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"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.
Ding
Darling, the man
Ding
Darling, the conservationist
Ding
Darling cartoons
Ding
Darling Conservation Education Fund at INHF
Ding
Darling publications and links
back to the Ding
Darling intro page
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