Herblock Gallery
Herblock Looks at 1974: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons

Herblock believed that both consumers and pollution control supporters felt the impact of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OAPEC) extended oil embargo. Automakers resisted manufacturing smaller vehicles and meeting emission standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The House of Representatives tried and failed to delay the implementation of impending 1977 emission controls. Consumers continued to experience gasoline shortages and increased prices in 1974.

When former National Security Council aides sued Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other government officials for wiretapping their telephones, Herblock felt that Kissinger had tarnished his superhero reputation. The lawsuits tested the legality of wiretapping without a court order in the name of national security. The lawsuit against Kissinger continued for many years.

Herblock contrasted the lack of support for wounded Vietnam veterans with the financial aid the United States provided the government of South Vietnam. In March 1974, wounded veterans protested for better medical care and benefits. A disabled veteran asked Donald E. Johnson, head of the Veterans Administration, “If the government can allocate $85 billion for bombs, why can’t it allocate more than $2.5 billion for men’s bodies busted up by bombs?”

Using the metaphor of an alcoholic husband impoverishing his family, Herblock critiqued high oil consumption in the United States for harming the economy and creating an energy crunch. When inflation gripped the nation in 1974, higher oil prices led to a decrease in consumer use of oil. To further limit oil consumption, which would decrease oil imports, President Gerald Ford was urged to consider restrictions on consumer use. The administration knew the public would resent rationing and weighed their options carefully.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt had a pool installed in the White House. Richard Nixon covered the pool to expand the spaces in the White House to meet with the press. Shortly after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, his successor Gerald Ford stated his desire for a swimming pool to use for exercise. Herblock, including himself in the cartoon, suggested that Ford remove the temporary flooring in the White House press room that covered the pool, but maintain communication with the press. The National Swimming Pool Institute used Herblock’s cartoon in fund-raising efforts to create a new pool on the South Lawn.

One year after the ceasefire took effect in Vietnam, Herblock reflected on the ongoing fatalities, represented here by a cemetery. After American combat soldiers departed Vietnam in March 1973, the North and South Vietnamese armies kept on fighting. In 1974, North Vietnam gained more territory until April 30, 1975, when it took Saigon, and the government of South Vietnam surrendered.

On March 2, 1974, a federal grand jury indicted seven White House aides for covering up the Watergate scandal. Only later would Americans learn that the jury listed Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. Nixon’s attorney James St. Clair announced that the administration intended to cooperate with the House impeachment investigators. But Herblock, who drew 140 cartoons about the Watergate scandal, used the sands of an hourglass to indicate that Richard Nixon’s ability to avoid complicity was slipping away.

As part of the effort to increase income from taxes in 1974, the House Ways and Means Committee considered legislation to eliminate the oil depletion allowance instituted in 1926. The oil industry pushed back, arguing that the tax break was necessary for research and development. As a result, the Senate passed legislation without a repeal of the oil depletion allowance. Here, Herblock depicts the oil industry as an octopus, profiting in eight realms, including a shakedown of consumers.

Quoting the poem Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herblock created a visual metaphor for what he perceived as the impending collapse of the United States Postal Service. Due to higher fuel costs for shipping mail overseas, the Senate proposed legislation authorizing the Civil Aeronautics Board to temporarily increase international mail rates to assist Pan-American World Airways and Trans World Airlines. The cost of regular first-class mail had increased to 10 cents earlier in the year.

Two decades after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ordered desegregation of public schools, a federal court ordered the city of Boston to integrate schools. Violence erupted. In this cartoon, Herblock accused Gerald Ford of enabling violent white people when the President stated, “I have consistently opposed forced busing to achieve racial balance as a solution to quality education and, therefore, I disagree with the judge’s order.” At the request of Edward W. Brooke, a Black senator from Massachusetts, Ford video-taped a message demanding peace and restraint. Nevertheless, violence continued for some years.

