Stripper's Guide

…About the only one who had the necessary skill and could give the required lightning action was Charles Lederer, of the Herald, who has the honor of having introduced this brand of newspaper enterprise in Chicago. The son of an artist residing in Lowell, Mass., Mr. Lederer, was born thirty-six years ago, and has been making pictures for a living for the past twenty. He could furnish a barrel of interesting incidents of a variegated career, but won't. He possesses an extraordinary facility, originality, and a gracefulness in drawing. Its most prominent characteristic is its large popularity with the masses, which has done much to place the Herald where it is in popular esteem. He is short, but won't admit it, has the hair and complexion of a stage villain, and has thus far escaped matrimony. He is a great club man, but claims to travel in the goody-goody class. He admits having $4.75 in the bank and $1.69 due and outstanding, under the impression that Mr. Bradstreet would see this notice. He speaks English in a North Clark street dialect. When pressed to give an account of himself he stated that he had struck out at 16 and worked on nearly all the New York illustrated papers and after having been discharged from the same number came to Chicago in 1877. Then he did general designing, illustrating publications from the pinkest of sporty papers to Sunday school books, with great impartiality. In 1883 newspaper illustration was introduced, and he worked on the Mail, Times, Tribune, News and Herald, remaining with the latter since 1885. Besides the regular run of newspaper illustration, he has done "comics," caricatures, and special and humorous writing which achieved much popularity.

…he is known all over the country as the great cartoonist of the old Chicago Herald, on which paper he made his reputation. He still contributes a story, for Lederer can write, with pictures to the Chicago Times-Herald on Sunday, but his principle work is now being done on the New York Mercury, the first page of which is daily illuminated with a cartoon from Lederer's pen. His illustrations of various phases of political life in the empire state are attracting considerable attention, and his pictures are already being copied, although he did not commence his work on the Mercury until the first of this month. Lederer's pen is a wicked one, and as a political cartoonist he is a terror to the opposition. Fortunately he is a democrat, from choice and principle, and therefore his thrusts are damaging to the enemy alone.

Charles Lederer, the veteran Chicago cartoonist, accompanied by Mrs. Lederer, has been visiting the Pacific coast. He attended the meetings of the National Educational Association in Los Angeles, and looked in at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Since his retirement from the active newspaper field, which he entered in the days of chalk plates, Mr. Lederer has been writing and illustration a series of art books for school use.