James A. Wales's Puck cover of 14 July 1880 shows Garfield and Hancock hammering an "Anti-Chinese" board, one half Republican and one half Democratic, around a Chinese man drawn in racial caricature. The caption says he has "no vote" and is "no use to either party."
What the cover shows
Content note: the central figure is a racial caricature of a Chinese man, drawn in the period's style. This page describes it without repeating the caricature's terms.
The two presidential candidates of 1880, Garfield for the Republicans and Hancock for the Democrats, are in shirtsleeves with hammers. Between them they are fixing a board lettered "Anti-Chinese," one end marked "Republican Plank" and the other "Democratic Plank," around a Chinese man. The archive records the caption in its title: "Where Both Platforms Agree: No Vote, No Use to Either Party."
The archive does not give a separate transcription of the cover, so this page quotes only the words its record gives.
Who made it
James A. Wales drew the cover for Puck, published by Keppler & Schwarzmann in New York, vol. 7, no. 175, 14 July 1880. The archive files it under the Hayes administration and the 1880 election. It is a private humor weekly commenting on both major parties.
How to read it
This cover cuts two ways, and both need saying. Its satire is aimed at the parties. The joke is that two rivals who agree on almost nothing agree on one thing: hostility toward people who cannot vote against them. "No use to either party" is a sharp line about how electoral politics treats anyone outside the electorate. That point was right, and it is still worth making.
The picture, though, relies on racial caricature itself. The man in the middle is drawn as a type, not as a person. So the cover mocks the politicians while handing readers a stereotype of its own. The archive tags it for scapegoating, and the scapegoat is in the center of the frame either way.
From a constitutional angle, the cover names the problem exactly. Equal protection and a voice in government are what keep a minority from becoming everyone's easy target. People with neither are, in the cover's words, of "no use" to a party, which is another way of saying they are safe to sacrifice. Three months later a pro-Hancock extra turned the same issue against Garfield with a forged letter about Chinese labor.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Where Both Platforms Agree: No Vote, No Use to Either Party (Puck cover, 14 July 1880). Puck (Keppler & Schwarzmann), artist James A. Wales.
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. loc.gov/item/90707286, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, no known restrictions.
