Judge — March 11, 1899 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The New Motto" - Judge Magazine, March 11, 1899 This political cartoon satirizes American **corporate trusts** and monopolies during the Gilded Age. The central figure represents "Trusts" as an octopus-like creature crushing a building labeled the Capitol, symbolizing how monopolistic corporations wielded excessive power over government institutions. The accompanying list of trusts—ranging from oil and steel to railroads and whiskey—documents the era's dominant cartels. The "new motto" appears to be that trusts, not democratic institutions, now control America. This reflects genuine 1890s anxieties about trust concentration. President Theodore Roosevelt would later campaign on trust-busting (starting 1901), making this cartoon representative of widespread public concern about corporate power overwhelming democratic governance.