Massachusetts Did It

Grant Hamilton draws Calvin Coolidge — named on his hat-band, baton raised — astride the G.O.P. elephant as it crushes a writhing snake labeled Radicalism beneath one massive foot. The rider's posture is triumphant, the elephant charging through scrub grass with evident purpose. The cartoon celebrates Coolidge's nationally noticed response to the 1919 Boston Police Strike, which made him a Republican hero and launched his path toward the 1920 vice-presidential nomination. Judge, reliably pro-Republican, frames the episode as the party itself stomping out labor radicalism and Bolshevik-tinged unrest — anxieties running hot in the Red Scare months following the Armistice. Hamilton's draftsmanship is clean and assured, the symbolism blunt: order on horseback, radicalism underfoot.