The Destroyer
- Title:
- The Destroyer
- Alternate Title:
- The Destroyer
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Pifat, Frank
- Date:
- 1938
- Date 2:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2308.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2308_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1920 - 1939
- Subject:
- Advertising & Promotion
Money & Finance
Other Moral & Social
Pictorial
Politics & Government
Satirical - Measurement:
- 23 x 18 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This map fills the entire cover of a pamphlet entitled “The Destroyer,” published in 1939 by one F. A. Kremer, attacking the mail order industry. It’s a bird’s-eye view of a metropolitan area as a giant octopus labeled “mail order houses.” The tentacles of the beast reach out to strangle general stores, groceries, hardware stores and other businesses in small, neighboring rural towns. While the city itself is not identified on the map or in the pamphlet, the skyline and shoreline strongly suggest Chicago - center of the nation’s mail order business at the time and long-time home of both Sears and Montgomery Ward. Wilson 2017.
The pamphlet - 4-1/2 pages of text, in a small font, single spaced - tells the story of one “John Paul,” a successful and respected farmer in the town of Shelbyville, in an unnamed state. As a result of his prominence, John Paul is pressed to speak in lieu of an absent congressman at the Lincoln County Farmers Annual Picnic. He delivers a diatribe against the local merchants, calling them “leeches” and accusing them of gouging the hard working farm community. He concludes by promising that he will henceforth buy only from mail order houses.
John Paul is so well regarded, and his speech so well received, that he is asked to give it repeatedly throughout the area, and his neighbors eagerly adopt his suggestion. But one night he is awakened by a terrible dream: that the city banks and mail order houses had grown into a gigantic octopus whose tentacles were wiping out not only the stores and shops of small towns, but all the businesses dependent on them. In the morning he drives into Shelbyville to reassure himself, only to discover that the dream had become a reality and the town was collapsing into bankruptcy. When the local bank failed, John not only lost his savings, but was repeatedly assessed as a stockholder. Wiped out, John lost everything, including his farm, which was sold at auction.
Shortly thereafter, John once again addressed his neighbors at the annual farm picnic, this time delivering a lengthy mea culpa. He had “burned down his house to get rid of his tenant;” had been “killing the goose that laid the golden egg;” and had “betrayed my neighbors and friends by leading them from the paths of peace and plenty into the highway of of destruction.” Within months John Paul was dead, and the minister preached at his funeral that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
There is a small farm community of Shelbyville in central Illinois, but no Lincoln County Illinois. This pamphlet was deaccessioned from the Library of Congress as a duplicate, and I have found no record of any other copy. The artist, Frank Pifat, served in the Wisconsin Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, and the 1940 census reports that he was then 28 years old, with an 8th grade education, living on his father's farm in Oneida County Wisconsin and working as a "helper and cutter" in a meat market.
The octopus is a persistent trope in persuasive cartography. It first appeared in Frederick Rose's "Serio-Comic War Map For The Year 1877," ID #2272, about the Russo-Turkish War. "Once Fred W. Rose had created the 'Octopus' map of Europe, it proved difficult to rid propaganda maps of them." Barber 2010, 164. "The prevalence of the octopus motif in later maps suggests that the octopus also spoke to humanity's primeval fears, evoking a terrifying and mysterious creature from the depths (the dark outer places of the world) that convincingly conjured a sense of limitless evil." Baynton-Williams 2015, 180.
The collection includes numerous maps - from Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Latin America, the Netherlands and the U.S. - employing the octopus motif. (Search > “octopus”.) Many of these relate to imperialism and war, from 1877 to the Cold War. Others attack social and political targets, including a "reactionary" journalist, the Standard Oil monopoly, “Landlordism,” mail order houses, Jews and Mormons.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Kremer, F. A. 1938. The Destroyer. s.l: s.p.
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.