Tariff politics: "I'm not that kind of kitten."

Protect U.S. from John Bull: Protection Pictures from Judge (1888).

High bar for comprehension here, and even I can't decode everything.  It's 1888 in Judge, a protectionist argument that Irish Americans should vote Republican.

For some reason, Britain, with the "J. Bull" feather in his cap, is figured as a monkey.  The kitten, meanwhile, wears a ribbon identifying him as the Irish American voter.  No idea what the Tin-Can Brigade is, or what the kitten's hat is supposed to be.  The stove, however, is clearly labeled as American industries, powered by the coal of "prosperity," and the chestnuts being cooked seem to be British industries, that is, cloth, iron, cotton, wool, agriculture, and something illegible behind the kitten's arm.

The monkey sits on a London Times quotation: "The only time England can use an Irishman is when he emigrates to America and votes for Free Trade," meaning when Irish Americans vote for the Democrats, as they overwhelmingly did.  The monkey asks the kitten to help get his chestnuts off the fire, presumably meaning British chestnuts cooked by American industrial prosperity, which the kitten answers by defending his virtue: "I'm not that kind of kitten."

So, for starters, both animals are clearly figured as male, so what's going on here is that the Irish American rejects the British homosexual advance by voting Republican -- which very few of them actually did.

But what's really significant here, as a historical matter, is that protectionism was a fully respectable political position and the position of the Republican party for nearly a century.  Today, we might support tariffs for this or that particular industry, but our orthodoxy is certainly for "free trade" in general.

The other significant piece is the protectionist argument: that high tariffs were necessary to protect American workers against "pauper labor," often figured as British.  Today, we most often think of it as Chinese.  In the 19th century, the idea of "free trade" as British imperialism was not a stretch.  Neither was appealing to Irish Americans to oppose the machinations of the British, a strategy known as "twisting the lion's tail."  But convincing Irish American workers to vote Republican was a harder sell.

Especially if you were figuring them as gay sex kittens if they remained Democrats.