Money Well Spent, I say: Jim Berryman on the cost of the 1956 campaign

A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 5 February 1957. A ragged donkey warms its hands over a fire in a ditch while a top-hatted elephant with a cigar looks down, and a newspaper reads "'56 Campaign Costs: G.O.P.-$20 Million, Dems.-$10 Million." Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743240).

What the cartoon shows

The two party animals, dressed for their parts. The archive describes a ragged donkey at the bottom of a ditch, warming its hands over a can on a small fire. At the edge above stands an elephant in a top hat, smoking a cigar. On the ground lies a newspaper with the only figures in the drawing.

'56 CAMPAIGN COSTS

G.O.P.-$20 MILLION

DEMS.-$10 MILLION

JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR

A Berryman original in the Senate files

Jim Berryman drew it for the Washington Evening Star, and the record dates it 5 February 1957. The original is in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, in the series of Berryman's political cartoons (series NAID 5730852). FRAME classes the source as identified, files the audience as the domestic public, and ties the cartoon to the 1956 U.S. election. Its themes are elections and party politics, and the economy.

Top hat and ditch

FRAME tags it card stacking. The archive's reading is that costume and setting do the work, with the printed figures as the evidence: rich party above, poor party below. The record does not say which figure, if either, speaks the title line, "Money well spent, I say."

The figures on the newspaper have no source in the drawing. The reader takes them on the cartoonist's word, and the cartoon builds its whole joke on them. That is fair game in a cartoon; the numbers are still a prop.

The question underneath is an old American one: what does money buy in an election? The cartoon answers with a picture of comfort and want, and it does not say what either party spent its money on. A libertarian reading takes campaign spending as a form of speech and asks the reader to judge the message rather than the budget. The cartoon itself is a jab, signed and printed in a daily paper.

Berryman's earlier cartoon It's Time to Lay This Needle Aside! also targeted politics, and his Faubus landslide cartoon came the year after this one. The 1956 race as the U.S. Information Agency presented it abroad, both tickets at equal size, is on the Elections U.S.A. page.