The Wasp — 1879 — page 826: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a satirical cartoon from *The Wasp* (July 31, 1880) mocking San Francisco's mayor under a newly enacted city charter. The illustration depicts the mayor as an ornately crowned, robed monarch seated regally on a throne, while subordinates bow and scrape before him. The "new charter" apparently granted expanded mayoral powers that the cartoonist viewed as authoritarian—hence the mockery of treating the mayor like absolute royalty rather than an elected official. The dead bodies and chaos at the throne's base suggest the cartoon criticizes the mayor's administration as destructive or tyrannical. The satire's point: the charter reform transformed an elected official into a virtual despot, contrary to democratic principles. The exaggeration exemplifies 19th-century American political cartooning's approach to governmental overreach.