The Cartoons of Evansville's Karl Kae Knecht
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It is clear that this was part of a wider agenda promoted by Knecht, part of the Progressive era commitment to activism on behalf of the safety of regular working people in America, a product of what the U.S. Department of Labor has called the “great interest during the Progressive Era in investigation and amelioration of hazardous working conditions.”154 It was certainly needed; as David Von Drehle said, “Death was an almost routine workplace hazard in those days.”155 After the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City that claimed the lives of 146 workers, Knecht drew a cartoon that unflinchingly showed the disaster unfolding. He depicted desperate workers calling for help from windows while flames surge all around them; another worker dangles from a ledge. The cartoon was captioned “When Building Ordinances Are Not Enforced” and gloomily predicted that “Calamities like that…will go on.”156 And as has been seen with his response to the Titanic disaster, Knecht was willing to go beyond mere criticism of enforcement and, for example, offer a critique of the shipping companies whom he saw as being responsible for maritime disasters. That is seen to an even more remarkable degree in his response to the sinking of the SS Vestris in 1928, in which over one hundred people died. His forceful and unambiguous cartoon of November 16, 1928, spoke of “unsafe life boats, improper equipment in life boats, [and] improper handling when launched,” as well as “a crew that would delay in sending S.O.S., delay lowering life boats [and] delay warning passengers.” Most striking of all, the cartoon depicts an inspector asleep at his desk and an owner who is only concerned that “we ought to make good money on this trip.”157
Obviously, the biggest single event of this time period was World War I, something that killed around ten million people and injured millions more while arguably doing more to shape the modern world than anything else. Knecht drew many cartoons that focused on the war, including a noteworthy effort on August 5, 1914, the day after Britain declared war on Germany, that showed the German kaiser as a circus animal trainer being confronted by the Russian bear and the lion of Britain (Knecht says “England”) under the caption “Now He Has Got His Hands Full!” The United States, of course, did not join the war until 1917, and the image of the American doughboy from 1917 is a celebration of that. A smiling young man labeled “Evansville” strides boldly forward, with his rifle on his right shoulder while he waves his army hat in the air with his left hand. In the background hang three sets of U.S. Army uniforms, from the Mexican-American War of 1846, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War of 1898. The theme of continuity of military service and the connectedness of one generation of American soldiers to another was one he would return to on several other occasions, most notably during World War II when he more than once depicted old soldiers from nineteenth century wars as brothers of the young men currently serving.158
World War I had a strong Evansville connection—hundreds of local men served, and eighty-five died in uniform, many of them killed in action and most of the rest killed by the influenza epidemic, the so-called Spanish flu, that raged around the world between 1918 and 1920.159 November 3, 1917, saw the first three American servicemen to be killed in action in France. One of them was James Bethel Gresham, who was born in Kentucky but raised and educated in Evansville. His body was eventually returned, and he is buried in the city’s Locust Hill Cemetery. Knecht drew a beautiful portrait of Gresham on his death in 1917—another reminder of Knecht’s ability as an artist. On November 11, his cartoon showed Gresham’s mother, Alice Dodd, on whom much of the city’s memorializing energy was focused. She is dressed in black, sitting on a flag-draped chair in front of a full-length portrait of her son. She holds a laurel wreath and on either side of her stand figures representing Evansville and Uncle Sam, heads bowed in respect.
Evansville doughboy, 1917. UE/EVPL.
The cartoon advertises the upcoming memorial services to Gresham in the Evansville Coliseum, and the figure of Evansville holds a scroll inscribed “The Evansville Courier Fund by popular subscription to build a home for the mother of hero James Bethel Gresham to be a memorial home.” On the day after, November 12, 1917, he drew an arresting front-page cartoon captioned “She Gave Her Son—What Are You Giving?” On the left side, it featured a young man pointing out at the viewer, reminiscent of the iconic Uncle Sam recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg, produced originally one year earlier—“you could go to the right or the left of that picture and Uncle Sam’s eyes still seemed fastened on you with that commanding glare.”160 He is holding a sign that says “Courier’s James Gresham Hero Home Fund. A home for his Mother—the first US mother to lose a son in the war with Germany—a memorial for Evansville and her soldier son.” The right side of the cartoon is a portrait of Gresham’s mother.
