Policy: A Kick in the Right Direction

A vulture-headed figure in a suit — labeled nothing itself, but carrying folders marked "N.Y. Board", "S. Canal Ring", and "Canal Ring" — is being bodily ejected from a building whose lintel reads "The Tammany Democratic Party." The door bears a sign: "The Vultures Reform Party." The caption reads "A Kick in the Right Direction." Nast's argument is sardonic: reformers who attached themselves to Tammany to exploit its patronage networks are now being expelled — not because Tammany found religion, but as political calculation. The bird-head caricature, a stock Nast device for corrupt opportunists, carries no ethnic marker here; the satire targets the canal-ring grafters and fake reformers circling New York's Democratic machine in the mid-1870s Reconstruction retrenchment era.