Booze and Boodle is a political term that was widely used in the 18th and into the 19th Century to describe the tools used to influence a person's vote toward a specific candidate. Booze is obvious and has never gone out of style as a tool of influence, while the word boodle -- the straight forward paying for a person's vote-- is no longer in use today, one might suspect that the practice continues on in some form.

Boodle was widespread throughout the country and was publicly acknowledged as a tool of elections. In 1903, the Governor of Rhode Island declared that the sales of votes in his state was so common that no attempt to conceal the practice was made. Republicans attributed their defeat in New York in 1910, to the groups failure to "distribute" funds among rural voters. The widespread rural practice of buying votes is lost to the attention given to the larger and more famous practices of large cities, such as New York during the Tammany Hall era.

When rural politicians could agree to stop the practice the vote sellers rose up and threatened that if their votes were not purchased they would vote against the man who first signed the agreement. A delegation of vote sellers in Ohio appealed to a reforming judge that to the poor folks of the area it made no difference who was elected to office since the only benefit they ever got was the money paid for their vote. Like many political practices, boodling shifted its substance to fit the style and needs of the day. Local political machines emerged that used patronage and public services (and probably some boodle as well) as a means to control voter outcomes.

George Yost Coffin (1850-1896) was a prominent Washington D.C. political cartoonist of the late nineteenth century. After graduating with a law degree in 1871, Coffin found employment as a clerk in the Revenue Marine division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, a post which he held until his death in 1896.

His career as a political cartoonist started in the mid-1870s with the first illustrated paper in Washington, D.C., the Illustrated Washington Chronicle. The Illustrated did not last long but he was able to sell his cartoons to Harper's Weekly, Puck, and the Judge. By the mid-1880s he was contributing cartoons to practically every local paper that printed pictures. In 1891, however, Coffin gave up his free lance work when he became the official cartoonist of The Washington Post, a position he held until his death in 1896 at the age of 46.

Medium : 1 drawing : ink

Created/Published : Between 1890, and 1900

Creator : George Yost Coffin, artist, 1850-1896

Part of the Cartoon Drawings Collection housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: acd2a07187