Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Ink Against Indifference: The Eastland Cartoonists

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 175

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A capsized ship at a Chicago dock should not have happened. Except, it did.

Today, we go looking for the people who translated that shock into a demand for justice while the city was still counting its dead: the editorial cartoonists. Their names rarely appear in modern accounts of the Eastland disaster, but in 1915 their drawings exposed hypocrisy, challenged officials, and said what polite prose often would not.

We also return to the story of Willie Novotny, the child known for days only as “No. 396,” and why his identification prompted such a powerful outpouring of sympathy. From there, we read a 1915 Cartoons Magazine article that points to lax inspection laws, questionable safeguards, and a system seemingly more interested in protecting itself than protecting ordinary workers, women, and children. It is a vivid snapshot of how Chicago wrestled with grief, accountability, and the fear that the investigation would end in a whitewash.

Finally, we meet three essential artists: Luther Daniels Bradley, John T. McCutcheon, and Bob Satterfield. Bradley asks the blunt question, “Whose safety first?” McCutcheon skewers the familiar pattern of investigations that come “too late,” and Satterfield’s on-the-scene sketching gives historians and genealogists a rare primary source from the riverfront itself.

If you care about the Eastland disaster, Chicago history, political cartoons, or the way public memory gets edited over time, this story belongs in your feed.

Resources:

Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 1915. H. H. Windsor, editor and publisher. Chicago. Digitized by Google Books.

Bradley, Luther Daniels. Cartoons by Bradley: Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News, with a Biographical Sketch and an Appreciation. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1917. Internet Archive.

Welcome And Creative Responses

Natalie Zett

Hello, I'm Natalie Zett, and welcome to Flower in the River. This podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well. And we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 175 of Flower in the River. And I hope you're doing okay. This week I'm continuing our look at the writers, poets, authors, and other creatives who responded to the Eastland disaster. In doing so, they also became part of its history, although most of them are rarely mentioned today. This week, I'm adding another group to that list. Cartoonists also responded to the disaster via their work, and their names and contributions have largely disappeared in the modern versions of the Eastland disaster story. While researching the history of the contributions of the cartoonists, I found an article that for the most part echoed what I shared during last week's episode. This was totally unintentional, at least on my part. If you listened to last week's episode, you remember that I shared a chapter from Dwight Boyer's book, True Tales of the Great Lakes. The chapter was called Who Speaks for the Little Feller? The title referred to a little boy who remained unidentified for several days after the Eastland disaster and was later identified as Willie Novotny. This week I planned to read another article from the 1915 issue of Cartoons magazine, and I'm still going to do that, because cartoonists are often overlooked, and they yielded tremendous influence, especially back then. And I wanted you to hear about their response. So imagine my surprise when I was looking at this article, and of course, I first looked at all of the cartoons, and I will share those with you via my promotional video for this episode. But the article itself featured the very story that I shared with you last week, the story of Willie Novotny. Now, this article has a different take on the story. Again, I plan to talk about cartoons and ended up with Willie Novotny again coming in. So for those who are interested, this is indeed another one of those serendipitous moments. Throughout my research of my own family and now the greater family of the Eastland disaster people, this happens a lot. A lot of times, though, I don't notice it except in hindsight. This time I noticed it in real time, and I want to share that with you.

