The 1912 presidential contest was unusual in that three major candidates were vigorously competing. It was a close horse race all the way to the finish line, the only time in American history that a third party nearly won all the marbles. Three hats were thrown into the political ring that year and Schmidt Brothers gave each his due on a postcard.

The race involved ex-president Teddy Roosevelt, who had left the White House in 1908 after selecting Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor. After rampaging through Africa on safari, Roosevelt came home and did not like the job Taft had done. But mostly, he just yearned to be back in his "bully pulpit" again. After defeat at the 1912 Republican convention in Chicago, which nominated Taft for a second term, Roosevelt and his legion of followers bolted and formed their own Progressive Party - the "Bull Moose, with Teddy as its standard-bearer.

In between these two conventions, the Democrats had given their blessings to Woodrow Wilson, who had left the peaceful groves of academe at Princeton to become governor of New Jersey. However, it took Wilson 45 ballots to capture the presidential nod of his party.

In the election that followed, Wilson won by virtue of Roosevelt and Taft splitting the Republican majority. In fact, Taft finished third.

It was for this election that the publishing firm of Schmidt Brothers issued their outstanding set of novelty postcards. Besides being a good caricature of each major party involved, there is a real piece of wire attached to the animal used to represent its tail. Thus, the bull moose, elephant or donkey on the card becomes slightly three-dimensional.

Schmidt Brothers was a major producer of such wire-tail add-ons and used the technique for many other topicals. They held the patent for the add-on novelty (U.S. Patent No. 101747) and no other American publisher competed. Some foreign printers did copy the wire tail idea, using it mostly to represent the tongue of a hen-pecking wife or mother-in-law on comic postcards.

Finding these political wire tails of the 1912 presidential contest in original condition today, with the wire tail still intact, is extremely difficult. As it is, cards with Wilson and Roosevelt from this election remain somewhat scarce, further complicating the problem of finding them.

Unfortunately, Schmidt did not release cards for the other "third" parties in the race - Socialist, Prohibition or Social Labor. It would have been more satisfying if they had, giving us a complete portrayal of the election that year. After all, Debs and Seidel of the Socialist Party drew nearly one million votes in the final count.

The three that did get released were:

"GOP." Inset of Taft and illustration of a steamroller and a rampaging wire-tail elephant. "Has He Got Enough Steam?"

"DEMOCRACY." Inset of Wilson and illustration of "The New Jersey Mosquito" and wire-tail galloping mule. "Will He Get Stung?"

"PROGRESSIVE." Inset of Roosevelt and illustration of "T. R. Hat" and a wire-tail charging mule. "My Hat Is Still In The Ring."

All of the postcards have the same White House background. There is a fourth card some collectors place in this set. It applies to Champ Clark, the Democratic Speaker of the House, who had failed in his attempt for the party's nomination. But it bears no artistic or style relationship to the postcards of the set. It was probably originally released prior to the party conventions.

Quite likely there may be other cards of failed nominee seeker A word of warning! If you should be lucky enough to find any wire-tail presidential candidate cards to add to your political collection, be sure you are buying a card that does not have a replacement or repaired tail. Often a regular, less expensive Schmidt wire-tail postcard is broken apart and the tail removed to replace a damaged wire-tail on a political. Such repaired wire tails are still good collectibles, but should not command the price for a pristine, original copy which nowadays is $50 to $75.