Career
Other info : Furtherreading | Bibliography
Held many odd jobs, including work as milk-delivery boy, barber shop porter, fireman, truck operator, and apprentice house painter; sold films for Underwood and Underwood; helped to organize Wisconsin Socialist Democratic Party; worked for Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Daily News; city hall reporter for Milwaukee Journal; secretary to Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel, 1910-12; worked for Milwaukee Leader and Chicago World, 1912; worked for Day Book (daily), Chicago, 1912-17; System: The Magazine of Business, Chicago, associate editor, February to early fall, 1913 (returned to Day Book); worked for Chicago Evening American for three weeks in 1917; Newspaper Enterprise Association (390 newspapers), Stockholm correspondent, 1918, ran Chicago office, 1919; Chicago Daily News, 1917-30, served as reporter (covered Chicago race riots), editorial writer, and motion picture editor, later continued as columnist until 1932; wrote weekly column syndicated by Chicago Daily Times, beginning in 1941. Presidential Medal of Freedom lecturer, University of Hawaii, 1934; Walgreen Foundation Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1940. Contributed newspaper columns to Chicago Times Syndicate and radio broadcasts such as "Cavalcade of America" and foreign broadcasts for the Office of War Information during World War II. Lectured and sang folk songs to his own guitar accompaniment.
