The Effects of the New Liquor Law, No. 1

This hand-colored print by Kimmel and Forster satirizes temperance legislation through a scene of domestic chaos. A man laden with kegs—one strapped to his back, another cradling an infant—strides through a public square with his family in tow. His son drinks from a mug while shouldering his own keg; the baby rides atop a barrel. The composition uses exaggeration and visual absurdity to mock both the presumed effects of prohibition and immigrant working-class life. The print exemplifies how 19th-century popular graphics deployed caricature and sequential action to convey social commentary, establishing visual conventions—composition, scale variation, and narrative clarity—that would shape comics' emerging vocabulary.