The 23rd Gov. of PA tried to criminalize political cartoons. Who was he?

Home Blogs Question of the Week The 23rd Gov. of PA tried to criminalize political cartoons. Who was he?

The 23rd Gov. of PA tried to criminalize political cartoons. Who was he?

2016-02-01 14:24

Answer: Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, the 23rd Governor of Pennsylvania.

Republican Samuel W. Pennypacker (1843-1916) was the first governor of Pennsylvania to be elected in the twentieth century, serving from 1903 to 1907. (His predecessor, William A. Stone, was elected in 1899.) During his administration he passed the Child Labor Act of 1905, appointed the state's first commissioner of forestry (Pennypacker was a fervent environmentalist), and he established the State Museum of Pennsylvania. Pennypacker also oversaw the campaign to fund and build a new state capitol building after the previous one had burned down in 1897. This year marks the 110th anniversary of the building, which was completed in the fall of 1906.

But Pennypacker's administration was not a wholly peaceful one. In part because of his involvement with the city's Republican political machine (which he tried to downplay), he developed a hostile relationship with the local press, which sought to expose corruption in the state government. As such, newspaper political cartoonists made Pennypacker the prime target in their works. In response, he supported the Salus-Grady Bill (the Newspaper Libel Act of 1903). The act it made it illegal in Pennsylvania to publish or create cartoons that portrayed people as "beast, bird, fish, insect, or other inhuman animal." The bill was repealed in 1907.

More information on Pennypacker, his history and administration, is available in HSP's Library, including Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker: Character Sketch of the Great Pennsylvania Governor, Historian, and Judge (call number Biog.F 154.P437 1912) and Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker: The Governor Now Most in the Public Eye (call number Biog.F 154.P438 1905).

Add comment

Current state: Draft

Rich-Text Editor

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.