Puck's Inventions: The Cash Purification Plant

Ehrhart's cover cartoon targets John D. Rockefeller at the height of the Standard Oil scandal. A round-faced, bald Rockefeller climbs a ladder to pour bags of coins into a red machine labeled Patent Disinfector, its base surrounded by a trunk marked Contributions and bulging money sacks. On the output end, a gaunt, weeping clergyman cranks a handle as coins spill into a bucket: Purified Cash for Missions. The caption reads The Cash Purification Plant. The argument is precise: Rockefeller's celebrated Baptist philanthropy was a laundering operation—dirty monopoly profits passed through the church's moral machinery and emerged sanctified. The clergyman's tears suggest either grief or theatrical gratitude; either way, he is complicit. Puck treated both men as fools, exactly as its masthead motto promised.