18th Amendment Political Cartoons: Artists, Symbols, and Bootleggers

Political cartoons about the 18th Amendment were the visual battleground of Prohibition, drawn by editorial artists on both the “wet” and “dry” sides between roughly 1919 and 1933 to argue over whether the ban on manufacturing, selling, and transporting alcohol was noble reform or national disaster. The most influential of these cartoonists, Rollin Kirby, invented the era’s defining character, “Mr. Dry,” while others like Carey Orr turned their pens on bootleggers and corruption. Recurring figures such as Uncle Sam, John Barleycorn, the camel, and the hooded gangster gave readers a shared visual shorthand that shaped public opinion through the decade and helped push the country toward repeal in 1933.

Wet and Dry Sides in Print

The two camps were not evenly matched on the page. Large-city newspapers, which tended to oppose Prohibition, syndicated their cartoons nationally, while dry-leaning papers in smaller towns rarely produced or distributed original cartoon work. One analysis of eight representative cartoons published between 1921 and 1930 found five wet, two dry, and one that simply illustrated the law’s legislative status.¹ By the end of the decade, the prevailing message in mainstream media was that modifying or repealing Prohibition was preferable to continued enforcement.

The dry side compensated through advocacy publishing. The Anti-Saloon League, active from 1893 to 1933, produced cartoons, fliers, pamphlets, and songs to build public sentiment for what it called the “saloonless society,” much of it printed by the American Issue Publishing Company.² The Women’s Christian Temperance Union used visual media too; a 1915 broadside depicted “the power behind the liquor lobby to suppress temperance and women’s suffrage.”³

The Cartoonists Who Defined the Era

Rollin Kirby

Rollin Kirby (1875–1952) is the name most tied to Prohibition-era cartooning. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for cartooning, in 1922, 1925, and 1929, and created the most enduring image of the debate: “Mr. Dry,” a black-coated, long-nosed, sour-faced figure who became visual shorthand for the kill-joy Prohibitionist.⁴ Other cartoonists picked up the character and used it throughout the decade. In Kirby’s 1930 cartoon “The Last Big Offensive,” held by the Library of Congress, Mr. Dry hauls a cannon, a comment on the collapsing enforcement effort in the amendment’s final years.⁵ Kirby also drew for women’s suffrage and civil rights and against imperialism, fascism, and the Ku Klux Klan.⁶

Carey Orr

Carey Orr (1890–1967) spent more than 46 years at the Chicago Tribune, and his front-page cartoons hit gangsterism, government waste, corruption, and Prohibition.⁷ Two of his best-known Prohibition works are “The Unhappy Couple” (September 21, 1925), a caricature of a female temperance activist, and “Bullet Proof” (April 29, 1926), which drew organized crime as an armored, hooded executioner funded by bootleg profits and bribes.⁸ Orr won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and donated more than 5,400 cartoons to Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center.

Others Worth Knowing

Jay “Ding” Darling, Daniel Fitzpatrick, and John McCutcheon were all recognized for Prohibition-era cartoon work.⁶ William H. Walker drew “Spirit of Prohibition” for Life magazine in 1921. Herbert Johnson produced “Pigs in Clover” for the Kansas City Times. Edwin Marcus drew “What a Queer Looking Camel” for The New York Times in 1928.⁸ Clifford Kennedy Berryman’s roughly 2,400 pen-and-ink drawings, preserved at the National Archives, include cartoons on Prohibition enforcement alongside decades of Washington politics.⁹

The Symbols Readers Recognized

Prohibition cartoons developed a shared visual vocabulary that readers of the era decoded on sight.

Uncle Sam represented the federal government, often shown struggling with enforcement. In the 1904 cartoon “The Thirty Pieces of Silver,” Uncle Sam was likened to Judas Iscariot, selling the right to sell liquor for government revenue.¹⁰
Mr. Dry, Kirby’s sour, long-nosed figure, stood in for the Prohibitionist temperament and was picked up by cartoonists nationwide.⁴
The camel symbolized dry supporters, a reference to going long stretches without water. Edwin Marcus used it in his 1928 New York Times cartoon about Al Smith’s presidential campaign, where the camel also carried undertones of religious prejudice against the Catholic candidate.⁸
John Barleycorn, an old allegorical figure for alcohol, was drawn dead or buried after Prohibition took effect. Ralph Barton’s 1921 “Masked Criminal at the Grave of John Barleycorn” placed a criminal beside a skull-and-crossbones tombstone. A 1920 photograph captured a physical monument inscribed “In Memoriam, John Barleycorn, Born B.C., Died Jan. 16, 1920, Resurrection?”⁵
Blind pigs was slang for speakeasies, used by Herbert Johnson in “Pigs in Clover” to show the explosion of illegal drinking establishments the government could not contain.⁸
The preacher-reformer and Carrie Nation appeared together in Walker’s 1921 “Spirit of Prohibition,” which drew a winged preacher to suggest a holier-than-thou attitude, alongside the real-life temperance activist carrying a book of blue laws.⁸

