Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants and being an American – January 3, 1919 “In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and …

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The Gothic Tea Society www.gothicteasociety.com 100 Years ago today there was a terrible tragedy. A fire killed 146 workers, mostly female immigrants. For a modern article on the 100 year remembrance go HERE Wiki says: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women aged sixteen to twenty-three. Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers. The factory was located in the Asch Building, at 29 Washington Place, now known as the Brown Building, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. The Triangle Waist Company factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just to the east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. Under the ownership of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists." The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays. As the workday was ending on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire flared up at approximately 4:45 PM in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the eighth floor. A large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, witnessing sixty-two people jumping or falling to their deaths from the burning building. Louis Waldman, later a New York Socialist state assemblyman, described the scene years later: One Saturday afternoon in March of that year — March 25, to be precise — I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library... It was a raw, unpleasant day and the comfortable reading room seemed a delightful place to spend the remaining few hours until the library closed. I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. Along with several others in the library, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire. A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames. Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies. The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines. The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. The fallen bodies and falling victims also made it difficult for the fire department to approach the building.

~ “Progress”, 1915 editorial cartoon Society despairs of the Modern Woman, 1915 style History geek note: Now I’m imagining an editorial cartoon from 1615 comparing “Ye Moderne Bible Reading Woman”...

"I'm going to be late, dear, It's total craziness here." "This island isn't big enough for two clichés." The following cartoon was the first one to be published in The New Yorker following 9/11: Leo Cullum's obits in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. An interview with Leo Cullum from The New Yorker website: If you have a healthy appreciation for the absurd and the anthropomorphic, a Leo Cullum cartoon – one of hundreds that he’s contributed to The New Yorker since the 1970s – will make your day. His drawings frequently star animals, from neurotic elephants to bi-curious dogs, though he lavishes plenty of attention on human foibles, too. Whatever the subject matter, a Cullum cartoon brings an immediate, knowing, and grateful laugh. We recently e-mailed Leo to learn more about his life’s work, present and past. (Including his long career as a pilot in the Marines and for TWA. Fact!) TCB: Were you always interesting in drawing? What kinds of things did you like to draw as a child? LC: As a kid, I always drew stick figures of battle scenes, eventually evolving into full-figured fights of cowboys and Indians. TCB: Did you have any role models in the cartooning world while you were growing up – New Yorker artists or otherwise? What about now? LC: I loved Don Martin at Mad magazine. Around 1970 I discovered The New Yorker, and when I initially started submitting cartoons, my ideas were bought for Charles Addams to draw. So, in that respect, he became my mentor. TCB: Was there anyone or any event in your life that pushed you toward art when you were young? LC: My mother studied fashion illustration at the Newark Fashion Institute. She thought I had talent, which was a big motivation. TCB: You graduated from college an English major, then became a pilot shortly after. Was flying something you wanted to do regardless of the draft, or did it put a crimp in plans that you had for after college? And what were those plans? LC: I thought I would probably wind up in advertising, but I had always wanted to fly. After I graduated from Holy Cross, I became an officer in the Marine Corps and was accepted into the aviation program, which I thought was a great opportunity. I had the time of my life. Certainly more fun than advertising. TCB: Did you find it hard to adjust to the relatively quiet life of cartooning full time after being a pilot? LC: No, not at all. I was cartooning during most of my 34 years of flying for TWA. I would draw during my layovers and on my days off from flying, so it really wasn’t much of an adjustment, except that I wasn’t drawing in Paris or Rome anymore. TCB: You’re well known for your drawings of anthropomorphic animals. What, to you, is the funniest animal you can put in a cartoon? LC: Well, I sell a lot of dog and cat cartoons but to me, lions are really the funniest. TCB: You’ve lived in Malibu since the 1970s. How has the area changed over time? Has living in that famously wealthy, celebrity-filled environment supplied you with good ideas for cartoons? LC: I have not gotten one cartoon idea from living in Malibu…seriously. It’s not a funny place. Pretty, but not funny. Maybe that’s the problem. Too much sun and blue water. It used to be a quiet and peaceful small town, but these days, the paparazzi have taken over. I make a point of never looking at celebrities. That seems to work for all of us. TCB: Regarding The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest, what are your thoughts about other people’s captions for your cartoons? LC: Mixed. I’m happy to sell the cartoon. But the original no longer has my caption, which is confusing. TCB: What do you think New Yorker cartoons represent to the magazine’s readers? Why have New Yorker cartoons reached such a level of cultural significance, while cartoons from other publications have not? LC: The New Yorker pays attention to the cartoons just as they do the articles. The cartoons are not an afterthought, but an equal part of the equation, and they expect the best. Many people will begin reading the magazine’s cartoons before they get in the habit of reading the magazine from cover to cover. The only other publication that comes close to treating cartoons as part of the publication is Playboy. Other magazines just use them as filler. TCB: What are some of your favorite cartoons from New Yorker artists? LC: As for cartoons, the longer you look at one, the less funny it becomes. There is one, by Michael Maslin, that stands out. It’s a picture of a man and a large dog, looking at a small dog in the pet store. The large dog says, “He is cute, but you already have a dog.”

Do you sometimes wonder how much personal information to share with a client? Or whether to disclose any information at all? The truth of the matter is that we are always disclosing things about ourselves all the time in the way we dress, talk and respond to things that are being shared with us, as […]

In order to pay their respects and honor the courage of the cartoonists and others lost at the Charlie Hebdo shooting, many other cartoonists created their own illustrations dedicated to the tragic event.

Today we’d like for you to meet the artist Mahnaz Yazdani. Mahnaz’s deep and meaningful work often portrays society's problems in surrealistic illustrations that tend to show how everyday people (just like us) suffer from things that seemingly the rest of our modern society refuses to acknowledge more often than not.

Ged Backland's random and witty thoughts on everyday life as told by Aunty Acid and her husband Walt in this Web comic