The Little Novotny Fellow

Natalie Zett

So I want to step back and talk about the Novotny family, because it was such a dramatic situation where the entire family was killed, and it took several days to identify the final member of that family, and that was little Willie Novotny. Back in 1915, with all of the chaos and loss in Chicago during the Eastland disaster, it was the story of this little boy, the story of the entire family perishing that touched people on so many levels. George Hilton in Eastland Legacy of the Titanic shared this account. By the morning of Friday, july thirtieth, all of the dead at the armory had been identified except one, a seven-year-old boy who bore the number 396, partly because he was so young, partly because his anonymity symbolized the depressing impersonality of the method of dealing with the deceased. His identification later that day as Willie Novotny of Cicero brought forth a particularly widespread outpouring of sympathy. Both of his parents and his older sister had been drowned. No one had been left from his immediate family to identify him. His funeral on the 31st at the Bohemian School, where he had been a pupil, was treated as a memorial to all the children who had died on the Eastland. Mayor Thompson and several other high city officials announced that they would attend. George Hilton's book gives the Novotny family their due. It's brief but thorough. Yet it's Dwight Boyer in chapter two of True Tales of the Great Lakes who really brings the story to life. Boyer doesn't just tell the Novotny story, he ties it into something far bigger. The Eastland disaster and the way its aftershocks tore through Chicago. One of the strange things that I've run into as I've been doing this research, many modern portrayals of the Eastland disaster, which sometimes has a basis in evidence, but not always. The Navotny family story is one of the few that has been told a number of times. That said, what I see once in a while is that in these modern adaptations of their story, the actual family members start to vanish, and the actual biographical information about each individual member, for the most part, is absent. So my solution to nearly everything in life, including Eastland research, is to create family trees. And that's what I did for the Novotny family. And already I'm getting a feel for who each individual was. So I get to know them better. Very soon I would like to share what I have learned about this family, where they came from, who their relatives were, their immigration patterns, and so on.

Cartoons Magazine On Lax Oversight

Natalie Zett

But now, how about if we meet some of these cartoonists and listen to the commentary? This is from Cartoons magazine, September 1915, volume eight, number three. There are a number of cartoons obviously in this magazine, hence the name, and I will share those so you'll see them. The article is Lax Inspection Laws Blamed for Eastland Tragedy. It seems all but incredible that a steel steamship tied to her dock in a narrow river and within a few feet from a bridge over which swept the life of a great city should, without warning, topple over and carry to a sudden death some twelve hundred excursionists. But it was the impossible that happened to the eastland. Saturday, july twenty fourth. The vessel was about to pull out carrying a section of the Mammoth Hawthorne Club excursion from Chicago to a resort across the lake when the tragedy occurred. The victims were, for the most part, employees of the Western Electric Company, and persons in very moderate circumstances. Many of them were women and little children. Those on the top decks had a fighting chance for life, but those imprisoned in the cabins were doomed. Like the Iroquois disaster, the accident took Chicago in a holiday mood. For weeks this colony of workers had looked forward to the grand excursion. They returned, some of them, to empty homes. A father or a mother was missing, or the mother and the children. In a few cases, entire families were wiped out, and this perhaps was more merciful. The authorities, now that the dead are buried, now that the river is yielding up its dead, are endeavoring to fix the blame. Nobody seemed to notice the list of the steamer, or if the list was noticed, it was taken as a joke. The Eastland was known on the lakes as a crank steamship. Some ten years previously, she had nearly capsized in open water owing to her top heaviness. The water ballast, which was essential to the boat's safety, appears to have been lacking. The tanks, it seems, were empty, and had been left in charge of an inexperienced employee. Statements have been made to the effect that the captain, Harry Pederson, was warned, but refused to listen to advice. Many sensational charges have been made involving owners, federal inspectors and others, but the evidence has not yet been sifted. It is now claimed that Robert Reed and Charles C. Eckliffe, United States inspectors, now in custody, allowed more than 2,500 persons on the ship. Infants in arms and half fares, it is said, were not counted. It was Inspector Reed who, on July 2nd, allowed the boat's passenger permit to be increased from 2,253 to 2,500, while both Reed and Eckliff repeatedly okayed the boat. Secretary Redfield of the Department of Commerce, who has been conducting what the Chicago press terms a self-investigation, has made himself most unpopular because of his methods of questioning the witnesses. His favorite expressions Is it not so? And isn't it a fact? Have given offense to Chicagoans and have led to the impression that Mr. Redfield intended, if possible, to whitewash the inspectors and absolve them from blame. No little friction has occurred between the Secretary and Judge Lantis, who is in charge of the federal grand jury investigation. President Wilson, however, has assured the citizens of Chicago that no attempt at exoneration will be made. It might be added that the war has by no means rendered Chicago callous to human suffering. Within a few days a huge relief fund was collected for the benefit of the survivors, many of whom find themselves as a result of the disaster, almost penniless. The case of number three hundred ninety six, known also as the little fellow, a bit of human clay that lay for several days unidentified in the improvised morgue, is another example of the Chicago spirit. A patient at the home for incurables offered the little fellow his own cemetery plot. Finally, when the little boy was identified, Chicago honored him by a public funeral, thus focusing its sympathy on one definite object. Whatever the result of the investigation, so far as those responsible for the horror are concerned, one thing appears certain. More attention will be given to the construction of excursion boats and errors of the Eastland type will be corrected. In a discussion of Secretary Redfield's mode of procedure, the Chicago Tribune says, An inquiry which this city considers important, he presents the small wit of an attorney for the defense entertaining a jury, and his manners are matters for his own choice, but when they reveal or illustrate a process of thought, Chicago has to protest. Quote, there is no disposition here to cheer on a manhunt. It is one of the most disagreeable things a community has to do. The whole American record is one of leniency. Many citizens find in this leniency a cause, a principle, or contributing of the disasters which we have more than any other people except the Chinese. We do not like to bring full responsibility home to some erring human whose mistake has had awful consequence. There is an instinctive feeling that his sufferings must be dreadful without adding the hand of the community to them. This is the instinct of kindly people, and unless it be proved that the victims of accident were exposed to greed or venality, there is likely to be more than adequate consideration for the responsible human agents. The spirit of the manhunt is not in Chicago now. The city does not want to inflict vindictive punishment on anyone. It does want justice done, and more than that it wants guarantees. It wants better assurances that the needful precautions are being taken. When the city, in this reasonable and just mood, finds that the head of the department which controls the supervision of lake steamship servicing is developing, even with jocularity and inept sarcasm, merely the fact that law is sufficient and regulations adequate, it is bound to think of the contradictory fact of the Eastland and feel that its sorrow and its right to justice are both imposed upon. If it were merely Mr Redfield's manner that was unfortunate, we might ascribe it to a temperamental failing, which would be more kindly not mentioned. But when that manner seems only to reveal a purpose, we cannot permit Mr. Redfield to be exempt from the criticism he invites.

