“Moving Day in Washington” (January 2, 1935)
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
14 x 19 in., ink on drawing board

On the Purdue campus, where he was a student, McCutcheon (class of 1889) is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.

After college, McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later: Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932.

Democrats’ large congressional majorities grew after the 1934 mid-term elections in a strong endorsement for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.”

Seated during the third and fourth years of FDR’s first term, the 74th Congress (January 3, 1935 – January 3, 1937) addressed the needs for a social safety net as the Great Depression persisted. The Supreme Court found many of FDR’s programs unconstitutional, but congressional Democrats continued passing reform legislation. Congress encouraged collective bargaining, created Social Security, regulated public utilities, and provided for rural electrification. Congress also passed the Neutrality Act, which prohibited arms exportation during wartime, in response to charges that weapons manufacturers were responsible for World War I.