PLUTOCRACY vs DEMOCRACY

Socialist newspapers and magazines flourished in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and Art Young's cartoons appeared in all of them. In mass circulation papers like the Appeal to Reason or the New York Call, Young's images spread the message of Socialism to the American masses. These "Cartoons for Socialism" enabled Young to depict the ravages of unemployment and the violence of the state, the arrogance of the powerful and the absurdity of the superrich, and all the while, he drew pictures of his dreams of a better world to come. Young's Socialist cartoons are both entertaining and didactic, often representing the entire capitalist system in a single frame, or establishing an allegorical melodrama populated by bloated plutocrats and corrupt politicos, shriveled preacher, subservient editors, and, on occasion, the forthright and robust young socialist.

Art Young, Good Morning, September - October 1920. — Art Young, *Good Morning*, September - October 1920.

Art Young, “Keeping It In the Family,” Good Morning, May 1 – 15, 1921. — Art Young, “Keeping It In the Family,” *Good Morning*, May 1 – 15, 1921.

Art Young, “Secret Meeting,” reprinted in The Best of Art Young (Vanguard Press, 1936). — Art Young, “Secret Meeting,” reprinted in *The Best of Art Young* (Vanguard Press, 1936).

Young’s cartoon "The Secret Meeting" illustrates the Haymarket generations' conviction that whereas the forces of capital and the state consistently conspire against the people (when their deliberations should be public), while when citizens and workers gather in a private meeting their door is smashed down by police and private detectives.