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Mr.

Natalie Zett

Redfield's apparent assumption is that the mass of interested people here is a mass ignorant of the first principles of ship construction and navigation. That is true. But it is best left to the people admittedly ignorant in the matter to be the only ones to comprehend that something must be wrong when a ship can roll over at its dock? A rather touching editorial on the little fellow comes from the Chicago Daily News. In the public morgue a little child's body lay, its wistful child's face waiting to be identified. All the other dead, hundreds of them, had been claimed. No one of the throngs that saw the one small face could tell the identity of that particular dead little boy. Taken from the overturned eastland, he was just one tiny wisp of a bountiful harvest of death. Known only as number three hundred ninety six or less specifically as the little fellow, the pathetic little body lay alone. Then came one day the dim eyed grandmother, now sole occupant of the home of the Novatnys. When she looked into the wistful small face, she recognized it. Thereupon the little fellow became Willie Novotny. On Saturday, a week following the tragedy, he and his father and mother and small sister Marie, all victims of the Eastland tragedy, were buried. Throngs of the mourners attended the funeral of the little fellow, whom death had contrived to make known to all of us as if for a definite purpose. We see their wistful child faces everywhere, their eyes full of wonder and questioning, their small trustful hands groping for or clinging to older hands, their small feet, stepping out readily along the paths into which they are led. Are we older ones amid our various distractions doing our full duty by the little fellows? We know we are not. Can we confront their questioning eyes? Can we clasp their trustful hands without a prayer in our hearts for guidance that will enable us to guide them aright? The little fellows under our practical methods have got to mind what they are about, have to look sharp, have got to get out of the way and not bother us, and generally have got to stand blinking and gasping in the dust and fume of our great affairs. Our practical minds strip them of their birthright of innocence. We feed them our worldly wisdom with painstaking thoroughness. End of article.

