In the Coming Era of Socialism
Date1909
Artist
Harry Grant Dart
(American illustrator, 1869–1936)
Illustration CitationPuck, July 7, 1909
MediumCommercial relief process with hand-coloring
Dimensionssheet: 14 3/16 × 20 11/16 in. (36 × 52.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1978
Object number1978-99
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPRINT
Label TextHarry Grant Dart's multi-scene cartoon shows police breaking up a demonstration by capitalists who - in a turn-around of the expected and in the detail characteristic of his work - are demanding their rights from socialists. A native of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Dart began his career making crayon portraits as advertisements for the National Crayon Company. In the mid-1890s, he moved to the Boston Herald and then on to the New York World, which deployed him to Cuba as a sketch artist. He later became art editor for The World, where he called on his experience as a free-lance cartoonist to create the comic The Explorigator. The 1908 strip - about children flying an airship around the world - was designed to compete with Little Nemo by Winsor McCay in the New York Herald. It was short-lived but was the springboard for Dart's later work for Life and Judge; his cartoons often featured futuristic scenarios.
