A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 18 May 1955. A vial marked "Polio vaccine" stands on a folder marked "Distribution program" under a federal eagle, with a syringe labelled "Politics" across it. Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743204).
What the cartoon shows
Three objects and a caption. A small bottle stands upright on a folder. A government emblem, an eagle with a shield, sits above them. A hypodermic syringe lies across the folder. Each object has one word or two lettered on it, and the caption tells the reader which one to put down.
POLIO VACCINE
DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM
POLITICS
JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR
Who drew it and where it is kept
Jim Berryman drew it for the Washington Evening Star. The original sits in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, in the series of Berryman's political cartoons (series NAID 5730852). The archive's rights line records it as public domain. That is a statement about the holding, not a claim that the newspaper was a government office. It was not; Berryman was a private cartoonist with a byline.
How to read it
The cartoon takes a side in a dispute about how a vaccine should be handed out, and it takes the side of "less politics." It does not say whose politics, which agency, or which rule. FRAME tags the drawing card stacking and then calls that tag a weak fit, which is a fair reading. A labelled-object cartoon is an argument by metaphor. It shows the reader the answer before it shows the problem.
The angle worth keeping is the public-health one. When a government decides who gets a medicine first, that decision is political whether anyone admits it or not, and voters are entitled to see the rules and argue about them. A cartoon asking officials to keep the needle labelled "Politics" away from a vaccine program is a citizen's demand, made openly in a newspaper, under the artist's own name. That is how such arguments ought to be made. A later federal campaign on a different disease is on the COVID-19 messaging hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, It's Time to Lay This Needle Aside!, 18 May 1955. Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star.
- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743204, catalog.archives.gov. Rights as recorded: public domain.
