Ding Darling: The Cartoonist

In an effort to save money for medical school tuition, J.N."Ding" Darling worked as a reporter for the Sioux City Journal after he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin.

Early in his work there, he had been ordered to obtain a photograph of a local lawyer involved in a colorful lawsuit, but failed in his mission because the irate barrister, cane in hand, chased him out of the courtroom. Darling, who had sketched since childhood, was able to furnish a drawing of the lawyer he had done earlier to use for publication. His editor liked his sketch and ran Darling's artwork with his article. Darling was soon instructed to draw depictions of Sioux City characters. Thus began a political cartooning career that spanned nearly a half-century.

Darling continued at the Journal as a reporter-cartoonist for six years before papers in Des Moines began to compete for his attention. Following his marriage, Darling took a position at the Des Moines Register.

In 1911, he said goodbye to the state he claimed as his home to work for the New York Globe for a short time. When he officially returned to Iowa to work for the Register again, after living in New York, he suggested, "The people of Iowa think more to the square inch than the people of New York think to the square mile...." The New York Herald Tribune offered to include Darling's cartoons in its syndicated service. Darling took the offer, which required monthly travel to New York while he continued to live and work otherwise in Des Moines.

Darling was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for cartoons nearly 20 years apart. He won the first of his Pulitzers in 1924 for his cartoon titled, "In Good Old U.S.A." At the time, it was the second Pulitzer to honor a cartoon. Darling was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for a cartoon he did that depicted Washington D.C. in a sea of paperwork called, "What a Place for a Waste Paper Salvage Campaign."

Darling was acclaimed by his peers as the foremost political cartoonist in the United States. After he had moved back to work for the Register, he continued to receive offers from other prestigious newspapers. Joseph Pulitzer himself had asked Darling to join the St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff, but Darling declined.

Darling retired from the Register in 1949. His work with the Des Moines Register and syndication nationwide by the New York Herald Tribune made "Ding" a household name.