A classic case of an editorial cartoon being somewhat inscrutable without context, this cartoon depicts an angry farmer and his cow donning homemade armor behind a fence with a posted “no hunting” sign, declaring to the reader, “There now! I guess they can’t get us this year”. Was this meant to be a literal illustration, highlighting the woes of local dairy farmers fending off the stray bullets of encroaching hunters? Or was this a metaphor for local legislative squabbles related to dairy farming? You might need to comb the archives in the Multnomah County Library to find out, but the cartoon itself is charming either way!
Howard Fisher, born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1890, started his career in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Journal in 1919. By 1930 he was the paper’s official editorial cartoonist, a position he occupied until retirement in 1956. His original illustrations were in high demand from some of the biggest names in America, from J. Edgar Hoover to president Harry S. Truman, and he won top prize in a contest sponsored by the newspaper trade publication Editor & Publisher in 1935.
Howard Fisher’s work appears in the collections of the University of Washington, the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, and the Library of Congress.
SKU: 21V23204
A classic case of an editorial cartoon being somewhat inscrutable without context, this cartoon depicts an angry farmer and his cow donning homemade armor behind a fence with a posted “no hunting” sign, declaring to the reader, “There now! I guess they can’t get us this year”. Was this meant to be a literal illustration, highlighting the woes of local dairy farmers fending off the stray bullets of encroaching hunters? Or was this a metaphor for local legislative squabbles related to dairy farming? You might need to comb the archives in the Multnomah County Library to find out, but the cartoon itself is charming either way!
Howard Fisher, born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1890, started his career in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Journal in 1919. By 1930 he was the paper’s official editorial cartoonist, a position he occupied until retirement in 1956. His original illustrations were in high demand from some of the biggest names in America, from J. Edgar Hoover to president Harry S. Truman, and he won top prize in a contest sponsored by the newspaper trade publication Editor & Publisher in 1935.
Howard Fisher’s work appears in the collections of the University of Washington, the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, and the Library of Congress.
SKU: 21V23204
DIMENSIONS
21” wide x 2” deep x 25” tall
ESTIMATED WEIGHT: 1 lbs
