"The Brains" That Achieved the Tammany Victory at the Rochester Democratic Convention

Nast draws Boss Tweed's figure—rotund, hands-on-hips, dressed in a businessman's suit—with his head replaced entirely by a moneybag stamped with a dollar sign. The caption reads: The "Brains" that achieved the Tammany Victory at the Rochester Democratic Convention. The substitution is the argument: Tweed has no mind, only money, and that money is his political power. Tammany Hall's 1871 Rochester convention had just re-nominated Democrats under Tweed's machine control, and Nast was at the height of his campaign to expose the ring's systematic looting of New York City's treasury—losses then estimated near $200 million. The image carries no ethnic caricature unusual for Nast's Tweed series; the critique here is purely plutocratic, reducing a man to his corruption.