What do Politicians and Mosquitos have in common?
On Tariffs + Political Comics... from 1912.
It’s almost like we’ve been here before…
I’m by no means an expert on trade or tariffs - but I did find some amusing political comics this morning… because OF F*CKING course we are just rinse and repeating the same shit from 100 years ago. We replayed and remixed the pandemic from 1918 so why not also remix more stuff too?! YAY. /sarcasm
The above is a cover from a magazine, Puck - the first to find success as a satire and humor publication in the United States. It was founded in 1876 and ran until 1918 (it was sold in 1917 to a larger conglomerate… and you can imagine they did not acquire it to keep the political satire pieces going). I’ll definitely circle back to a long piece focusing on Puck later.
The title of this magazine cover/edition was:
“To swat 'em is waste of time”
with a subline of:
“Pour oil, and plenty of it, on the thing that breeds them.
And TBH, yeah… I get it. Sometimes you have to just torch the a**holes to get them to leave you alone so that’s some solid advice. Now they didn’t specifically sayyyyy to also toss a match and light that oil on fire… but like, they didn’t say *not* to either.
The cover above shows a swarm of mosquitos (the politicians in this case) - the three in the foreground with very distinct faces/facial features. These cartoons often represented real political figurers at the time, I think they’re probably William Taft, all black on the right - who would lose re-election later that year, Woodrow Wilson, front left in brown - won the 1912 election, and Theodore Roosevelt, far back left former president - ran in & election as a “new progressive” but lost.
The actual insect mosquito are a pest to humans and clearly 100 years ago they were just as much of a pain in the ass then as they are now. Because in a day/age with no tech, if you put something like an animal/insect on a cover it better be well known and then if you stick human faces on it… well, mosquitos were that widely hated known.
So because this was published in July - aka the middle of summer - you can assume it was hot and humid, and the meaning behind that is the mosquito swarm is supposed to be “protecting” the goods/American people by placing the protective tariffs and we the People place our trust in them the Politicians. I’ve also seen other magazine covers from this era that use the word “trust” to mean like a bank trust which is used to manage assets or financial things.
The mosquitos on the cover are all wearing shirts labeled “Trust” as they hover over a swamp (DC - so yes that nickname has been around for a hot second) with the words “High Protective Tariff” in the water below. Off on the side, there’s an oil can next to the front-most figure which reads “Revision Downward Oil - Wilson Brand”
“Revision Downward” or “Revise Downward” is a term that means to reduce a number after running the calculations again, usually because of new information that’s been gathered. And you do this to make things look better for you or your brand. So the oil can saying “Wilson Brand” is literally saying they’re (Wilson/Wilson’s Team is) running the numbers and prices are going to come down. This is something you see done commonly but the term is not used - for example after a crisis and there are people unaccounted for: the number will be adjusted from 10 missing to 8 when people are found and reunited.
Oh, if you’re wondering what “High Protective Tariff” means - a protective tariff is a tax imposed on imported goods to make them more expensive compared to goods produced domestically. And if it’s high, that’s high for consumers of course. Because we need *PROTECTION* from imported goods and not from like you know actual threats like gun violence and climate change.
What does that mean for Tiny Werewolves?
From day one, I have always focused on small-batch, as much in-studio production as possible, using products/suppliers that come from American-based supply chains. So I am incredibly lucky that so far I have not been super affected the last several years by the tariffs or inflation. If you’ve been around a while you’ve noticed that I have not yet needed to increase my prices and I’m just finishing my 2025 cost of goods analysis and things are holding strong at their current price points. Which means *fingers crossed* I’ll be able to hold at the same prices - because we all know I will NEVER sacrifice quality of materials to make things cheaper.
Over the last couple days, I’ve seen a lot of other small creators freaking out about the new tariffs on goods coming from overseas, specifically China… and rightfully so. If they rely on manufacturing something on quantities under a run of around 1000pcs, the United States just basically lacks the manufacturing facilities (period) to *do* some of the things they need at a price that people can afford to buy the product at combined with the raw goods to produce the items are (you guessed it) made overseas. So unless we as a country want to really invest in “made-in-America” manufacturing/assembly then it’s really problematic.
I personally never wanted to rely on a part of the system that couldn’t control and I’ve never really had the cash flow to manufacture in bulk overseas anyway. When I first started in early 2020 and into 2021 there were a lot of product/supply shortages because of Covid. So being able to have direct control of all the materials was extremely important to me. If something was out of stock, I wanted to pick the exact back-up material. And that’s what helped shaped my line into what it is today, small-batch production - where the materials are the same across many of the items but the configuration of them is what makes each item different.
Bonus old political cartoons, that are still relevant today which LOL means we’re *still* doing the same sh*t:
For context, this one was summarized as: William Howard Taft coming from the White House, carrying golf club, and shaking hands with (an injured/damaged) "tariff bill" - Warning the Library of Congress uses a dated term in their summary which I replaced.
I love old political cartoons, and you found some good, and appropriate ones, too! ❤️