"The People Wanted a Change, and They Got It" — Puck, 1893

Published during Grover Cleveland's second term, this Puck cartoon splits across two labeled years. At left, 1889: a rotund Cleveland tips his hat and surrenders the Treasury key to incoming Benjamin Harrison, whose figure stands triumphant before a safe marked "U.S. Treasury — Surplus $100,000,000 Dollars." At right, 1893: Cleveland returns to find that same safe fallen from its hinges, door stamped "Looted," shelves bare. Harrison retreats hat-in-hand. The caption quotes Harrison's own boast against him, then lands Puck's counter-punch: the public got their change and are suffering for it. The cartoon blames Republican fiscal policy — particularly the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and McKinley Tariff — for draining the surplus and triggering the Panic of 1893. No ethnic caricature appears; the satire is purely partisan.