About the Title:
“Plague take it” was one of a number of expressions used by Christians in the 19th and early 20th centuries to express extreme frustration while avoiding profanity. A famous use of the phrase was in a 1911 cartoon by Udo Keppler dealing with President William Howard Taft, his attorney general, George Wickersham, and anti-trust law. The cartoon, published in the November, 1911 issue of Puck, depicts the massive President Taft standing behind a chair on which the diminutive Wickersham is standing and using a stick labeled “Sherman Law” to beat a toy labeled “Monopoly” that is on a table and shows a wealthy businessman holding money bags and sitting in a bowl. Hanging on the wall is a “Sectional View” of the toy showing that it is weighted at the bottom with “High Protection”, stating “The Reason Why” it doesn’t stay down when Wickersham hits it. The caption for the cartoon reads “Plague Take It. Why Doesn’t it Stay Down When I Hit It?”
