Monday Spill
Last week’s New Yorker was a double issue, dated September 1 & 8, 2025, meaning no new issue to page through.
On this Labor Day in the 100th year anniversary of The New Yorker it seemed like a fun idea to take a look at the magazine’s very first cover published around Labor Day of 1925 (the actual date of the holiday that year was September 7th). Interestingly enough, the issue is of historical note.
The cover is signed “Jimmie The Ink,” perhaps my all-time favorite cartoonist pen name. The artist’s real name: James Daugherty. This was his first of two covers (the other one was dated January 23, 1926). Mr. Ink, or should I say, Mr. Daugherty, also contributed 21 cartoons to the magazine. His first is shown here (it appeared in the issue of August 1, 1925):
The September 5th issue deserves a footnote in New Yorker history as the last of the “practice” issues before the issue of September 12th, 1925. In May of 1925, Raoul Fleischmann ((the principal financial backer of the magazine) nearly pulled the plug on The New Yorker (the magazine was a flop, financially, in its first few months) but then decided against it, giving The New Yorker a second chance; it was hoped the magazine’s fortunes would “revive” by the issue of September 12th, 1925. According to Ralph Ingersoll, the magazine’s first managing editor, “the issues leading up to the target issue were just practice.”
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James Daugherty ( aka Jimmie The Ink) Born, Ashville, North Carolina, 1890. Died, February 21, 1974, Boston, Mass. According to his NYTs obit (Feb 22, 1974) Daugherty was “an early nonobjective artist of the synchromist school, which structured paintings by means of flat planes and discs of brilliant colors…” He was also an acclaimed children’s book author, who received The Newberry Medal in 1940 for his book “Daniel Boone”. He contributed 19 drawings and two covers to The New Yorker, from August 1, 1925 through April 10, 1926. More information: https://daughertyfoundation.com/chronology/