Cartoons Against Bootleggers and Corruption

As the 1920s wore on, cartoonists shifted from moral argument about drinking to the law’s unintended consequences: bootlegging, speakeasies, and organized crime. The 18th Amendment had created a vast black market, and editorial artists became some of its sharpest critics.

Orr’s “Bullet Proof” (1926) is the standout example. Organized crime is drawn as a hooded executioner in armor, carrying a bloody axe, with money bags hanging from the figure labeled to show how bootleg profits paid off politicians, jurors, and top lawyers. Three years later, a cartoonist identified as “Brown” published “Some People Are Like That” in The Atlanta Constitution on July 4, 1929, highlighting the “Prohibition muddle” of graft, bribery, crime, and widespread contempt for law.⁸

Congress tried to answer with the Jones “Five and Ten” Act in March 1929, raising penalties for Volstead Act violations to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. By December 1929, President Hoover conceded in his State of the Union address that “if the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.” Berryman’s untitled January 1930 cartoon in The Washington Evening Star caught the moment when national appetite for aggressive enforcement had waned and, after the October 1929 stock market crash, legislative attention shifted to the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill.⁸

Where to See Prohibition Cartoons Today

Several institutions hold the originals and reproductions.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division holds editorial cartoons by Rollin Kirby, Ralph Barton, Alfred Joseph Frueh, and others.⁵
The National Archives preserves the Berryman collection of roughly 2,400 pen-and-ink drawings covering Washington politics from the late 1880s through 1949.⁹
Ohio State University’s Department of History maintains a digital “Temperance and Prohibition” collection established in 1996, with cartoon galleries, posters, and propaganda produced by the American Issue Publishing Company and the Prohibition Party.¹¹
The Smithsonian’s Learning Lab hosts a sorting activity using era cartoons that asks students to categorize each one as wet or dry.¹²
Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center holds more than 5,400 of Carey Orr’s original cartoons.⁷

Why the Images Still Matter

The sharp, personal satire that Prohibition-era cartoonists practiced is protected by the First Amendment, a principle the Supreme Court affirmed unanimously in Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). The Court held that a parody no reasonable person would take as stating actual facts is protected speech even when crude or offensive.¹³ Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that allowing public figures to recover damages because speech caused an adverse emotional impact would chill political satire, and he named political cartoonists and editorial writers as forms of discourse the First Amendment was designed to protect.¹⁴

The visual vocabulary those artists built, from Uncle Sam struggling against lawlessness to Mr. Dry’s pinched disapproval to the armored gangster growing rich on bootleg profits, has outlasted the amendment itself. Legalization advocates today cite Prohibition’s failures when arguing against drug bans,¹⁵ and the templates the cartoonists set still shape how Americans picture the gap between what the law forbids and what people actually do.

1
America in Class. Political Cartoons, Prohibition
2
Westerville History Museum. Anti-Saloon League Museum
3
Library of Congress. Temperance and Suffrage Movement Collections Connections
4
Britannica Kids. Rollin Kirby
5
Library of Congress. Prohibition Images Gallery
6
Denison University. Cuttingly Clever: 20th Century Political Cartoons
7
Syracuse University Libraries. Carey Orr
8
America in Class. Political Cartoons: Prohibition
9
National Archives. Berryman Political Cartoon Collection
10
Ohio State University. Prohibition Party Cartoons: The Thirty Pieces of Silver
11
Ohio State University. Temperance and Prohibition
12
Smithsonian Learning Lab. Prohibition Political Cartoons: Wets vs. Drys Sorting Activity
13
Library of Congress. Satire Is Protected Free Speech
14
First Amendment Encyclopedia, MTSU. Hustler Magazine v. Falwell
15
PBS NewsHour. 100 Years Later, Prohibition’s Legacy Remains