Nonetheless, Nast continued reputedly turning down an offer of $500,000 to go to Europe to 'study art' - and the circulation of the magazine tripled.
In today's worth, that is about 12.5 million dollars. I believe Nast didn't take it because one, that money is dirty, and two, STRONGLY disliked Irish Catholics.
Tweed and his Irish Catholic associates
Thomas Nast outspokenly does not like Irish immigrants or Catholics. I find it humorous that one of Nast's highlights in his career was successfully canceling Boss Tweeds career, who happened to help Irish Catholics to be naturalized.
A cartoonist who was greatly influenced by Nast, and who was promoted as his protégé by the newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst, was Homer Davenport. After working for Hearst's San Francisco Examiner he joined the New York Evening Journal when Hearst took it over in 1895 and became the highest paid American cartoonist of his day. Like Nast he attacked political corruption and so incensed local government officials in New York that in 1897 Republican 'Boss' Thomas Platt tried to introduce an Anti-Cartoon Bill into the New York State legislature. In response Davenport drew Platt alongside Nast's version of William Tweed with a large bag of dollars between them and the caption: 'They Never Liked Cartoons.'
I decided to annotate this paragraph to show how influential Thomas Nast was. Before and after his death, he changed political opinions through cartoons and influenced other artists to draw their political views and post them to voice the importance of equality and fairness. He even created republican and democratic symbols. It is understandable why most call him both an artist and politician.