Judge — September 20, 1884 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Butler's New Party" - The Judge, September 20, 1884 This political cartoon satirizes General Benjamin Butler's third-party presidential campaign of 1884. The main illustration shows Butler as a disheveled figure dumping garbage—labeled with names including "Greenback Party" and "Anti-Monopoly"—into a waste receptacle marked "Dem Dump." The satire mocks Butler's attempt to unite various splinter political movements under a single candidacy. By depicting his coalition as literal garbage being discarded, the cartoonist ridicules both the viability of his campaign and the quality of the political movements he's attempting to consolidate. The Judge masthead figure above surveys this chaos from his editorial desk, positioning the magazine as an observer of political absurdity during the 1884 election cycle.