Why Cartoons Hit Harder Than Prose

Natalie Zett

And in that original publication, those words were surrounded by powerful images contributed by cartoonists from across the country. Now when I hear the word cartoon, part of me still thinks of childhood entertainment. But that sells the form short. In nineteen fifteen, cartoonists were not merely drawing jokes or amusing pictures, they were commentators, witnesses, and critics. With a single image, they could expose hypocrisy, challenge authority, and express grief in ways that pages of prose sometimes could not. Their drawings made an argument before the reader had absorbed a single sentence. As a reminder, I know this is an audio-oncast, so I will post the original article, post the individual images on my website, in the promo video that I make, and also I upload everything to the Internet Archive, and that ensures accessibility. But before we meet the artists behind those drawings, I want to talk about the world in which they were working and what it meant to turn the Eastland into ink. By the summer of nineteen fifteen, Chicago was already a powerhouse in political cartooning. Papers like the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Tribune routinely put editorial art on the front page, using images to say things that text sometimes could not say, or they would have to soften their words or even censor them. Cartoonists weren't just decorating the news. They were part of the city's moral argument, calling out machine politics, corporate greed, and official indifference in a language that almost everyone could read at a glance. The humble but powerful cartoon. When the Eastland capsized at the dock in the Chicago River, those cartoonists did what they always do in moments of crisis. Of course they reached for their pens, their pencils, but they also searched for allegory. They wanted to find the human faces in the midst of all of this chaos. In this cartoon's magazine spread, Luther Bradley creates an image of justice, and justice is a woman, and she warns us that the ship is top heavy and must be safeguarded. Another cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon, sketches the familiar scene of the investigation arriving too late as usual. The point is sharp and it stings. These were not unforeseeable acts of God. They were consequences of systems that chose convenience and greed and profit over human beings. Hopefully you get the idea as to what they were all

Bradley And McCutcheon On Blame

Natalie Zett

about. But now let's get to know a few of these cartoonists better. Let's start with somebody who's relatively new to me anyway. His name is Luther Daniels Bradley, and his Eastland cartoons anchor the article you just heard. Bradley was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1883 and studied at Northwestern and Yale. And yet, get this, had no formal art training. He discovered cartooning almost on a dare, seeing a magazine in a Melbourne shop window, and deciding he could do better. In Australia, where he was living for many years, he became a major voice, chronicling boom time optimism, labor struggles, and the crash of the eighteen nineties. When he returned to Chicago and joined the Chicago Daily News, he brought that reformer's eye with him. In his Eastland cartoon, the ship is literally surrounded by words like side issues, technicalities, legal quibbles, and whitewash, a visual indictment of the way investigations can wander away from the core issue of safety. Bradley's question, whose safety first? That hits hard in a city that had already lived through the Iroquois theater fire. He's doing what you might call early public history, taking complex testimony, ballast records, inspection decisions, and forcing readers to look at them as a single uncomfortable picture. Now let's meet John Tinney McCutcheon, who I introduced in an earlier episode. And his Eastland cartoon appears with the caption Too Late as Ural. McCutcheon was one of Chicago's best known editorial artists. An Indiana native, McCutcheon arrived in Chicago in 1889, and he eventually became the front page cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, a role he held for decades. His work was reprinted nationwide, and later educators would use his cartoons to teach how one artist could capture voter concerns and civic failures in a single panel. In the Eastland Spread, McCutcheon's image sits right under the line, there will be an investigation of the disaster. But the title reminds us that the investigation comes only after hundreds have died. Paired with the article's discussion of Secretary Redfield, Judge Landis, and the fear of quote unquote whitewash, McCutcheon's drawing becomes kind of a visual warning label. If we always investigate late, if we always find ways to soften blame, then tragedies like the Eastland and the Iroquois are not accidents. They are patterns. McCutcheon's loyalty like Bradley's is not to the comfort of officials, but to the people who boarded that ship trusting someone had safeguarded them. The final cartoonist who I want to mention

