"Gold at 160, Gold at 130"
1 2017-03-23T14:53:03-07:00 Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht 3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d 11862 2 Harper's Weekly (1869) plain 2017-09-03T16:56:30-07:00 Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht 3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359dThis page is referenced by:
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Picturing Providence, Illustrating Illness
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The visual language of fate-from-above drew on older traditions in Western art. Depictions of the “money devil” showering covetous Europeans with undeserved riches dated back to the seventeenth century and cast prosperity (at least the get-rich-quick kind) as a curse from beyond. Americans would invoke this motif time and again in the nineteenth century.
"Gold at 160. Gold at 130," printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1869, envisioned diabolical influences in the volatile gold market. Lorum Ipsum, sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
“Economy – The Lesson of the Great Panic” (1873) Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
An untitled cartoon in J. Laurence Laughlin’s Facts About Money (1896) presented failure as a heavenly spirit descending on the acquisitive masses. "Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?The lesson these images conveyed was more moral than technical. These artists did not profess to know how to manage economic affairs, either in one’s personal life or in the halls of political power. Instead, echoing powerful moral traditions, they cautioned against greed and hubris, casting ruin as divine retribution and success as a goal best pursued by modesty, diligence, and thrift – advice made clearest by engraver John Donaghy’s instruction to “Emulate Poor Richard.”
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Providence and Partisanship
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When nineteenth-century Americans sought to explain how forces beyond their direct control could influence their economic lives, they often turned to morality tales that emphasized the sins of political leaders and the judgment of providence. Imagery that cast booms and busts as a form of punishment posited a causal link between individual actions and economic effects, but it was a connection that ran through the medium of God, the Devil, or another other-worldly moral arbiter.
Note how fortune appears to descend from the heavens in many these images. Calamity is not traced to natural events or human relations; it is something that originates in another world and passes into our own. Like the divine, these financial crashes seem to be beyond mankind's full comprehension.
Yet humans are not guiltless in its arrival. Greed, gambling, and the search for a quick dollar invite divine or diabolic judgment, making misfortune a moral issue – a kind of punishment for one’s devotion to pecuniary gain. Note the ways in which these images turn other-worldly economic interventions into a judgment on personal behavior.
These themes echoed imagery that circulated in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Observe the similarities between these representations as well as the differences. Economic matters are bound together with religious values. Yet in European images, it is sudden prosperity that signals vice and sin rather than sudden poverty. Both rapid gain and loss stem from the same embrace of illicit temptations in the providential worldview, but in the American version, it is the negative consequences – panic, dependence, and destitution – that are given greater emphasis. -
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Picturing Providence, Illustrating Illness
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The visual language of fate-from-above drew on older traditions in Western art. Depictions of the “money devil” showering covetous Europeans with undeserved riches dated back to the seventeenth century and cast prosperity (at least the get-rich-quick kind) as a curse from beyond. Americans would invoke this motif time and again in the nineteenth century. “Gold at 160. Gold at 130,” printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1869, envisioned diabolical influences in the volatile gold market, while “Economy – The Lesson of the Great Panic” (1873) and an untitled cartoon in J. Laurence Laughlin’s Facts About Money (1896) presented failure as a heavenly spirit descending on the acquisitive masses.The lesson these images conveyed was more moral than technical. These artists did not profess to know how to manage economic affairs, either in one’s personal life or in the halls of political power. Instead, echoing powerful moral traditions, they cautioned against greed and hubris, casting ruin as divine retribution and success as a goal best pursued by modesty, diligence, and thrift – advice made clearest by engraver John Donaghy’s instruction to “Emulate Poor Richard.”
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Gold at 160. Gold at 130.
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2017-07-10T13:44:42-07:00
"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?" -
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2017-03-23T14:55:14-07:00
The Money Devil
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2017-03-23T14:55:14-07:00
This visual language of fate-from-above drew on older traditions in Western art. Depictions of the ‘money devil’ showering covetous Europeans with undeserved riches dated back to the seventeenth century and cast prosperity (at least the get-rich-quick kind) as a curse from beyond. Americans invoked this motif time and again in the nineteenth century. “Gold at 160. Gold at 130,” printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1869, envisioned diabolical influences in the volatile gold market, while “Economy – The Lesson of the Great Panic” (1873) and an untitled cartoon in J. Laurence Laughlin’s Facts About Money (1896) presented failure as a heavenly spirit descending on the acquisitive masses.