In July of 1899, Luther Bradley (1853-1917) joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News and he became one the newspaper’s most famous and beloved political cartoonists. This book was published after his death. It includes a biography and remembrance written by Daily News editor, Henry Justin Smith and a generous selection of his beautifully drawn cartoons reflecting the issues of the period.
everywhere, was never personally conspicuous. He did not make speeches, or sit on platforms, or seek office. His very portrait was almost unknown. In an age when publicity comes easily to less eminent men, when, indeed, popular persons are so much written about that their work is less known than their way of working, Luther Bradley managed to live unobtrusively. Yet he had friends, thousands of friends who never saw him, but who felt that in his cartoons he spoke directly to them. They wrote to him, not as “Dear sir,” but as “Dear Mr. Bradley.” In the scrapbooks wherein he methodically pasted every cartoon he had published for the last seventeen years, he laid away scores of these letters, some from people of note, the majority from that vast body of “plain citizens” he loved to serve. They said in these letters he had “helped”‘ them. They asked his advice. Mothers poured out to him their thoughts. Little boys sent drawings painfully copying his style. He laid all these tenderly away where he could see them again. They were his banquets.
