1950 Political Cartoon

"You read books, eh?"

This cartoon by Herb Block showed a type of propaganda about what's going on in the United States of America after the Cold War. The US is afraid of the idea of "communism" that they had launched many anti-communist campaigns. In a way, it showed that the US is paranoid and afraid of the idea of communism.One of the campaign was to investigate people. The officers had overdone and caused many hundreds of elementary and high school teachers to lost their jobs. Some were forced to be named by proliferating "anti-subversive" groups. The cartoonist wanted to portray this and so he drew the picture above where the "Anti-subversive Committee  is the "bad guy". The title as well as a caption, "You read books, eh?", resembles an officer interrogating a victim that does she only read books? or does she have a role in something else. The officers are trying to prove that the woman that she isn't just a regular teacher, but is also communist spy or a member of a group that wishes to overthrow the government. Normally, things like the world map isn't enough to show that she's a threat to the country. But to this committee they can "paint" anyone with really anything that can be related to "subversive" or overthrowing the government. To exaggerate this problem even more, the author uses a woman as a victim for a reason. Woman symbolizes weak or those who cannot defend themselves. Therefore, the picture shows the committee oppressing the weak Not only this, notice the amount of committee versus the amount of victim, Eight officers to one teacher. This further portrays the offensive and cowardly act made by this committee  This is ridiculous as they have taken it too far, and that someone needed to stop them.