CAPITULATION IS CONTAGIOUS

By killing a cartoon that lampooned its owner, The Washington Post set a dangerous precedent.

- ADRIENNE LAFRANCE

Joseph Keppler's "The Bosses of the Senate" (1889)

At the height of his powers, Jay Gould was known by many names, few of them flattering. People called him the Skunk of Wall Street, the Napoleon of Finance, and Mephistopheles himself. Gould, alongside rivals such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller, was a captain of industry—or, as they would all come to be known, a robber baron.

These men were stupendously powerful, and ruthlessly devoted to the perpetuation of their own wealth and influence. They battled one another for control of America's railways. They hoarded gold, manipulated markets, and exploited workers. They bribed journalists to win favorable coverage and, when that didn't work, threatened the writers and editors who displeased them.

These threats carried weight. Rockefeller's Standard Oil could crush a newspaper by pulling advertising if it didn't like what it saw. Eventually Gould and Rockefeller bought or otherwise invested in newspapers, in an attempt to exert greater influence over how they were covered. Gould even bought a majority interest in Western Union, which gave him power to control the flow of vital information.

Even so, muckrakers such as Ida Tarbell took on Standard Oil. Cartoonists such as Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler lampooned the unconstrained power of the industrialists and the corruption of Tammany Hall and its leader, William "Boss" Tweed. Tweed was fixated on the political cartoons that mocked him. "I don't care so much what the newspapers write about memy constituents can't read," he said. "But, damn it, they can see pictures."