Our View: The more things change …

His Uncle Sam is a little too tall and thin. A modern cartoonist might draw him more along the Colonel Sanders line. But William C. Morris’ cartoon on immigration – published in The Spokesman-Review and in his 1908 book of collected cartoons – seems as current today as it was 100 years ago.

More than a century ago, immigrants swarmed into the “new country.” The Italians, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Germans traveled here and worked the railroads, cleaned the homes, farmed the land, started small businesses. The United States had few restrictions for immigrants who arrived right after the turn of the century. But when Morris created this cartoon, the resentment at the multitudes was obviously growing.

That resentment would build into the sanctions and restrictions that faced immigrants by the 1920s. Many immigrants came anyway – illegally – a fact that history sometimes forgets, according to syndicated columnist Brian Donohue, who writes about that topic in his column on this page today.

Morris was a political cartoonist for The Spokesman-Review for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1904. If he were to look through the political cartoons available today, he’d see many of the same themes he satirized. Partisan politics. Corrupt big business. World leaders talking peace at the negotiating table while secretly plotting war. And he focused on issues close to home, too. For instance, in 1910, he cartooned in favor of a park bond that ultimately passed and shaped the city’s parks legacy.

Political cartoonists have always played a unique role in journalism’s history. With mighty images and spare words, they show us where we’ve been and where we might be headed.