Judge, 1894-03-24 · page 16 of 16
Judge — March 24, 1894 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine cartoon satirizes political violence and corruption in late 19th-century New York. The image depicts two figures at a doorway—one appearing to be a politician or official, the other a soldier or law officer with a rifle—suggesting complicity in violence. The accompanying text directly accuses Governor Roswell P. Flower and a U.S. Senator (unnamed but clearly identifiable to contemporary readers) of responsibility for "the shooting of Robert Ross" that occurred "last Tuesday" in Troy, New York. The article argues the senator orchestrated electoral machinery and violence to win an election, then fled to Washington. The cartoon's message: political elites bear moral responsibility for the bloodshed their corrupt systems produce. The "door" represents the threshold between political conspiracy and violent consequence—illustrating how power corrupts and distances decision-makers from the human cost of their actions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
comicbooks.com AT THEIR DOOR. Roswell P. Flower is doubly responsible for the shooting of Robert Ross. But guiltier than Governor Flower and more odious is the senator of the United States who has long bees perfecting the machinery employed in his behalf last Tuesday, who went to Troy before the election to make sure that it was in thorough order, and the day after the election sneaked back to the national capitol from the scene of his horrible triumph. He is the man on whom more than on any other, more even than on the filthy and malignant exponents of his political doctrines: whose lives the law may yet take, the ple of this state should and will put the indelible brand of infamy. Thousands of them have not feared to ratify in mass-meeting the public proclamation of his responsibility for Tuesday's murder. Fens of thousands more will hold him guilty and will yet render against him at the polls the verdict that-he most dreads.—N. Y. Tribune,