A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 3 May 1954. A safari hunter labelled Brownell, his rifle bannered "Sherman Anti-Trust Act," faces a big car labelled "Big Auto Companies" and asks whether it will gobble up the competitors. Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743185).
What the cartoon shows
A hunt for big game in Detroit. A man in safari dress, with rifle and binoculars, carries the label Brownell. In front of him stands a large car labelled Big Auto Companies. Its hood is open and marked B-E-E-P, and a banner on the hunter's rifle names the law he carries. The caption is a question.
THE QUESTION IS... WHETHER IT'S GOING TO GOBBLE UP THE COMPETITORS?
B-E-E-P
BIG AUTO COMPANIES
BROWNELL
SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT
JIM BERRYMAN
Who drew it and where it is kept
The drawing was made for the Washington Evening Star and is signed with Berryman's name alone. It is now a Senate record at the National Archives, filed in the Jim Berryman political cartoons series (NAID 5730852); public domain is the archive's rights entry for that holding. FRAME classes the source as openly identified, the audience as the domestic public, and the theme as economy and finance. The record names the hunter only by the label Brownell and does not identify a particular case, so none is named here.
How to read it
FRAME tags it fear appeal and calls the fit weak. The cartoon frames concentration in the car industry as a threat to be hunted. The question in the caption is the cartoon's real content: will the big companies swallow the small ones?
This is a point on which honest readers divide. One reading says the Sherman Act protects open markets, and that a few giant firms can shut out new competitors as surely as any regulator could. Another says that a government armed with a broad statute and a hunting license can do its own damage, choosing which successful firms to chase and why. The libertarian reading asks both questions. Competition is the consumer's protection, and so is a government that has to show its evidence before it fires.
The caption does not answer its own question. It puts the question to the reader, under the cartoonist's own name, in a daily paper. For other Berryman cartoons on this site, see The House That Jack Built, from later the same year, and the 1955 polio vaccine cartoon.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Detroit Safari, 3 May 1954. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743185, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
