“Come, brothers, you have grown so big you cannot afford to quarrel.”

William A. Rogers depicts Capital and Labor as evenly matched—with Commerce a beleaguered referee—on a 1901 cover of Harper’s Weekly. Variations on this theme frequently appeared in the Progressive Era’s mainstream press. Commerce alternated with other allegorical figures like the “nation” or the “public,” suggesting that organized labor now represented a powerful “interest,” equal to capital and equally oblivious to how its actions affected the well-being of ordinary Americans.

Source: William A. Rogers, Harper’s Weekly, June 1, 1901—American Social History Project.