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- Title
- Bank-ometer Truths for the producers of wealth the banking system unmasked or the true causes of pressure panic and distress
- Description
- Cartoon designed by radical labor activist Seth Luther to promote the dissolution of the United States banking system. Depicts the U.S Bank as operated by the industrial turbine "Currency Reservoir." The "Bank of England Tube," "State Bank Tube," and "Expansion and Contraction Tube" extend from the reservoir and power meters labeled "Paperometer," "Stockometer," Flourometer," and "Wageometer," which flank the bank and measure the system. Meters measure the benefits to industry and the disadvantages to the artisan of the banking system from 1816 to 1840, including: the expansion and contraction of paper money; the prices and amounts of import and export commodities; the economic effects from the monetary fluctuations on manufacturers and mechanics; the price of stocks and flour; and the wages (lower in 1840 than 1816) and cost of living of New York carpenters. Also contains seventeen boxed quotations from prominent political figures criticizing paper money and banks, including statements by Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Samuel Young, John Tyler, and Bank of the United States supporter Henry Clay; a chart containing figures indicating an increase in the number of banks from 1774 to 1840, the amount of hard and paper currency in circulation, and the "aggregate receipts" from public land sales; as well as references to Jackson's 1832 veto of the Bank of the United States and Van Buren's 1840 Independent Treasury Bill. Dedicated to Andrew Jackson for his "righteous" veto of the Bank of the United States on July 4, 1840., Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entered according to act of Congress July 22, 1840 Seth Luther Author and Proprietor in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the So. District of N.Y., Retrospective conversion record: original entry, edited., Library Company Annual Report, 2001, p. 30., Advertised in Public Ledger, October 8, 1840. Price listed as 25 cents.
- Creator
- Lawton, Stephen, lithographer
- Date
- designed Nov. 1833, drawn 1840, cJuly 22, 1840
- Location
- Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *political cartoons - 1840-Ban [5760.F.84]
- Title
- All on hobbies, gee up, gee ho!
- Description
- Cartoon depicting the possible candidates for the presidential election of 1840, riding hobby horses symbolizing their issues. President Van Buren leads the pack cheering on his "old hickory nag," "Sub Treasury," named after his financial program, which allowed independent agencies to administer federal funds. Politicians following Van Buren include: bullionist Senator Thomas Hart Benton on "Specie Currency," his "golden poney" which carries "more weight than any of them"; Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, leading opponents to Van Buren's fiscal policy, bickering over their shared horse named after the defunct "United States Bank"; South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun riding his "consistent" horse "State Rights and Nullification"; 1836 presidential nominee William Henry Harrison, attired in uniform, on his "Anti-Masonic" horse that keeps a "pretty easy pace" but may "lose his wind" if another scandal like the abduction and murder of mason William Morgan does not occur; and Congressman John Quincy Adams steering away from the group on his "Ebony" horse "Abolition.", Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entd accordd to Act of Congress in the year 1838, by H.R. Robinson, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York., Artist's initial lower left corner., Retrospective conversion record: original entry, edited., Described in Nancy Reynolds Davison's E.W. Clay: American political caricaturist of the Jacksonian era (PhD diss., The University of Michigan, 1980), p. 205., Accessioned 1989., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
- Creator
- Clay, Edward Williams, 1799-1857, lithographer
- Date
- 1838
- Location
- Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department political cartoons - 1838-1 [P.9249.8]