Bob Satterfield Draws From The Scene

Natalie Zett

doesn't even have his cartoon featured in this issue. However, Bob Satterfield is somebody that we need to get reacquainted with. I featured him a few times in this podcast, but he needs to be front and center in any discussion about cartoonists and the Eastland disaster. Robert William Satterfield, otherwise known as Sat, was an American editorial cartoonist whose on the scene sketch and accompanying article about the Eastland disaster provided a rare, contemporaneous visual and narrative record of the tragedy. Bob Satterfield was born on October 18, 1875 in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and died on February 17, 1958, in Glendale, California. Known professionally as Sat, he built his reputation as an editorial cartoonist, creating comic strips such as The Family Next Door, O Thunder, and The Bicker Family, along with daily panels including Sat's Bear, Days We'll Never Forget, and Busy Bear. His career began in the late 1890s when the Cleveland Press hired him after purchasing one of his unsolicited cartoons. He later worked for papers such as the Kansas City World and Cleveland News and syndicates, including Publishers, AutoCaster Service, and Newspaper Enterprise Association. Satterfield was in Chicago at the time of the Eastland disaster and went to the riverfront where the excursion steamer had capsized at its dock. On site, he sketched a cartoon directly from the scene, drawing on his established editorial style to respond to the unfolding catastrophe rather than reconstructing it later from secondhand reports. This immediate eyewitness quality distinguishes his Eastland work from many of the later visual depictions which often rely on retrospective interpretation. The Eastland cartoon Satterfield drew on the riverfront uses visual satire to comment on the human and institutional dimensions of the disaster rather than treating it only as a spectacle. By combining caricature, symbolism, and recognizable elements of the Chicago Riverfront, the drawing embeds the capsized vessel and rescue efforts within a broader critique of responsibility and complacency. For historians and genealogists, the cartoon functions as a visual source that reflects how at least one critical observer understood the disaster's causes and consequences in real time. Alongside this sketch, Satterfield wrote an article that amplified the commentary in his cartoon, describing what he witnessed and framing the disaster in terms of questioned safeguards, decision making, and the failure to protect ordinary workers and families. The article offers narrative detail and interpretive language that helps modern researchers read the cartoon more precisely, clarifying his targets, whether corporate negligence, regulatory failure, or broader social indifference. Taken together, the text and image form a paired source. His prose documents specific observations and judgments, while the cartoon distills them into powerful visual shorthand. Satterfield's Eastland cartoon and article contribute to Eastland history by adding a primary interpretive voice. And they help historians like you and me trace how accountability and blame were discussed in the public sphere in 1915. For public history work, his sketchpad and prose also illustrate how visual journalism shaped early memory of the disaster and how editorial artists could challenge dominant narrative about industrial and organizational responsibility, and also that works for that time and this time.

Restoring Artists To The Record

Natalie Zett

As I wrap up this episode, here's what I want to leave you with. Luther Bradley, John T. McCutcheon, and Bob Satterfield weren't bystanders to the Eastland disaster. They were witnesses, commentators, and in their own way first responders. While officials pointed fingers and investigations stalled, these guys picked up their pens and demanded accountability in a language everyone could read at a glance. Their cartoons asked the questions that mattered whose safety first? Why are these investigations always too late? They gave grieving Chicago a voice, and they gave us, more than a century later, a real time record of how people understood this tragedy as it unfolded. And here's what's troubling about all of this. We live in an age where more Eastland material is digitally available than ever before. And yet, if you search platforms that mention the Eastland disaster, you will seldom, if ever, find the names of Bradley, McCutcheon, and Satterfield. This type of thing is very common, but I do want to make sure to go on the record and mention what I find as I'm doing this research, or what I don't find in this case. These artists were definitely part of the Eastland disaster. They shaped how Chicago grieved, how it demanded justice, and how it remembered. And that's what my work in this podcast is all about restoring names, restoring biographies, and contributions that have been omitted in recent years. Thanks for being here with me. In the meantime, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and stay safe. And I'll talk to you next week.

Closing Thanks And Where To Find More

Natalie Zett

Hey, that's it for this episode, and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes. And for more information, please go to my website. That's www.flowerinthher.com. I hope you'll consider buying my book available as audiobook, ebook, paperback, and hardcover because I still owe people money. And that's my running joke. But the one thing I'm serious about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of all who experienced the Eastland disaster of 1915. Goodbye for now.

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Natalie Zett

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