Picturing Protectionism: The Tariff Question in Protectionist Cartoon Propaganda in the United States, 1894‒1909

Abstract Although political cartoons were a dominant form of visual political media during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, historians have paid little attention to how the contentious tariff debate of the time was reflected in this medium. This article examines the visual strategies used by protectionist agitators, focusing on the cartoons published by the American Protective Tariff League in its weekly newspaper, the American Economist , between 1894 and 1909. Frequently reproduced in other newspapers, these cartoons reached a broad readership. Through an analysis of recurring symbols, metaphors, and visualization patterns, the article shows how protectionists used cartoons to transform the abstract and somewhat esoteric economic issue of tariffs into an attractive political cause that resonated deeply with ordinary Americans. Demonstrating how cartoons served to simplify, dramatize, and emotionalize the tariff issue, the article thus expands our understanding of the cultural forces that underpinned protectionism’s attractiveness as a political ideology around the turn of the century. Overall, the presentation of the tariff issue in these cartoons amounted to a peculiar mix of fearmongering and promise. While the tariff was usually depicted through metaphors of protection and defense against an imminent threat, the abstract concept of protectionism was visually displayed through metaphors evoking a general notion of prosperity as its alleged result.