This Has Happened

A heavyset bully in a battered top hat crouches in the street, sleeves shoved up, the words "Wall St." stretched across his chest. He has hold of a smaller figure and is wrenching it down; another victim already lies crumpled at the left. Davenport worked for Hearst, and he built his name attacking monopoly power and the men who ran it. He drew heavily, in thick blacks and dense hatching that give his brutes real weight. The line printed overhead, "This Has Happened," refuses the usual cartoon shelter of allegory and tells the reader to take the scene as reportage. Where a Puck centerfold made its case through classical costume and myth, Davenport preferred a back-alley beating in modern dress.