Homer Davenport - Career

Career

Davenport's career was not immediately successful. His first job was drawing for the Portland, Oregon newspaper, The Oregonian, where he was fired, it was said, for doing a poor job of drawing a stove for an advertisement. He later worked for the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. Ultimately, he came to the attention of William Randolph Hearst who recognized Davenport's talent for political cartooning and his tendency to attack corrupt political bosses. Hearst brought him to the east coast to work for the New York Evening Journal in 1895. He later also worked for the New York Evening Mail, producing a continuing stream of highly detailed pen & ink caricatures of many of the leading figures of the day. His drawings left few public figures unscathed; he even caricatured himself and his boss, Hearst.

Ultimately, Davenport’s work became so well recognized for skewering political figures he considered corrupt, such as U.S. Senator Mark Hanna and others, that his opponents attempted to pass a law banning political cartoons. The bill, introduced in the New York State Legislature with the prodding of U.S. Senator Thomas C. Platt, (R-NY), did not pass, but the effort inspired Davenport to create one of his most famous works: “No Honest Man Need Fear Cartoons."

He covered the elections of 1896 and 1900, satirizing William McKinley as corrupt and William Jennings Bryan as an anarchist. However, his 1904 cartoon "He's good enough for me," portraying Uncle Sam as appearing to endorse Theodore Roosevelt, represented both Davenport's support of Trust-busting and his admiration of Roosevelt himself. Davenport also traveled worldwide, covering the Dreyfus affair, and caricaturing many of the leading political figures of Great Britain.

Davenport went on to author several autobiographical books and went on the lecture circuit, traveling the world speaking on cartoons, satire and Silverton. His books included The Diary of a Country Boy, and The Dollar or the Man. He also published a large-format book containing many of his cartoons in 1898. Titled Cartoons by Davenport, an annotated reissue was published in Silverton in 2006. Apparently as a joke, Davenport once included The Bell of Silverton and Other Stories of Oregon, in a list of his publications. A book of that name did not exist however. Some speculate that this was an early working title for The Country Boy.

His last assignment was to illustrate the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. He caught pneumonia while waiting on the docks of New York City for the arrival of the survivors, and died shortly after. Hearst paid for an elaborate funeral and had Davenport’s body returned to his native Silverton for burial.