Wilson's Cartoonist

Abstract

Charles R. Macauley was the New York World's main editorial cartoonist from 1904 to 1914. This article examines his role in Woodrow Wilson's 1912 presidential campaign, including not only drawing laudatory editorial cartoons of him for the newspaper but openly providing cartoons for the campaign and writing a campaign film, The Old way and the New, that was designed to appeal to working and middle-class voters and encourage them to give money. This was well before the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopted the first national code of ethics for papers in 1923, and the World had no problem with what he was doing. Yet Macauley was fired in early 1914 for collecting campaign funds for a mayoral candidate in New York City because the publisher claimed he was helping to run a “secret campaign fond,” which the paper opposed.