CARTOON - THE CRUCIFICTION OF REASON

Ben Strange was a prominent political cartoonist in Western Australia who worked for the Western Mail from 1898 to 1930. This original cartoon, by Ben Strange, was collected by Ivor T Birtwistle who also worked at the Western Mail in the early 1900s.
The cartoon was first published in the Western Mail on 14 February 1929 and foreshadows approaching economic disaster that will follow the ‘Crucifixion of Reason’. The cartoon is possibly inspired by recent statements by the Labour Council at a conference in Melbourne that the union movement would refuse to present their case regarding workers conditions to the Commonwealth Arbitration Court because they believed that the Court was only acting in the interest of employers thanks to changes to the act controlling the court by the Federal Government (The National Party with Stanley Bruce as Prime Minister was in government).
Around this time the WA State Labor Government was largely at loggerheads with the Nationalist Federal Government concerning economic development policy, particularly wage rates for workers.