“So Sweet of Him” (ca. 1936)
by Lucius Curtis “Lute” Pease, Jr. (1869 -1963)
12 x 14 in., ink on heavy paper
Coppola Collection

Pease was a cartoonist for the Newark Evening Newsfrom 1914 to 1954, and received the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He was a miner in Alaska for 5 years before beginning a career in art. He was an illustrator for the Oregonian and famously interviewed Mark Twain. From his retirement in 1954 until his death in 1963, he devoted himself to fostering his skills as a painter of portraits and landscapes.

On May 27, 1935 (“black Monday), a conservative Supreme Court struck down a key provision of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Essentially, the high court ruled that the federal government had no role in regulating the economy.

Furious, the progressive president staged a scorching press conference in the Oval Office, memorably complaining for more than an hour that the court was returning to a “horse and buggy” definition of interstate commerce.

It was a losing battle, though. Roosevelt spent the rest of the 1935–36 Congressional session watching his signature legislative achievements dismantled — everything from social security to farming regulations and labor rights — based on a narrow reading of the Constitution’s due process clause.

If contemporary, the reverse side of this drawing might narrow the time frame a bit to late 1935 and early 1936. The sketch shows the White House loading its veto cannon with four likely targets floating over the Congress: a bill about silver, one about soldier bonuses, a bank deposit fail bailout, and a farm mortgage bill.

The “soldier bonus” was a back-pay plan for WW1 vets that had been around for a while. It was passed on January 22, 1936 and vetoed on January 27.