“A Graphic Story of The Boom, The Crash and The Recovery of American Business, 1912-1936” by W.K. Cadman ca. 1936
From time to time, materials cross our desks that we just don’t have much information on, and we like to turn to you, our readers, for help. The above image is one such example, and we hope there’s at least one of you out there who could help us shed a little light on this mystery graphic from the mid-1930s.
The Facts As We Know Them
Here’s what we know about this item:
- It was created circa 1936 by an artist named W.K. Cadman.
- It offers a very detailed examination of the ups and downs of the American economy for a 20-year period dating from before World War I to the mid-Depression years.
- It is not an unbiased examination of the facts. It skewers Republican Herbert Hoover’s claim that his administration’s policies would put a “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” by switching the verbiage to claim that after the 1929 stock market crash, there were “two cars going to pot and the chickens [were] in the garage.” This leads us to believe the graphic was distributed by or at least commissioned based on the ideals of the Democratic Party.
- It was donated to the W.R. Poage Legislative Library as part of the papers of Caso March, a Baylor alumnus and three-time candidate for Texas governor (1946, 1948, 1950). In the 1930s, March was an attorney for the Federal Power Commission and a member of the Supreme Court of Texas.
- Its size and general appearance lead us to believe it was either an insert in or was a supplemental to a newspaper.
And that’s about the sum total of what we know for sure. You can find a little more info on Caso March at his collection’s page on the Poage website, and you can see a higher resolution version of the image in our Historic Newspapers collection.
If you have more information on this piece or could point us to someone who does, drop us a line at digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu or leave us a comment below!