James Julius Chambers was born on November 21, 1850 at Bellefontaine, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Joseph and Sarabella (Walker) Chambers. When he was eleven years old he decided he would work in a newspaper office and thereafter spent most of his vacations in the office of a Bellefontaine newspaper.
Education
In 1870 he was graduated from Cornell University.
Career
He became a reporter on the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley. Illness forced him to leave New York for a time, and in the summer of 1872 he explored the headwaters of the Mississippi River in a Baden-Powell canoe, going above Lake Itasca to discover Elk Lake, connected with Itasca by a stream since named Chambers Creek. For this discovery he was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His trip furnished material for a series of letters published in the New York Herald, and later a book, The Mississippi River and Its Wonderful Valley (1910). Returning to New York and the service of the Tribune in August 1872, with the connivance of the city editor he arranged to be committed as insane to the Bloomingdale Asylum in order to obtain authentic information as to alleged abuses of the inmates. His friends secured his release after ten days, and his reports and stories in the Tribune resulted in the release of some twelve sane persons, in a general readjustment of the authorities of the institution and eventually, it is said, in the revision of the state lunacy laws. These experiences were later published in A Mad World and Its Inhabitants, an excellent piece of colorful and descriptive reporting. In 1873 he joined the staff of the New York Herald, serving as correspondent in various parts of the world, and for a time as city editor. In 1886 Bennett appointed him managing editor and in the following year called him to Paris to launch the Paris Herald. This done, Chambers returned to the managing desk in New York. In 1889 he was offered by Joseph Pulitzer the managing editorship of the New York World, which he retained until 1891. His remaining years were devoted to travel, literature, and many incidental jobs which offered themselves. He was non-resident lecturer on journalism at Cornell University in 1903-04 and at New York University in 1910. . In 1904 he began a column in the Brooklyn Eagle, called "Walks and Talks, " which he continued until the day before he died. In 1912 he brought out a large volume called The Book of New York, containing his recollections of personal contacts with important personages during his newspaper career. At the time of his death he was engaged in revising a book for the press, News Hunting on Three Continents (1921), a good human-interest account of a reporter's life.