Herblock Gallery
Herblock Looks at 1975: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons

Mocking Gerald Ford’s Whip Inflation Now (WIN) campaign, Herblock used the metaphor of an unleashed horse bolting despite the president’s attempts to “whip it” into shape. Ford inherited high inflation and recession from the Nixon administration. Ford failed to control inflation in the first year of his administration and dropped the WIN messaging by March 1975.

Herblock enjoyed using literary metaphors in his cartoons, and he returned to Alice in Wonderland throughout his career. Here, Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole served as a metaphor for the economy in early 1975, when it appeared that ongoing inflation and unemployment would lead the country into a depression. As unemployment continued to increase and real wages declined, the United States endured the most severe recession of the second half of the 20th century.

Construction declined during the recession in 1975. Herblock looked at the demand for housing and compared it with construction rates and imagined Americans out in the cold. Congress passed legislation to stimulate the economy with the Emergency Middle Income Housing Act of 1975, but Gerald Ford vetoed it. The rate of new building construction remained low, and unemployment among construction workers remained high in early 1975, leaving everyone out in the cold.

As unemployment rates reached their highest level since World War II, Americans queued up for jobs and unemployment benefits. Herblock imagined two recent college graduates conversing in a line as they learned the current economic reality. As the Baby Boom generation increasingly entered the workforce, they competed with older workers for available jobs. In addition, stagnation in the construction industry prevented the usual seasonal employment and in May 1975, unemployment reached nine percent.

Although unemployment improved slightly in June 1975, those seeking jobs felt little relief. Herblock used the image of a worker left hanging on limb to illustrate a sentiment shared by some, including AFL-CIO president George Meany, who stated, “The failure of the Administration and of the Congress to do enough to meet this crisis is deplorable.”

The recession affected the American automobile industry, which closed plants and laid off workers because of a large volume of unsold cars. As a result, manufacturers pressured the Ford administration to delay the implementation of safety and pollution standards for vehicles. The slump compelled the industry to introduce smaller, more fuel efficient cars. While automakers tied their slump to federal regulation, by using the word “excuses” in his title, Herblock showed them as victims of their own bad management.

By contrasting the decrepit state of the country’s mass transit system with the jammed and polluting highway system, Herblock reacted with dismay to news about federal spending. Despite growing concern about air pollution and a shortage of oil and gasoline, the Department of Transportation announced that it intended to allocate half of its budget towards repairing highways while urban mass transit received only ten percent and the Federal Railroad Administration less than five percent.

Herblock portrayed President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller foolishly playing with a Pandora’s box of “Who-lost-Indochina politics” in the days leading up to the American evacuation from Saigon on April 29, 1975. Ford publicly blamed Congress for failing to fund the war in Vietnam. Just as the war had divided the American people, the fall of South Vietnam, the increasing power of the Pathet Lao in Laos, and the Khmer Rouge coup d’etat in Cambodia led to divisive recrimination.

Herblock depicted Ronald Reagan, labeled “Right-Wing G.O.P.,” forcing the Republican Party elephant to perform a circus trick of sitting on a small chair representing a narrower political platform. Reagan toured the United States in April and May of 1975. Without officially announcing his intention to run for president, Reagan was critical of Gerald Ford throughout his tour. Moderate Republicans feared that Ford could lose to militant conservatives, but the right-wing United Republicans of California denounced Reagan, calling him a “consiliberal.”

Herblock’s average American turns around in surprise to the news that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were involved in activities that affected law-abiding Americans. In this cartoon, Herblock pointed to actions including secret tests using LSD, training postal inspectors in surveillance techniques, reading private mail, hiring the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro in Cuba, and wiretapping that compelled the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to demand testimony from FBI and CIA officials.