Political Cartoons

Plan A and Plan B is illustrated with numerous New Deal-era political cartoons published by the Chicago Tribune (the Tribune was a conservative newspaper until around 2008).

John McCutcheon (1870-1949), Carey Orr (1890-1967), and Joe Parrish (1905-1989) were long-running Chicago Tribune cartoonists (for 30 to 60 years each) during the pre-WWII period and after; the Tribune included a cartoon on the front page top center nearly every day. Those published before mid-1946 are in the public domain.

Carey Orr was a Chicago Tribune cartoonist from 1917 to 1963. His cartoons reveal a mastery of the human form due to his athletic background as a semi-pro baseball player; animal anatomy due to growing up on a farm; mechanical aptitude from the engineering courses he took in college; and above all: a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of economics, law, and political philosophy. He cleverly represented these complex ideas in simple illustrations that could be understood by ordinary Tribune readers.

And here’s a half dozen of Orr’s cleverest and most economically and politically astute cartoons (it was difficult to pick only six):

John McCutcheon was a Chicago Tribune cartoonist from 1903 to 1946. Here are a few of his cartoons:

Joe Parrish was a Chicago Tribune cartoonist from 1936 to 1970. Most of his best cartoons that are available in the public domain are from the pre-WWII period, when the Tribune was strongly anti-war.

To enjoy more cartoons like these (and read commentary about their context and ideas), see Plan A and Plan B, available at Amazon.com.