Pen used by Herbert L. Block (Herblock). Gift of Brian Noyes, 2010. Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (011.00.00)

By placing Richard Nixon in a quagmire and denying his level of involvement in the ITT and milk fund scandals, Herblock expressed his disbelief in the president’s statement. Irregularities in 1972 election fund-raising that were exposed during the Watergate investigation, led the White House to issue statements that were immediately countered by former administration officials. Some of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) spent time in prison for illegal fund-raising, while Richard Nixon continued to deny involvement.

In this energetic cartoon, Herblock portrayed President Richard Nixon actively preventing the movement of the symbolic figure of Justice by tripping her with tape gaps, a locked filing cabinet of presidential papers, claims of executive privilege, and a safe labeled national security. While Nixon squared off against the House Judiciary Committee in its relentless Watergate investigation, he attempted to create an image of a strong executive branch. Public support for his presidency continued to decline throughout 1974 as new information against him emerged.

As the House Judiciary Committee demanded Nixon’s withheld tapes be admitted into evidence, the White House pushed back, stating it would be “constitutionally irresponsible.” Herblock may have had that statement in mind when he presented a reproduction of the Constitution in his cartoon. With the indictment of several presidential aides and administration officials in March 1974, calls increased for the impeachment of the president. Even his congressionally appointed vice president, Gerald Ford, openly spoke about some of Nixon’s actions as impeachable.

After being sentenced to prison for his role in defaming Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post, Charles W. Colson then testified to the House Judiciary Committee about his role as White House counsel in directly masterminding some of President Richard Nixon’s revenge against political enemies. Here, Herblock imagined Colson as a ghost terrorizing President Richard Nixon about being implicated in the Watergate affair.

As the House Judiciary Committee voted to send articles of impeachment to the House, the White House released the transcript of a tape that incriminated President Richard Nixon in Watergate. Here, Herblock imagined a congressman listening to the “smoking gun,” the taped conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, on June 23, 1972, just six days after the Watergate break-in. Even Nixon’s staunchest allies in Congress started to demand his removal. The vote to impeach never went forward. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.

As grain shortages led to inflated food prices, and the OAPEC embargo led to a shortage of gasoline at fuel pumps, Herblock’s female consumer added a shortage of money to her woes. In October 1973, when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) increased the price of crude oil and placed on embargo on shipping to the United States, American consumers felt acute shortages that continued after the embargo lifted in March 1974. Grocery inflation continued throughout the year.

Herblock depicted a couple accustomed to dining on food more luxurious than beans, trying to convince themselves that they were eating a steak. They conversed with the implication that President Richard Nixon was innocent of Watergate charges. Their self-talk did not improve their outlook. Consumers, facing record food prices, changed purchasing and dining habits in the 1970s.

Here, flood waters served as the metaphor for the United States’ inflation woes in 1974. Herblock placed this couple on a rooftop of a flooded house, facing rising building costs and interest rates. While the cartoon was timed to actual flooding in the United States, Herblock intended his visual metaphor broadly to include the rising cost of housing stock and building materials that made it more difficult for working-class and middle-class families to purchase a home.

Using the metaphor of fire to represent inflation, Herblock commented on what Americans generally felt in the summer of 1974 – inflation affected their lives as much as the impending impeachment vote in Congress. Herblock portrayed the administration as a firefighter ignoring the destruction. However, President Nixon called for legislation to control inflation days before his August 9, 1974, departure from the White House.

Herblock evoked President Gerald Ford’s college football days, urging him to fight against inflation and recession by doing more than carrying a “Whip Inflation Now” (WIN) banner. When President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, his vice president, Gerald Ford succeeded him and inherited an economy facing skyrocketing inflation. Herblock, like many of his fellow journalists, thought Ford needed to engage with direct measures to help Americans deal with rising consumer prices and job losses. “Whip Inflation Now” served as little more than a slogan.

Pen used by Herbert L. Block (Herblock). Gift of Brian Noyes, 2010. Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (011.00.00)