1935.06.12 “Outstretched Hands”
by John Francis Knott (1878-1963)
10 x 15 in., ink on drawing board

Knott started working at The Dallas Morning News in 1905. He drew daily cartoons in the paper during Woodrow Wilson’s first presidential campaign and World War I. Knott’s most famous cartoon character “Old Man Texas” was a champion for government honesty, low taxes and property ownership. It is believed his cartoons supporting American entry into World War I helped increase the sales of Liberty Bonds and donations towards the war effort. In 1957, Knott retired from the News. During his fifty-year career as a cartoonist, he created more than 15,000 cartoons. Knott taught painting in Dallas public schools for almost twenty years.

Many of today’s advanced economies benefited from large-scale debt relief thanks to their 1934 default on war-related debt owed to the US and UK, the two main creditor governments of the time. The amounts were substantial: in France, Greece, and Italy, the war debt relief accounted for 36%, 43%, and 52% of 1934 GDP respectively. These debts were fully written off and the debt largely forgotten.

“Spring Serenade” (May 11, 1935)
by Bert Thomas (1883-1966)
11 x 14 in., ink on heavy paper

Bert Thomas (1883-1966) was a wonderful British cartoonist and longtime contributor to Punch magazine (1905-1935). Thomas gained his initial popularity during WWI, with a well-known cartoon that raised 250,000 pounds sterling in aid for British soldiers.

Mussolini, the father of fascism, partnered with Hitler in 1936. Before then, Mussolini was acting on his own. In 1930, the Italians began to fortify lands that were claimed by Ethiopia. The two countries had battled 30 years earlier and were at an unsteady truce. Fighting broke out in December 1935.

Mussolini ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets that included undefended villages and medical facilities.

Between January and May, Ethiopia appealed for arbitration at least 4-5 times from the League of Nations, which had been set up after WW1 to prevent a repeat, but its ability to function was limited, particularly with the absence of the isolationist USA.

The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Ethiopians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee.

“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.