"The Protectors of our Industries" Gillam, Puck, 1883

This political cartoon (“The protectors of our Industries”) was created to show wealthy business men
compared to the workers and how the business men needed the workers to make their businesses
survive and also how the workers were being treated. The author of it is Bernhard Gillam in 1883. Gillam
was a Republican who originally was interested in studying law but moved on to be a portrait painter
which lead to him being a cartoonist. By looking at the cartoon it is easy to see that Gillam was against
big business. The cartoon was published by Keppler & Schwarzmann in the Puck magazine. The people
depicted in the cartoon are Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, all of whom
were very wealthy when they lived. In the cartoon you can see that the workers are carrying what appears
to be a ship with businessmen who I named previously on it. The business men are all dressed up in
quality clothing while the workers appear to be poor. There are different section that groups are carrying.
One section of the boat is for the cloth workers, one for linens, one for limber, and one for paper workers.
Each section also has how much each gets paid a week. They range from $6 to $11. It is ironic because
the businessmen are sitting on bags that say a million on them while some workers don’t make more than
$24 a month. In my opinion, the cartoon was created to show the difference between the workers of a
company and the owners. What Gillam was most likely trying to say in the cartoon was that the business
men were to greedy and taking too much money while the workers were treated with no respect and
made no money but the businesses relied on these workers to function.