James Wear "Bug" Holliday, Des Moines Prohibitionists, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1887 - 1890

This baseball card of James Wear "Bug" Holliday, of the Des Moines Prohibitionists, was made in the late 19th century by Goodwin & Company, using photographic and printing techniques. These cards were made to be included in packages of Old Judge Cigarettes. Consider the industrial processes involved here. Photography itself was quite new at this time, and the ability to reproduce images on a mass scale even more so. Think about the laborers that worked in the tobacco fields, factories that processed the tobacco and assembled the cigarettes, the photographers who took the images, and the printing-press operators. Each of them played a part in creating this object, which was designed to stoke the desire for a very specific kind of consumption. The sepia tone of the image is a direct result of the chemical processes used to develop the photographs. So, this card offers a glimpse into not just one industry, but an entire network of production and consumption, all captured in a small rectangle of paper. This was a deliberate effort to harness celebrity culture to the project of capitalism.