This is the sort of cartoon you might get faced with in an exam... so what does it all mean? Look carefully at the picture and try to work out who the man is and what he is doing. Then read on below...
Published in 1933 in a New York newspaper
| Cartoons are designed to be funny and we're not sure what this newspaper was like so we have to be careful about trusting this source too much. Remember though - this was actually published and read by lots of people so it is a great source for telling us how people might have thought! |
| It says FDR on his shoulder so he must be President Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
| The big clue here is in the words. We can see FDR is a giant, walking through the sea dragging boats along behind him. But those boats are supposed to represent things like 'bank confidence' and 'beer'. We can also see he is pulling them away from the 'shoals of doubt' towards the 'port of prosperity'. |
So what can we learn from the source?
| From the source we can infer that people had a lot of faith in FDR and his New Deal. The cartoon was published shortly after FDR became President and shows him as a giant figure, pulling people to safety on his reforms, such as his bank reform and his efforts to help the unemployed. |
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