I'm sure many WASPs got a chuckle out of them.
Boss Tweed didn't care for the ridicule. He famously said:
"I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don't
know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures.."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_M._Tweed
See also:
[quote]
Across the pond, an American cartoonist held even greater sway. Almost
single-handedly, Thomas Nast took down William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, the
corrupt head of Tammany Hall in New York. Nast’s caricatures were so fierce
and funny [/quote]
Please note: people thought thye were funny!
[quote continues...]
that the public turned against the Boss, and he was forced from office.
He fled to Europe to escape prosecution for theft, but officials identified
the fugitive from a Nast cartoon. Tweed’s critique of his tormentor: “I don’t
care so much what the papers write—my constituents can’t read . . . it’s them
damn pictures.” Yet for all of Nast’s artistic achievements—he invented the
GOP elephant, the Democratic donkey, and the popular image of Santa Claus —
his cartoons had a dark side. Nast was violently anti-Catholic (one of his
drawings shows bishops turning into crocodiles as they invade American shores),
and he invariably portrayed Irish immigrants as unwashed, drunken louts.
....
Nothing is as effective as ridicule for driving barbarians from the
temple of Western civilization.
[/quote] "Them Damn Pictures: Cartoonists provide the only
effective answer to the barbarity in Paris.
Stefan Kanfer, January 11, 2015
https://www.city-journal.org/html/them-damn-pictures-11494.html
Modern readers may miss the humor, but Nast and Tweed's contemporaries'
didn't.