Caption: On June 28, 1882, Puck devoted its cover to the political struggle between "independent" Republicans, represented by Oregon senatorial candidate John H. Mitchell, and the "bossism" of the Republican machine, represented by a childish James Donald Cameron, who despite his weights of "Threats," "Tricks," and "Bluster" is outweighed by the moral gravitas of the independent Mitchell. President Chester Arthur, dressed as a Roman Caesar, wields the sword of "Patronage," by which he can dictate the outcome of the contest. Despite Puck's endorsement, Mitchell lost his bid for reelection.

Caption: In the 1910s Pennsylvania Senators Boise Penrose and Philander C. Knox were two of the most powerful men in Washington. Prominent conservatives and champions of big business, both men died in 1921.

Caption: As one of the nation's most popular political idealists, Henry George was the subject of constant derision by the mainstream press, including this Puck cartoon in which George plays on his Bass-Less Theories, in a Benefit Concert for the Improvement of the Laborer's Condition that includes the Anarchist Press on trombone, Knights of Labor President Terence Powderly on harp, and the American Federation of Labor on cymbals.

Caption: This political cartoon from 1904 well demonstrates American fears about the Standard Oil Company's vast and growing power over the American government. With arms already wrapped around the steel, copper, and shipping industries; the United States Capitol; and a state capital building; it now stretches out yet another tentacle over the White House. Such fears were not new in 1904. Back in 1881, Henry Lloyd Demarest quipped in the Atlantic Monthly, that “The Standard has done everything with the Pennsylvania legislature, except refine it.”

Caption: In the late 1800s the shocking inequalities between the huge fortunes of the nation's "captains of industry" and an ever-growing population of impoverished workers drove Americans to grapple with questions about the rights of workers and employers. This 1883 editorial cartoon mocked the claims that plutocrat businessmen were the protectors of American industries by presenting Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage as bloated parasites sitting on bags of "millions," and protective bulwarks resting on the backs industrial workers making only $6 to $11 a week.

Caption: In 1889 John Wanamaker was appointed United States Postmaster General by President Benjamin Harrison. Wanamaker improved the efficiency of the Postal Service and laid the groundwork for free rural postal service in the United States, which was implemented in 1897. Wanamaker's four-year tenure as Postmaster General, however, was also marred by controversy, including the political firing of some 30,000 postal workers, which led him into conflict with civil-service crusader and fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

Caption: In the 1920s, the Republican party still enjoyed an iron lock on the black voters of Philadelphia. This 1926 editorial cartoon published in the Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s oldest African American newspaper, reflects black reformers fury at the party’s manipulation of the black vote. Set during the “Season of False Faces and False Promises,” the cartoonist presented the Republican political boss as clown holding black puppets in one hand, while he reaches with his other hand into a barrel of jobs.

Caption: In 1903 political cartoonist Charles Nelan's caricatured Pennsylvania governor Samuel Pennypacker as a parrot mouthing the words of his cousin, Republican U.S. Senator Matthew Quay. Pennypacker was so furious he ramrodded an anti-cartoon bill through the Pennsylvania legislature, which drew him into an acrimonious war with many of the state’s newspapers and resulted in an explosion of public indignation; the subject of this political cartoon also by Nelan.

Caption: Boise Penrose's power in the United States' Senate and Washington politics was well known, as was the structure of constituents upon which his power rested. The layers on which he stands, from top to bottom are "The People," "The State Legislature," "The Bosses," and "The Interests," atop which perches "The Senator."

Caption: In 1885 Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor won major concessions from Jay Gould's Southwest railway conglomerate, while the distracted Gould–seen on the right–was engaged in a fierce war to make himself master of the American telegraph industry. About the time that Judge magazine put him on its cover in October of 1886, Powderly, the leader of the surging American labor movement, endorsed radical political economist Henry George–his head in the background– in his campaign for mayor of New York City. That November, George lost to Democrat Abram Hewitt in a general election marked by fraud. Supported by voters outraged by the business practices of Gould and other powerful businessmen that Powderly had branded “monopolists,” and the “new slave owners,” third-party candidates did win victories in dozens of towns and cities across the nation.

Caption: Years after Gould ran the Erie Railroad into bankruptcy he watered the stock of the Wabash Railroad and Western Union Telegraph Company, and once again came into conflict with the Vanderbilts, this time with the Commodore's son William, who had become president of the New York Central after his father's death.