Next!

Udo Keppler's octopus is the most reproduced anti-monopoly image America produced. The body is a great oil-storage tank stamped "Standard Oil," and from it green tentacles snake across the country, each already wrapped around a victim, a state capitol, the copper and steel and shipping interests, Congress. One tentacle has closed on the domed statehouse at the left; another gropes across the bare ground toward the small white building marked "White House." The single-word title says what comes after the legislatures and the industries: "Next!", the presidency itself. Standard Oil under John D. Rockefeller was the trust that defined the age, and Puck drew its reach as something with suckers, patient and closing in.