Watch That Carpet, Fella

3/31/1966

Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

A few days before this cartoon appeared, President Johnson had signed a supplemental appropriations bill that provided $13.1 billion—the amount he had requested—for the Vietnam War. At the same time, LBJ was meeting with his top domestic advisors, asking them to trim expenditures in nonmilitary sectors of the budget so that the deficit could be held to its predicted level.

This is the forest, primeval April 24 1929

Concern for the depletion of our natural resources is not new. In his first daily cartoon, Herb Block deplored the clear-cutting of America's virgin forests and foreshadowed the economic wasteland to come in the next decade. The caption is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline.

The Philanthropist - December 5, 1930

Help The Unemployed - Apples 5 cents

The Great Depression devastated the United States in the 1930s, leaving as much as 25 percent of the workforce unemployed. People who lost their jobs began selling five-cent apples on the streets of American cities, providing a symbol of the economic hardships of the era.

Albert Einstein Lived Here - April 19, 1955

Herb Block pays tribute to scientist Albert Einstein, possibly the greatest man of the twentieth century.

Fire - June 17, 1949

By 1949, the Soviets had expanded their control to cover most of Eastern Europe, and it appeared that China would soon fall to the communists as well. "The fear-filled forties and fifties were a dark period when the spread of communism abroad increased anxieties and frustration at home," wrote Herb Block. In their zeal to stamp out all signs of subversion in the United States

Fear is a Constant

not a cartoon

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For the darker side.