'Swifty and his Wonderful Dream', The New York Herald, 1904. The man with the high hat is a caricature of George McClennan, major of New York City.
John Buckingham Lowitz is one of the pioneers of American newspaper comics. He created 'The Captain Kiddis Kids', which started running on 21 November 1897. Lowitz also made the newspaper comics 'Cathode Ray' (1896), 'The Barnyard Club' (1898), 'The Never-Was People' (1897), 'Scenes in Gazoozaland' (1896) and 'In the Jungle' (1896).
On 6 December 1903, his strip 'Swifty and his Wonderful Dream' started running in The New York Herald (which would later run the similar, and by now much more famous, 'Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams' by Winsor McCay, starting in 1905). The character Swifty is one of the many "messenger boys" depicted in the comics of the turn of the century.