Cartoons

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 6, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 18.

The cartoon is a great educator, either for good or for bad. It presents much in picture that may be seen at a glance. The cartoon was used very effectively in Reformation times to show the defects and the inconsistencies of the ecclesiasticism against which the Reformers were combating. But in that time the cartoonist was confined very largely, for publicity, to displaying his caricatures in show-windows and such places. But now the cartoon goes everywhere that papers and magazines are circulated.

The cartoon is not only an educator, but it is also very frequently a reflector of public sentiment. It interprets and presents in caricature what is very pleasing to a large part of the community in which it is circulated, otherwise the cartoonist could not find a market for his productions. These statements being recognized as commonplace fact, many of the cartoons of the time become more than ordinarily significant. For instance, one of the great dailies of the Pacific Coast has a series of cartoons in almost every issue, in which are pictured the escapades of an old man with women other than his wife. The whole thought of the cartoons seems to be that it is nothing more than just funny for a married man to flirt with other women, and when he is caught by his wife in this flirting, it is all the funnier, and there is nothing serious about it.

Such cartoons, coming day after day, have their effect on many minds. Of course the properly moral man and woman will throw such things away in disgust as soon as they glance at them; but very many, particularly among the younger people, will study them closely, and laugh at them, and their keen moral perceptibilities are blunted unconsciously. They soon come to regard it as no very serious thing to be flirting with any persons of the opposite sex they chance to meet.

Closely allied with the cartoon that makes a jest of the sacredness of the marriage relation are the stories and songs that are of the same character. These evil triplets are doing much of the seed-sowing that brings so many people to the divorce courts. Through jest, and song, and cartoon, people are led to think that it is not so bad to be disloyal to the companion to whom the pledge was given to be faithful and true while life should last. And when the moral sentiment is broken down, the individual becomes the mere plaything of sin.

When we consider, as has already been suggested, that cartoons, jests, and songs are a reflection of much sentiment that lies hidden in the hearts of the people, they become at once a striking commentary on prevailing conditions. It is plain that we could not have so much demand for the cartoons mentioned in the foregoing were there not lax conditions in society that would not only tolerate but support them. Why will editors who claim to be working for the moral uplift of mankind, permit their columns to be prostituted to such degrading and degenerating work?