Joseph Keppler drew the Senate floor in 1889 with the senators dwarfed by enormous trust magnates — Standard Oil, Steel, Coal, Iron, Sugar, Tin, Copper. The “PEOPLE’S ENTRANCE” at the back of the chamber is closed.
The cartoon ran in Puck at the height of Gilded Age plutocracy. Keppler was making a constitutional argument. Article I, Section 3 made the Senate accountable to the people indirectly, through state legislatures — but the state legislatures had been bought. The cartoon helped crystallize the public pressure that produced the 17th Amendment in 1913, which moved Senate elections to direct popular vote.
A century later, the trust magnates have been replaced by six billionaires who each spent over $100 million on the 2024 cycle — more than the Trump candidate committee combined. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United (2010) rebuilt the architecture Keppler was drawing against. The 1889 Puck cover is the most accurate political illustration of 2024 politics in print.
