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¶ In Manhattan, the complaint was different: Cartoonist J. N. ("Ding") Darling's drawing was approved by the editor, and then cartoonist and editor heard from angry readers. The New York Herald Tribune published a Ding cartoon picturing high prices as a gigantic Topsy. In the background was a Negro couple, obviously Topsy's parents, labeled Excessive Demands and Low Production. Then the squawks came. As representative of "a number of" protests, the Trib published a letter from Thurgood Marshall, counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Wrote he: "This vicious libel. . . can easily be interpreted as an effort to make the Negro the scapegoat for high prices."
The astonished Trib replied that it regarded Topsy as part of the U.S. literary heritage, and no more a reflection on the Negro than Mr. Milquetoast is upon the white race. In recent cartoons, added the Trib, high prices have been represented by "a fat (and ugly) white baby, a silly little white man leading a mountain-climbing expedition to failure, an enormous tree, a blindfolded white man of shambling and oaf-like appearance, a white poker player somewhat resembling a disreputable banker, a hound dog chasing a (white) figure representing the public, who was depicted as a rabbit." Added the Trib: "In none of these cases was the economic comment taken as either cultural or racial or personal because of the symbols used."