Background
William Allen Rogers, son of William Allen and Elizabeth (Smith) Rogers, was born at Springfield, Ohio.
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William Allen Rogers, son of William Allen and Elizabeth (Smith) Rogers, was born at Springfield, Ohio.
He studied at the Wittenberg College and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but he never graduated.
An early aptitude for drawing won him a position with a farm-implement company, making fancy scrolls on plows and mowing machines. At fourteen he was selling cartoons to a group of Middle-Western newspapers, and thus became the first American cartoonist to be syndicated. In 1873 he joined the staff of the original Daily Graphic in New York City, served on this paper till 1877, and then commenced a long association with Harper's Weekly. At that time newspaper photography was impracticable, and all illustration was the work of an artist who actually sketched the event as it was happening. It was customary, in making a sketch of an inauguration or a parade, to visit the scene somewhat in advance, make a careful drawing of the setting, and fill in the principal figures later. Naturally, the artist had to work rapidly. In making a death-bed sketch of President Garfield, Rogers had only a few moments in which to absorb and record the scene. On the back of a paper bag he indicated the outline of the dying president, the attendant doctors and relatives, then elaborated these from photographs. The original drawing is with many others, now in the permanent collection of the New York Public Library. Rogers' career as a political cartoonist began on October 2, 1880. Thomas Nast happened to be absent from Harper's office, and Rogers leapt into the breach by making a pungent cartoon on the Garfield-Hancock campaign, depicting the moribund Democratic party receiving a transfusion of blood from the "stalwart" general. With that cartoon Rogers laid the cornerstone of his reputation, and for the next forty years his pictorial commentary on political events and the news of the day - woman's suffrage, vivisection, silver, Zeppelins, Wall Street, cold storage, Tammany Hall - appeared in Harper's Weekly, Harper's Monthly Magazine, Life, Puck, and the New York Herald. In these cartoons Rogers gave a direct and simplified "pictorializing of opinion, " which could be easily apprehended by the commonest intelligence. Caricaturist he was not; there is no trace of distortion in the lineaments or physique of his characters.
Both his line and his viewpoint, while far from saccharine, lack the savagery of Nast and Daumier, and one has the feeling that Rogers was essentially a well-tempered, healthy, and sympathetic human being. Only during the World War did he lose his balance. In 1914 James Gordon Bennett sent his editors a cable from Europe saying, "Tell Rogers there is only one issue in this war. It is the issue between civilization and savagery" (A World Worth While, p. 256). Rogers responded with a series of war cartoons, afterward published in a volume entitled America's Black and White Book: One Hundred Pictured Reasons Why We are at War (1917), in which he brutally and often hysterically assailed Germany's leaders and war ideals. So powerful and effective were these cartoons, however, that the French government awarded Rogers membership in the Legion of Honor at the close of the war. If Rogers had not gained fame as a political cartoonist he would still be affectionately remembered as an illustrator of children's books. As a boy, Booth Tarkington was of the opinion that the illustrator of Toby Tyler "must be a pretty fine man. " The stories of James Otis and Kirk Munroe were enriched by Rogers' gentle, humorous drawings as they appeared serially in Harper's Young People and later in book form. Between 1920 and 1922 Rogers was director of the Illustrators' School for Disabled Soldiers, financed by the Federal Board for Vocational Education. Thereafter he was on the staff of the Washington Post, and also found time to write his memoirs, A World Worth While (1922)--an autobiography that reveals his essential belief in the goodness of life and humanity. His other published works include: Danny's Partner (1923), The Miracle Mine (1925), and The Lost Caravan (1927). On October 20, 1931, Rogers succumbed to a heart malady after a brief illness in his home at Washington, D. C. , United States
member of the Legion of Honor
Rogers was essentially a well-tempered, healthy, and sympathetic human being.
Quotes from others about the person
In 1914 James Gordon Bennett sent his editors a cable from Europe saying, "Tell Rogers there is only one issue in this war. It is the issue between civilization and savagery" (A World Worth While, p. 256).
He had married, on April 10, 1879, Sarah Butler of Springfield, Ohio. A son and a daughter survived him.