The Bosses of the Senate

Joseph Keppler's "The Bosses of the Senate," published in Puck in 1889, is the defining political cartoon of the Gilded Age, and one of the most quoted images in the history of American satire. Keppler drew the Senate chamber overhung by a row of monstrously bloated moneybag-men, the trusts and monopolies, looming over the tiny senators below. Above them a banner reversed the founding creed: "This is a Senate of the Monopolists, by the Monopolists, and for the Monopolists." A doorway marked for the people's entrance stands closed and bolted. In a single richly detailed panel, Keppler indicted the corruption of an entire era, and did it so unforgettably that the image is still reprinted in textbooks as shorthand for corporate power's grip on government. Its importance to comics runs deep. Keppler helped make Puck a showcase for lavish, full-color satirical art, elevating the cartoon into a sophisticated visual argument that ordinary readers could grasp at a glance. This is caricature as journalism and moral reckoning, the tradition that would flow directly into editorial comics and, eventually, into the socially conscious storytelling comic books could aspire to.