The Wasp — 1880 — page 112: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This political cartoon satirizes the distribution of agricultural wealth in America. The top panel shows farmers and laborers harvesting crops in a rural setting. The bottom panel reveals the actual destination of that harvest's profits: a well-dressed gentleman in a top hat (likely representing a banker, financier, or corporate middleman) receives the bounty while holding what appears to be financial documents or currency. The barrels labeled with agricultural products flow toward this capitalist figure rather than to the farmers who produced them. The satire critiques how economic systems concentrated agricultural profits in the hands of wealthy intermediaries rather than the laborers who performed the actual work—a common Progressive Era complaint about exploitative economic structures.