Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose
“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose” is a satirical political cartoon illustrated by Thomas Nast and created from woodcut relief prints. Harper’s Weekly, an illustrated newspaper published by Harpers & Brothers, featured many of Nast’s illustrations criticizing political corruption or advocating for racial minorities during the U.S. Civil War. Nast contributed his on-the-scene illustrations during American wartimes and addressed societal issues through his stylized political cartoons. In “Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose,” published on July 23, 1870, Nast addresses how intersectionality transformed the lived experiences of immigrants in the United States in an easily digestible cartoon format.
Newspapers like Harper’s Weekly flourished in popularity due to technological and resource advancements like mass printing, inexpensive paper, and postal systems, which propelled the dissemination of news and information to the public. Furthermore, press graphics lowered the barrier to understanding for the public. For illiterate individuals, usually racial minorities, they could still grasp some understanding of Nast’s message solely through the illustrations, symbols, and motifs. In more ways than just providing news via words to the public, press graphics in newspapers helped increase education and literacy rates without formal instruction.
“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose” spotlights how immigrant groups in America oppressed one another for their differences despite sharing immigrant status. Nast depicts Irish and German immigrants on top of a large wall while peering down at the Chinese immigrants on the ground. A falling ladder kicked by a European immigrant reads “Emigration,” and the caption states “Throwing down the ladder by which they rose,” hence the cartoon’s title. The white immigrants wear formal clothing such as top hats, suits, and dress shoes, while the Chinese immigrants don stereotypical rice hats and their cultural dresses.
Nast frames the European immigrants as the superior immigrant race by their heightened position on the wall barring the Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. through sheer height and the falling ladder. However, this position of power is entirely self-declared by the European immigrants, who utilize their proximity to whiteness as justification for the right to assimilate in the U.S. Nast further juxtaposes the two groups through their outfits, implying that the well-dressed, “dignified” European immigrants look down on the “exotic” Asian immigrants. Nast’s greater message highlights the internal discrimination between oppressed groups in the U.S., but in the process, he contributes to the unrealistic and exaggerated depiction of Eastern peoples and cultures to a Western audience. To readers, Chinese immigrants appear powerless, primitive, and poor. Their clothes look shabby compared to the European immigrants, and their bare belongings, such as farming tools and small suitcase, suggest that their future in the U.S. would be limited to the harsh conditions of agricultural labor.
This depiction, when broadcasted to the American public, invites a warped perspective of Chinese civilization while also spotlighting the challenges of immigrant integration in the U.S. when they pit themselves against one another. Despite living in a period of significant civil rights breakthroughs, Nast exposes how orientalist and white superiority complexes define Eastern cultures for Western entertainment and understanding.
