Thomas Nast February 8, 1879

Thomas Nast’s February 8, 1879 cartoon entitled “Every Dog (no distinction of color) Has His Day” published in Harper’s Weekly, depicts discrimination of Chinese immigrants.  In the cartoon, a Chinese immigrant reads signs posted on the wall with anti-Chinese statements.  A Native American looks over the Chinese man’s shoulder and there is a caption, “Pale face ‘fraid you crowd him out as he did me”.  An African American man reclines in the corner of the cartoon with a smiling face, the words “My day is coming” written on the wall beside him.  This cartoon was drawn during a depression that began in the mid 1870’s.¹  America focused on minority groups and Chinese immigrants specifically, as a group that would snatch American jobs from Americans. Finding a scapegoat in the Chinese immigrants, California went so far as to pass a law banning the employment of Chinese workers and forcing their relocation outside city limits.  Eventually, the U.S. circuit court would rule that law unconstitutional, but this does explain the extent of fear and blame attributed to the Chinese immigrant.² Thomas Nast’s dislike for the Irish can also be found in this cartoon.  The anti-Chinese postings on the wall are signed by “Kearney (a real American)” and “Pat. Irish. Esq.”.  Stating “foreigners not wanted” expresses the hypocritical tone of the cartoon, since all Americas came from an immigrant past and the Irish suffered, along with other groups, under discrimination and hatred.  The Ku Klux Klan is also represented in the cartoon, by a small posting on the wall, almost being covered up by the anti-Chinese posting, representing an emphasis on Chinese immigration eclipsing the anti-African American stance.  Groups that were once divided in America banned together in joint racism against the Native Americans, Chinese and African Americans, conveniently forgetting their own struggles against bigotry.  Henry George, an American writer during the late nineteenth century, offered the explanation, “the population of this country has been drawn from many different sources; but hitherto, with but one exception these accessions have been of the same race, and though widely differing in language, customs, and national characteristics, have been capable of being welded into a homogenous people.”³  This cartoon seems to represent the idea that white men could argue and disagree about most politics but could unite in discrimination, despite the obvious hypocrisy.  The Native American and the African Americans’ presence in the cartoon serve to point to other races that were targeted by white Americans and immigrants alike.  Like passing the torch to the next group for persecution, the Native American is encouraging the Chinese man’s ire.  The African American appears to be relieved that the spotlight is not on him anymore and in a prophecy even Nast could not have foreseen, states that his day will come, which would occur in the Civil rights movement of the 1960’s. This cartoon stands as a lasting reminder that issues like immigration, racism, discrimination and who qualifies as a ‘real’ American are not new issues, and remain in American society today.

¹Lucy Salyer. Laws Harsh as Tigers.  (North Carolina, The University of North Carolina Press) 1995, 9.

²Lisa Sanderson. March 16, 2009. “The Financial Crisis of the 1870’s The Long Depression”. www.suite101.com, retrieved February 11, 2012, [from] http://lisa-sanderson.suite101.com/the-financial-crisis-of-the-1870s-a102773.

³Philip S. Foner and Daniel Rosenberg, ed. Racism, Dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to Present. (Westport Connecticut,  Greenwood Press 1993), 86.