"Bottom Facts"

Nast draws a portly figure—likely Secretary of the Navy George Robeson—submerged to his waist in murky water, hunched over a bag of money while clutching documents. The figure wears a stovepipe hat and is rendered with the broad caricature Nast applied to Gilded Age politicians he considered corrupt. The caption quotes the Evening Post: the House Naval Committee had examined Robeson's private bank account for the six years before he entered the Cabinet and compared it with his account since heading the Navy Department. Nast's argument is blunt—the secretary is literally caught at the bottom, in the muck, counting spoils. The cartoon sits within Grant-era Republican scandals, where cabinet corruption became a national embarrassment and Nast, normally a Republican loyalist, turned his pen on his own party's officeholders.