A tale of the times - Pat takes his cue from John, and solves the Chinese puzzle [caricature of Irishman seated on heavily loaded wagon, which is being pulled by a Chinese man; the Irishman is holding the man's pigtail as a rein]

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In this wood engraving, an Irishman sits atop a heavily loaded wagon while a Chinese man pulls it, and the rider steers by holding the puller's pigtail as if it were a rein. The caption, "Pat takes his cue from John," uses "Pat" and "John" as stock names for Irish and Chinese men, and the joke is that the Irishman has taken the upper hand in a labor arrangement. It appeared in *Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper* in July 1870, when Chinese workers and Irish immigrants were both competing for jobs in the United States, especially in California and on railroad construction. The drawing shows how such caricatures used ethnic stereotypes to comment on the economic anxieties of the day.

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