Carl Schurz in a Trash Receptacle

Nast drops Missouri Senator Carl Schurz—head, shoulders, and one indignant arm protruding—into a wicker waste basket stuffed with his own Senate causes: Corrupt Administration, Fraud, French Arms Sale, Pres. Grant Is Not Honest About Civil Service, No Reform Under Grant. Giant legs flank him on both sides; an oversized desk looms behind, rendering Schurz literally pygmy-sized. The caption quotes Schurz's letter to Democrats: "I frankly declared that I had not passed from the Republican into the Democratic Party." Nast's argument is contemptuous: Schurz, a Liberal Republican who broke with Grant over patronage and civil-service corruption, belongs in the trash precisely because his reformist complaints are, to Nast's loyalist eye, self-serving rubbish from a man with nowhere politically to land.