A Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star, dated 18 July 1938 and titled "The Sower" by the National Archives, shows a figure labelled Hopkins scattering money from a WPA bag across a map arrow marked "The South" while a figure labelled Wallace watches with wheat crop reports. NAID 5743110.
What the cartoon shows
A man in a farmer's straw hat and neckerchief runs along an arrow marked "The South," flinging bills and coins from a sack lettered WPA. His label reads Hopkins. On a fence sits a second man, labelled Wallace, holding a sheaf of wheat crop reports. The running man calls back to him.
SHUCKS HENRY! YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A BUMPER CROP! WAIT 'TIL YOU GET A LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY!
WHEAT CROP REPORTS
WALLACE
HOPKINS
WPA
THE SOUTH
Jim Berryman
Where it comes from
Jim Berryman drew for the Washington Evening Star. The original is in the National Archives among Records of the U.S. Senate, in a series of his political cartoons. The Archives catalog titles this one "The Sower." FRAME files it under the Works Progress Administration, lists the themes as economy and labor, and tags it for plain folks, while calling that a weak fit: the farm costume is a visual joke more than an appeal.
How to read it
The joke is a pun on farming. One man counts the real harvest on paper. The other is "sowing" federal relief money and promises a crop bigger than any wheat field. The cartoon does not say what that crop will be. It leaves the reader to supply it, and the obvious reading is a harvest of goodwill, or votes, from the places the money falls.
That suggestion is the cartoon's argument, not a finding. A drawing cannot show that relief dollars bought loyalty anywhere. What it can do, and does, is put a fair question in front of readers in the capital: when a government hands out money on a national scale, who decides where it lands, and does the giver expect something back? Skepticism about that is not hostility to the unemployed. It is the ordinary check a free press keeps on public spending. Berryman asks the question with a straw hat and a grin, and the reader is free to answer it either way.
The cartoon's devices are the kind the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was cataloguing the same year. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the New Deal's own publicity, from the Blue Eagle to the government films.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Shucks Henry! You've never seen a bumper crop (NARA title: The Sower), Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star, 18 July 1938.
- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852), NAID 5743110, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
