Tom Spurgeon points readers to this collection of Winsor McCay editorial cartoons. They are presented without context and appear to be illustrations for editorials rather than freestanding cartoons, but they do have their years attached to their file names, and this one is from 1914.
It immediately put me in mind of this passage from Jacob Riis's 1902 book, "The Battle with the Slum," which followed his 1890 blockbuster look at poverty, "How the Other Half Lives," and was a more detailed telling of how the social reformers of the time had dug in and fought, not poverty, but selfish business interests and bloated, unresponsive bureaucracies, to make the cities liveable.
Riis's description of an 1897 meeting with the Powers That Be remains compelling, and might well have been illustrated by McCay's cartoon:
“Everything takes ten years,” said Abram S. Hewitt, when, exactly ten years after he had as mayor championed the Small Parks Act, he took his seat as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Small Parks. The ten years had wrought a great change. It was no longer the slum of to-day, but that of to-morrow, that challenged attention.
The committee took the point of view of the children from the first. It had a large map prepared, showing where in the city there was room to play and where there was none. Then it called in the police and asked them to point out where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum.
“They have no other playground than the street,” was the explanation given in each case. “They smash lamps and break windows. The storekeepers kick and there is trouble. That is how it begins.”
“Many complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians, storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing baseball in some parts of almost every street. The damage is not slight. Arrests are frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in.”
This last was the report of an up-town captain. He remembered the days when there were open lots there. “But those lots are now built upon,” he said, “and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for them to play.”
The committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. Then it asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their precincts were, and why they had no trouble. Every one of them put his finger on a green spot that marked a park.
“My people are quiet and orderly,” said the captain of the Tompkins Square precinct. The police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection, and the commander of the precinct was hit on the head with a hammer by “his people” and laid out for dead.
“The Hook Gang is gone,” said he of Corlears Hook. The professional pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at its calling.
“The whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the better,” said the captain of Mulberry Street; and the committee rose and said that it had heard enough.
The map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found the children crowding. The moment that was done the committee sent the map and a copy of chapter 338 of the laws of 1895 to the mayor, and reported that its task was finished. This is the law and all there is of it:—
“The people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:—
“Section 1. Hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of New York without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same.
“Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately.”
We often speak of the racism of those days, and there are parts of Riis's descriptions of the poor that are steeped in the prejudices of his times. But at least that generation, once tranquilly isolated by the limited media of their age, responded with horror and compassion once shown how the other half lives.
Today, we see the images and, instead of digging in to change them, our politicians use them as wedges to divide us, while we pat our own fat bellies and blame the poor for their failure to be middleclass.
And those pious hypocrites who claim to be social reformers, those favored lapdogs of politicians and corporate image-makers, lobby for charter schools, which are simply less costly BandAids to placate the vocal, involved parents who would otherwise agitate for more systemic change.
It is a less generous, less compassionate time.
We could use another Jacob Riis, whose combination of photojournalism and prose opened the eyes of the nation to the hitherto unseen poverty, and the violence, crime and despair it created.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if a new Winsor McCay could come add compelling art to the battle?
In other news: Norm Feuti has relaunched "Gil" at King Features. Gil was a webcomic that Norm, currently better known for "Retail," worked on some time ago, then retired, then put into development at KFS. Here's the first strip and editor Brendan Burford's discussion, which includes some additional links of interest to those who wonder how this stuff happens. I'll be watching.
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