File:A Midsummer-Night's Dream Nomination.jpg

日本語:artoonist Thomas Nast's selection of Shakespeare's fanciful A Midsummer-Night's Dream conveys ridicule mingled with some concern over the 1880 presidential nomination of Congressman James Weaver of Iowa by the Greenback-Labor Party. Weaver appears as Bottom, the weaver whom Puck has mischievously endowed with the head of an ass. Columbia, the personification of the United States, fills the role of Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, upon whom Puck has also cast his magic by compelling her to fall in love with Bottom. She will eventually awaken from the spell, anxiously unsure of the reality of what has transpired. The cornerstone of the Greenback agenda was to help debt-poor Americans (often farmers) by spurring inflation through expanding the money supply with paper currency ("greenbacks"). Nast warns that while the Greenback message may be seductive, it is ultimately deceptive