the United States was buffeted by the severe economic contraction known to history as the Panic of 1893. Together Coxey and Browne discussed a means of better publicizing the Good Roads Bill, with the pair determining to, in Coxey’s words, “send a petition to Washington with boots on” through a cross-country march of the unemployed.
Browne and Coxey held a series of public meetings in Massillon and other towns in the area, drawing attention to Coxey’s proposed Good Roads Bill and drawing attention to the planned march, which was to depart from Massillon for Washington, D.C. on Easter Sunday 1894.
Browne gained notoriety for his Theosophic religious views and Coxey was converted to his unorthodox ideas. They came to regard their march as an “Army of Peace,” giving the name “Commonweal of Christ” to their movement. This quasi-religious interpretation of the 1894 march movement was broadly ridiculed, generating some publicity for the cause but generally doing “a great deal more harm than good,” in the estimation of at least one historian.
The “Commonweal of Christ” arrived in Washington, DC on May Day, 1894, with about 400 marchers in the ranks. “Coxey and Brown made their way to the steps of the United States Capitol to address the accompanying crowd, but were blocked by mounted police. The pair jumped a stone wall in an attempt to reach their goal, along with Christopher Columbus Jones, leader of the marchers from Philadelphia, but police on foot chased the three down and detained them, first holding down Browne and beating him, tearing his clothes and ripping off the amber bead necklace from his neck. Coxey was released, but Browne and Jones were placed under arrest, with bond posted by two wealthy sympathizers of the marchers.”
On May 2, Coxey, Browne, and Jones were charged in police court with carrying an illegal banner on capitol grounds, with Coxey and Browne additionally charged with trampling the grass. A jury trial followed, during which the District Attorney denigrated Browne as “a fakir, a charlatan, and a mounteback who dresses up in ridiculous garments and exhibits himself to the curious multitudes at 10 cents a head.” The three defendants were convicted on the morning of May 8 and freed on bond.
Sentence was pronounced on May 21, with Coxey and Browne each fined $5 for walking on the grass, and Coxey, Browne, and Jones sentenced to 20 days in jail for carrying banners on capitol grounds.
In January 1914, Browne collapsed and died at the age of 64 years old. Special thanks to Donald (“Rusty”) Mott for all his good research on Browne. This post is also copied from the following sources:
W.T. Stead, Chicago To-Day, or, The Labour War in America. London: Review of Reviews, 1894.
Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army: A Study in Industrial Unrest, 1893-1898. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1929.
Benjamin F. Alexander, Coxey’s Army: Popular Protest in the Gilded Age. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015; *pg. 119.
Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
“No License. A Question to be Settled in the State of New York, 19th of May, 1846… Citizens of the State of Nfw [sic] York, Look at the Following. Will You Vote License?”
Above and below cropped and photoshopped
