CARTOON, originally a preliminary drawing, executed to full scale and often in colour, of the design to be carried out in tapestry, mosaic, mural painting, or other work of art, and usually upon a heavy or durable paper. The cartoon when used for tapes try is usually placed in the loom so that the weaver can see it clearly just below his work, for which it acts as a guide.
In the more common parlance of to-day, the word means a drawing, distributed publicly by the press or by means of hand bills or posters, which crystallizes some current trend of thought into pictorial form often humorous and derisive. (W. E. Cx.) The political cartoon has come into greater general use in the United States than in any other country. Almost every daily paper uses either a syndicated cartoon or one drawn by a staff artist. The cartoon's worth is based on its instantaneous exposition of an idea. The very specific character of the drawn picture precludes anything except a direct attack. There is no qualification in it- it says but one thing and that at a glance. Herein lies its virtue and its limitation. The cartoon of approbation is rarely successful. To say a man is a good man in a cartoon carries little force ; but if the artist can say that he is corrupt or unworthy, then he is wielding a weighty club. All cartoons, however, need not be bitter to be effective. Humour plays an important part in their appeal. Ridicule is one of the most potent weapons in the world when turned into social and political channels.
The cartoon in America roughly divides itself into two schools. In one, the homely, quasi-rural setting and characters are pre sented somewhat in the manner of the comic "strip." John Mc Cutcheon of the Chicago Tribune is the chief exponent of this, by far the more numerous, group. The chief characteristics of these artists are usually a cheerful humour, a multitude of little figures engaged in violent action, comic animals and a generous labelling of persons and objects. In these pictures the sudden im pact of the idea is diffused through the multiplicity of incident. "Balloons," those bits of conversation surrounded with a wire line, must be read as well as the labels attached to the figures in order that the artist's idea may be comprehended. The other school deals in a starker form of pictorial representation. Here the mean ing explodes at first glance. Everything exterior to the single idea is eliminated. This method is derived from the French of which Forain is the leading exponent. Also, it may be noted that the execution of this second group is of higher artistic merit or at least aspiration. There is a greater sophistication, both in con ception and execution in these cartoons, and they imply an audi ence of more mature thought than do those of the cheery, bucolic nature which abound in the country's press.
Through syndication, cartoons reach even the smallest papers so that the country is thoroughly supplied with its daily picture. The syndicate, however, having to serve all sorts of papers in all sorts of communities, has softened the "attack" quality in most of this product so that the result has been a more or less negative, quali fied picture which is guaranteed to offend no one and therefore has lost most of its pungency. Lacking that virility, it has come to be simply a thing of entertainment wherein the annals of the great middle class are set forth in terms of simplicity.
There is growing up in the daily press a social cartoon which is based upon a close observation of urban life—a sort of picture which has no relation to politics or public affairs, but sets forth some phase of life with either sympathy or satire. Dennis Wort man of the New York il'orld is the best representative of this interesting form.
One of the handicaps which confront the cartoonist is the paucity of symbols through which he must express himself. Through repetition the various devices become worn and thread bare ; yet there is no escape from them for they have become established in the public's mind and any variant or change would obscure the meaning of the message the cartoonist wishes to con vey. The G.O.P. elephant; the Democratic donkey (both origi nated by Thos. Nast in the days when he fought the Tweed ring); the weedy individual labelled "Prohibition" ; the round Nihilist bomb with the sputtering fuse ; the apoplectic, silk-hatted indi vidual who becomes "Wall Street" or "The Interests" or "The Trusts"; the meek, side-whiskered, spectacled creature who re ceives the brick Labour hurls at Capital and who is labelled "The Common People"—all these and more form the standardized little group of puppets with which the cartoonist must work. The figure of Uncle Sam is the most overworked of all. Each day he looks sternly out at the world from his place on the editorial page and views with alarm, warns, dictates, with pontifical fervour. Rarely does he laugh, for he is the Federal voice, and as such, deals only in weighty matters. He tells kings, potentates, labour unions, corrupt officeholders, swindling trusts (depending on whether he is a Re publican or Democratic Uncle Sam) where they "get off." In his gayer moments he welcomes transatlantic flyers and channel swimmers and, in his sadder moments, stands with bowed head at the death of a public man of importance. He is ubiquitous, untir ing and a good deal of a bore. Yet the management of a daily cartoon would be difficult without his valuable services.
The influence of the cartoon is doubtless a very considerable one in the formation of public opinion; for the public at large can comprehend the simple message of the drawn picture, whereas the reading of long editorials entails a much greater sustained ef fort on their part. A few of the weekly magazines use a political cartoon ; but here we find the methods of the comic "strip" used rather than the sterner forms of satire. It would appear that, on the whole, the editors of the United States feel that a cheerful, simple, innocuous appeal is preferable to a more mordant presen tation of pictorial ideas. Many of the cartoons of the extreme left wing of the Socialist party are of great force, full of bitterness and class antagonism. Because of the restricted circulation of the papers in which they appear, they are little known to the public. On the whole, the cartoons of the daily press fairly well represent the mind of the American public in its tolerant, non-critical, ex cessively partisan point of view. (R. K.)