As so often, Knecht was being an artistic activist for a civic cause. The previous day Mayor Bosse had introduced her to a crowd of five thousand at the Coliseum who “gave a rousing ovation that swelled to the roof, but still retained the solemnity of tribute to the fallen hero and his mother.”161 The campaign led by Knecht and the Courier was ultimately successful, and less than one year later, the city presented to Mrs. Dodd a home located in Garvin Park.162 On November 19, 1917, Knecht drew a cartoon that showed the erection of a monument, presumably by the American people, as Uncle Sam’s coat and hat are hanging up nearby. The monument is marked “For World Democracy,” and the very first stone—the foundation, or base, of the monument—is inscribed “James B. Gresham, Evansville, Ind.” The poignant caption is simply “At the Base.” What is remarkable about this image is that Knecht reused it two decades later when he included it in another cartoon that was yet again part of a civic campaign, this time by the Indiana Veterans of Foreign Wars to raise money for a Gresham memorial at Dress Plaza at the city’s riverfront.163 The original cartoon is pasted in at top right while at lower right is a line drawing of the “Monument built by the French at Bathelmont France near [the] place where Gresham, first American soldier, was killed in [the] World War.” The left-hand side shows schoolchildren depositing coins into a collection jar while Kay salutes with a bayonetted rifle. When Gresham’s body came home to Evansville in 1921, Knecht drew a cartoon on July 15 that was an extremely powerful antiwar statement: an enormous figure of a bareheaded Uncle Sam holding the flag-draped coffin, saying, “And I trust that this first shall be the last of firsts.” All of these cartoons together communicate rather well not just the importance of James Bethel Gresham to Evansville but also his importance to Karl Kae Knecht.
James Bethel Gresham, November 1917. UE/EVPL.
The next two cartoons to be studied in this section deal with the city of Evansville’s most fundamental physical feature, one that has had huge ramifications both positive and negative—its location on the Ohio River. His magnificent 1926 cartoon entitled “Our Giant” personifies the river as a mighty beast of burden. Not just any mighty beast of course—this is, after all, Karl Kae Knecht—the Ohio River is here depicted as an enormous elephant, many times bigger than life size. The drawing communicates the immense power of the river and also its immense potential, assuming it could be controlled and navigated and exploited through dams, bridges and an “Evansville River Terminal.” Knecht was a consistent advocate for all three of these, as he was for all kinds of infrastructure projects that would benefit his adopted city. As seen already, the Evansville Henderson Bridge was to come in 1932, and the Mead Johnson river terminal was opened in February 1931.164 The river dwarfs the men in the picture, but the men are still in control—barely—as shown by the figure in the foreground who is guiding the beast with an elephant hook.
Gresham Memorial Fund, 1936. UE/EVPL.
But man was not really in control, as seen in the greatest disaster in Evansville history, the flood of 1937, which is the subject of the next cartoon, captioned “As the Wild Waves Leave.” The flood was a massive disaster across much of the Midwest—David Welky called it “the worst river flood in American history.” In the words of James E. Castro: “‘He
ll and High Water’ was the way Time magazine of February 1, 1937, described the flood, and the description could not have been more accurate. The raging floodwaters inundated thousands of homes and businesses, factories and farms in a half dozen states, drove a million people from their homes, claimed nearly 400 lives, and recorded $500 million in damages.”165 Evansville was hit extremely hard; experienced local journalist Rich Davis said in 2007 that it was “the greatest natural disaster in the history of Evansville.” Over seven thousand homes were affected as the Ohio River rose nineteen feet above its flood stage.166 Five hundred city blocks were flooded, and “many of the old commercial buildings along the waterfront on Riverside Avenue and First Street were so battered and weakened by the waves that they either collapsed or had to be torn down.”
Ohio River as a mighty elephant, 1926. UE/EVPL.
“As the Wild Waves Leave,” 1937. UE/EVPL.
The cost to the city was astronomical, and the iconic photographs of the devastation—many of them taken by Knecht himself—almost defy belief today.167 Knecht’s cartoon is a brilliant example of another aspect of his style—this drawing is gently pedagogic, providing a wealth of information in a warm and amusing manner. The key fact—that the river crested at 53.74 feet on January 31, 1937—is communicated powerfully, and then a series of amusing little vignettes tell other parts of the story. In the corner, Kay complains about her sore feet from having to wear wading boots for so long. It is also a reminder that sometimes the cartoonist’s role is to provide comfort—this is an image that would have allowed an exhausted and shaken community to pause for a moment and smile, perhaps even laugh. And then, led by Mr. Public and his impressive biceps, they could get back to the hard work of cleaning up.
The aviation experiences of Karl Kae Knecht, 1931. UE/EVPL.
As has been seen already, Knecht was an aviation enthusiast, going on early flights, taking aerial photographs, drawing many aerial views of the city and advocating for an Evansville airport and its subsequent growth over the years. His 1931 cartoon of his own aviation experiences is a wonderful little showcase of his talents and quirks. He often drew self-portraits, and in this one, he places himself right in the middle of a series of drawings that are aerial views of Evansville. As he often did, he includes a pair of previous drawings and cleverly interweaves them with the new; in this case, the “new” is literally the newest type of airplane in existence—what Knecht calls the “autogiro airplane,” which made its Evansville debut in September 1931, wowing a crowd of thousands at the airport.168 Among the landmarks that he picks out for special mention are the zoo, the courthouse, the Ohio River bridge and his own place of work, the downtown offices of the Courier.
