Saturday, November 14, 2015

Camouflage in Meat Packing in 1919

Cartoon by Bart O. Foss (1919)
Above A cartoon by Bart O. Foss, titled CAMOUFLAGE—A PACKER ADAPTATION, published in The Nonpartisan Leader (St Paul MN), February 24, 1919, p. 1. The text beneath the drawing reads—

Among the things war has developed is the art of camouflage. It is a very handy weapon for special interests. Cartoonist [Bart O.] Foss here gives a graphic illustration of how the packers have seized on the method to deceive the public. The cleverest means that money can secure are used to make the people believe that there is competition between the big packers, while behind the camouflage they chuckle to themselves on their cuteness and merrily arrange the markets in their own interests. But if the war has developed camouflage it has at the same time made the people aware of it as never before. The farmers of the Northwest have become expert camouflage detectors. They all see "around the corner" of those packer ads, and yet those ads are the last word in camouflage.