Thomas Nast Cartoon Depicts Tweed as Money Bag

Harper’s Weekly publishes Thomas Nast’s devastating political cartoon “The BRAINS,” depicting Boss Tweed as a corpulent figure with a bag of money for his head. The image crystallizes public outrage over Tammany Hall corruption, making the abstract concept of systematic graft viscerally understandable to voters who cannot read the lengthy newspaper exposés.

Nast’s cartoon campaign against the Tweed Ring, which intensified throughout 1871, proves so effective that Tweed famously complains “I don’t care what they write about me—my constituents can’t read. But damn it, they can see pictures!” Tweed’s emissaries offer Nast a bribe of $100,000 disguised as a “gift from wealthy benefactors” to enable the artist to study in Europe. Nast feigns interest and negotiates upward before refusing a final offer of $500,000—demonstrating both the Ring’s desperation and the perceived value of suppressing critical media.

The cartoon series in Harper’s Weekly, combined with the New York Times’ documentary evidence, creates an unstoppable public pressure campaign. Nast’s other notable 1871 cartoons include “Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to Blow Over” (September 23), showing Tweed and his cronies as carrion birds, and “The Tammany Tiger Loose” (November 11), depicting corruption as a predatory animal. The Tweed Ring loses its majority in the November 7, 1871 elections, and Tweed is arrested in October 1871, illustrating the power of visual media to expose and combat institutional corruption.