And the Courier is the subject of the next cartoon, a historical work from 1921 that discusses the development of printing presses, starting with a ghostly Gutenberg-era press at top left. A nineteenth-century press from the time “when the Courier was still young” dominates the top panel—presumably from around the middle of the century, as the paper was founded in 1845. In 1910, the paper described its earliest manifestation like this: “In 1845 The Courier was a four-page, five-column newspaper, dingy in appearance and poor in news. At the time, however, it ranked with all other newspapers throughout the central west and surpassed many of them.”169 By 1921, new technology was changing the printing industry and the Evansville Press was boasting of its new fifty-four-ton Goss printing machine, a “New High Speed Printing Machine of the Latest Pattern” with thirty-six thousand separate parts.170 Perhaps this is what forced Knecht to produce this drawing—the bottom part of which he had drawn for a completely different cartoon in 1915. It is a rather astonishing piece of recycling. The words “our new press” from 1915 were erased and the date “1921” was added to the drawing. The speech balloon on the left is actually partially the same as six years earlier, with some words whited out and replaced. Despite that, the whole works together very well, the drawings are intricate and attractive and it is an interesting example of Knecht’s willingness to repurpose old images for new circumstances.
No discussion of American life in the 1920s and 1930s would be complete without considering two of the biggest phenomena of the era and, indeed, of all American history: Prohibition and the Great Depression. Karl Kae Knecht of course drew many cartoons that considered these two experiences, and this chapter will close by studying two cartoons on each topic.
The history of printing presses, 1921. UE/EVPL.
Prohibition refers to the thirteen-year period between 1920 and 1933 when, under the Eighteenth Amendment, “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” was prohibited.171 Its effects were, of course, to drive these activities underground and create a gigantic black market and a vast network of smuggling that made massive fortunes for many people and led to the violent death of countless others. “For all its outrageously intolerant overtones, its hypocrisy and double standards,” said Edward Behr, “Prohibition represented a genuine attempt to better the lives of people. That it did them instead untold harm—that America has never fully recovered from the legacy of these thirteen years—should come as no surprise. As history keeps telling us—but do we ever listen?—the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”172
Knecht’s cartoon from 1929 is a very amusing depiction of alcohol smuggling in Florida around the infamous Belle Isle. (He spells it incorrectly.) The island held the mansion of the department store magnate J.C. Penney, at which President Herbert Hoover vacationed in early 1929. Hoover is shown out on a fishing trip, catching a crate of illicit booze. It was also close to mobster Al Capone’s villa on Palm Island, which might help explain its central role in illicit alcohol transportation.173 In this picture, the island is surrounded by grim-faced law enforcement, and one smuggler warns the other to “stay as far away from Bell[e] Isle as you can.” In the bottom right, Kay, too, gets involved, swimming along with an open bottle of alcohol in her trunk.
Prohibition smuggling boats in Florida, 1929. UE/EVPL.
The second Knecht cartoon dealing with Prohibition is a retrospective assessment, drawn on the death of its architect, Andrew J. Volstead, and published on January 24, 1947. His was the act of Congress that formally carried out the purpose of the Eighteenth Amendment and “set the rules for National Prohibition,”174 and Knecht calls him the “father of the Volstead Prohibition Act that made the 18th Amendment.” What is truly conspicuous about this cartoon is how unequivocally Knecht condemns the whole Prohibition enterprise. A smirking Al Capone features with equal prominence to Volstead himself, symbolizing the fact that organized crime was the era’s biggest beneficiary, and when Knecht lists the outcomes of Prohibition, they are all negative. “Criminal organizations,” “rackets,” “gang wars” and “bootlegging” all flow from the “Prohibition Era,” which is itself symbolized by a sealed and padlocked bottle.
Before Prohibition was even over, the Wall Street crash took place, and the Great Depression began. Knecht’s June 1933 cartoon of a figure representing the Depression being strangled by the ubiquitous symbol of the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the Blue Eagle, is dramatic and powerful. The NRA was one of the central policies of Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office and one of the central planks of what has been called the First New Deal. Tim McNeese said recently:
The NRA’s overarching purpose was to solve the problems of economic instability, overproduction, and labor-management issues by carrying out economic planning. Representing industrial leaders, labor leaders, and government bureaucrats, the NRA created new “codes” of competition. The codes were based on limiting production while setting prices and workers’ hours and wages.…The strict rules of capitalism took a back seat to the latent socialism of the NRA.175
This is an optimistic cartoon. Kay tells the figure representing the Depression, “You’d better wave the white flag,” and it certainly seems like the Blue Eagle very much has the upper hand. While this optimism was misplaced—the U.S
. Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in 1935, and in many ways, the Depression did not end until the gigantic stimulus of World War II—it was by no means unique to Knecht in 1933. The historian Robert S. McElvaine wrote:
Volstead, architect of Prohibition, January 24, 1947. UE/EVPL.
The largest parade in the history of New York City saw 250,000 people march down Fifth Avenue for the Blue Eagle.…For a brief time in the summer of 1933 it was believable that the country was marching back to prosperity. During the months between Roosevelt’s inauguration and the effective dates of the NRA codes in the fall, production and employment increased significantly. The index of factory production, which had hit a low of 56 in March, rose to 101 in July 1933.176
People were excited—the possibility of the Depression being quickly defeated seemed real. And Knecht’s cartoon both reflected and perpetuated that view.