Monopoly Men: Political Cartoonists and Antitrust in the Gilded Age

Abstract

Most American children are familiar with the monocled and mustachioed man who graces the front of the Monopoly box. He has become instantly recognizable as the game has been marketed by Parker Brothers and Hasbro since the mid-1930s. But the root of the character goes back even further, to the wealthy American businessmen who came to prominence during the economic revolution of the Gilded Age. These men employed trusts to manage commercial interests and companies which effectively monopolized key industries and garnered them extreme fortunes. In turn, the dynamics of Gilded Age America brought these “robber barons” into the spotlight of the growing editorial media, particularly the emerging cadre of cartoonists. These men represented both sides of the political spectrum and dedicated their professional lives to commenting on the major issues of the day. Beginning with Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler, two of the artform’s most famous practitioners, cartooning paid particular attention to the development of trusts and monopolies. Building on the foundation laid by their forebearers, the artists publishing from the 1890s to 1910s developed the motifs that would eventually inspire the “Monopoly Man.” Their work stoked and encouraged burgeoning opposition to the trusts, which coalesced into a semi-formal anti-trust movement and inspired the rash of government prosecutions, most famously the breakup of the Standard Oil Company in 1911.