Editor Emeritus

Charles Henry Dennis went to work on the Chicago Daily News less than a year after he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1881. He started as a night police reporter, was soon covering murder trials at the Criminal Courts Building. Later he was assigned to the anarchist uprisings that preceded the Haymarket riots. Like other Newsmen, he wrote his stories in longhand, warmed his shins at the fat-bellied stove in the "local" room.

A year after Dennis joined the News, a young man named Eugene Field got a job on the same paper. For four years (1887-91) Dennis and Field shared an office. They swapped jokes while Field wrote his column (Sharps and Flats) for the paper and unprintable verses for his own amusement, and Dennis wrote editorials. Then, as now, sanitation was prime news in Chicago. His editorials urged construction of a drainage canal (started in 1892), deplored the famed Haymarket riots (1886) and graft in the County Commissioner's office.

In 1892, Dennis became managing editor of the Record (morning paper owned by the News). He sent one of the first correspondents to Cuba to cover the rebellion that preceded the Spanish-American War. At the Battle of Manila Bay Dennis' correspondent was John McCutcheon, later to win fame as the Chicago Tribune's cartoonist.

In 1901, Victor Lawson sold the Record, made Charles Dennis chief editorial writer and manager of foreign news for his evening paper, the Daily News. Lawson and Dennis made the News's foreign service, for a time, the best in the U. S. When Lawson and Dennis started, most foreign news reached Chicago second-hand by way of London. Dennis trained a staff of correspondents, sent them all over the world.

In the Boxer Rebellion, Dr. Morrison of the London Times and Dr. Robert Coltman of the News were besieged in the foreign compound at Peking. A Chinese beggar smuggled their stories to Tientsin. In 1904, the News had a reporter traveling with Kuroki's Army through Manchuria. When Japan silenced the wireless on the London Times's dispatch boat, the News was left with the only working press craft in the Yellow Sea. Victor Lawson was more concerned with making the News a good paper than running up his circulation, but the News grew with its city.

By 1912, Charles Dennis was managing editor of the News. When the War broke he had what he considered the best foreign staff of any U. S. paper ready for action. Harry Hansen, now the New York World-Telegram's book critic, followed the German army through Belgium. First description of Big Berthas to reach the U. S. came to the Daily News from Raymond Swing in Berlin. Lewis Edgar Brown was with the Serbian army that retreated through Albania. His reports were re-cabled from Chicago to the London Times. In London, Edward Price Bell got interviews with Lord Grey that were reprinted all over the world. Charles Dennis himself went to Paris in 1919 to help cover the Peace Conference. All News correspondents during the War and for years after were not only crack newshawks but also unofficial U. S. Ambassadors who dipped discreetly in and out of world diplomacy.

When Victor Lawson died in 1925. Charles Dennis became editor of the News, kept his job when Frank Knox bought the paper in 1931. A white-haired, tireless man who looked and talked like a Roman Senator, he continued to write and rewrite the editorial page in longhand on a board laid across his knees.

Last week, at 74, Charles Dennis retired as editor of the News, became its Editor Emeritus.* He will retain his salary and office where he expects to write a biography of his old friend Victor Lawson. Publisher Knox assumed the title of editor and publisher, gave the job of chief editorial writer to the News's seasoned Paris correspondent, Paul Scott Mowrer.

*Another Editor Emeritus: Arthur Millidge Howe of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

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