Traitorous Americans 

• 1950 
• Milians, Max P. 
• Drawing 
• Historical item 

5625907

Drawings / paintings

Traitorous Americans

36 x 29 cm

1950

Original editorial cartoon on card in pen, ink and crayon, 1950, syndicated to a number of newspapers, shows a doctor examining the brain of a ‘traitorous American’ (i.e. a Communist) who is looking at a screen extolling the USA and its virtues: ‘our cultural benefits (free speech)’, ‘our industrial advantages’, ‘our higher living standards’. Anti-Communist sentiment was growing sharply at this period and, like many Americans, the doctor is puzzled as to why some Americans supported an ideology which seemed to have as its main objective the destruction of the capitalist world and its leader the USA. Card size 36 x 29 cm (14 x 11.5 inch), image size 31 x 26 cm, signed lower left with nine zeros as underline. Two small stains, otherwise in very good condition. Verso: “Fair-Deal mistakes hay” Original editorial cartoon on card in pen, ink and crayon, 1950, syndicated to a number of newspapers, shows ‘Chairman Gabrielson’, national chairman of the Republican Party, who had recently named a 15-member Republican policy committee with responsibility for drafting a Republican (GOP) statement of principles for the 1950 congressional campaign, the great majority of these members being all-out critics of President Truman’s ‘Fair Deal’ (the successor to Roosevelt’s New Deal). ‘GOP appeals’ go out to ‘GOP strays’ in ‘Dem(ocrat) pastures’. This refers to the fact that many Republicans went along with the Fair Deal and Truman’s foreign policy at this time (me-tooism) and the Republican right wanted to do something about this and reaffirm traditional conservative values. ‘Mistakes hay’ is a play on the expression ‘makes hay’. Card size 36 x 29 cm (14 x 11.5 inch), image size 31 x 26 cm, signed lower left with nine zeros as underline. Glue staining around borders, otherwise in good condition.