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Chief Hearst gunman for 1932 is 75-year-old Frederick Burr Opper, creator of "Happy Hooligan." Never an art student, Cartoonist Opper worked long for oldtime Puck, joined the Hearst press in 1899, first won fame & fortune with his cartoons of theMcKinley-Bryan campaign of 1900. For 30 years Arthur Brisbane has contributed political ideas for the Opper pencil. Early in this campaign "Happy Hooligan" was allowed to lapse when Publisher Heartst put Mr. Opper to work on a daily front-page series entitled "Erbie and 'Is Playmates" * In these cartoons the President was always depicted as a fat little busy-body surrounded by "Ropy" (Europe), "Bolivar" (the G. O. P. elephant), "Taxpayer," "Minstrels" (Republican newspapers and orators), "International Bankers," "Wall Street" and other stock characters. Throughout the series as in many another Hearst cartoon, the question of War Debts played a major part, with "Ropy" loudly boasting that he would "pay nobody" and " 'Erbie" trying to still his outcries. In most of the Opper pictures, which were supplemented with an irrelevant editorial text. National Chairman Sanders could be found inanely interviewing such fabulous characters as Sherlock Holmes, Baron Munchausen and Robinson Crusoe on " 'Erbie's chances." Inferior as art, the Opper cartoons, by their absurdity and persistence, have been highly effective.
Other Hearst cartoonists hammering away at familiar Hearst themes include Walter Joseph Enright, portrayer of the "Jackass Rabbit Congressman" who refused to accept Mr. Hearst's sales tax; Winsor McCay, nightmare man; and Nelson Harding, a Pulitzer Prize-winner when on the Brooklyn Eagle.
Because most of the U. S. press is Republican, most U. S. political cartoons are antiDemocratic. But mass does not make merit. Democrats had little to fear from the stark platitudes of Boston Transcript'?, Cowan, the sketchy banalities of New York's Evening Post's Sykes. or the solemn exaggerations of Philadelphia Public Ledger's Warren.
Jay Norwood ("Ding") Darling drawing his intricate political pictures for the New York Herald Tribune from his home in Des Moines, stands out as the cartoonist most helpful to the G. O. P. Mr. Darling has managed to satirize the Roose
"Voter's Dream"
A composite view of the campaign, drawn for TIME by Artist Nat Karson (see "The Voter's Dream"), represents 33 faces, six issues. The issues: Farm Strike, Hog Prices, Maine election, the B. E. F., the Gold Dollar, the Whispering Campaign. The faces:
President Hoover
Calvin Coolidge
Governor Roosevelt
Al Smith
Vice President Curtis
Bernarr Macfadden
Speaker Garner
Mrs. Roosevelt & children
Theodore Roosevelt
William Jennings Bryan
James Aloysius Farley
Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
William Gibbs McAdoo
Samuel Instill
William Randolph Hearst
Senator Reed
Smoot
The Forgotten Man
Senator Huey Long
Eugene Meyer
Vincent Astor
Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole
Eddie Dowling
James John Walker
Mrs. Pauline
Morton Sabin
Samuel Seabury
John Francis Curry
Secretary of Treasury Mills
John H. McCooey
General Douglas MacArthur
Secretary of War Hurley