Arts and ChartsMain MenuIntroductionAn Age of PanicsNineteenth Century TrackAn Age of EconomicsTwentieth Century TrackGalleryCreditsDaniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d
The Money Devil
12017-03-23T14:55:14-07:00Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d118621plain2017-03-23T14:55:14-07:00Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359dThis 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.
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12017-03-23T14:53:03-07:00"Gold at 160, Gold at 130"2Harper's Weekly (1869)media/Gold at 160.jpegplain2017-09-03T16:56:30-07:00
