Actualités: La Bourse ou le Knout!

This lithographic cartoon depicts a street confrontation between a well-dressed gentleman and a laborer wielding a whip, while a third figure observes. The composition satirizes economic coercion and class conflict in mid-19th-century urban life, playing on the French phrase 'bourse ou knout'—purse or whip—suggesting forcible wealth extraction.

The print exemplifies the Actualités tradition of French political satire, inheriting techniques from Gillray and Rowlandson but sharpened through Daumier's social critique. Lithography's fluid line and tonal range allow the artist to render fabric, gesture, and street architecture with sharp social observation. The caricature frames its commentary on labor relations and state power during the authoritarian Second Empire.