Arbitration is the True Balance of Power

Two antagonists climb opposing ladders to wrestle the hands of a grandfather clock labeled Business: a top-hatted capitalist on the left, surrounded by wall-placards reading General Lock-Out and No Union Wanted; a working-man on the right, his wall papered with Strike & Boycott, Rights of Labor, and Grand Labor Meeting. Between them, the child-figure of Puck — Keppler's cherubic magazine mascot — stands on a book marked Common Sense and steadies the pendulum, labeled Arbitration. The caption delivers the editorial argument plainly: neither capital nor labor should force the clock; only arbitration keeps time. The cartoon reflects Gilded Age anxieties about industrial conflict, appearing amid the wave of railroad strikes and labor agitation that preceded the Haymarket affair of May 1886. Keppler's working-man figure carries the broad ethnic shorthand common in period illustration — rough clothing, flat cap, heavy-featured — a caricature convention used across Puck to mark class and immigrant identity rather than any single nationality.