Page:Cartoons by Bradley.djvu/32

 straightway banished as unworthy. He took an honest pride in the fact that he did not have to fall back on makeshift or second rate ideas when he squared his elbows above his drawing board for the day's work. At that particular moment he was far more likely to find himself suffering from an embarrassment of riches in the form of many inviting subjects for treatment than from a dearth of ideas.

HEN he joined the staff of The Daily News Bradley was already a cartoonist of experience, having won notable success in Melbourne and having worked on other Chicago newspapers for several years. After he became the head of the art department of The Daily News, with general supervision over a considerable staff of artists and photographers, he attended to the many details of executive management along with his daily task of conceiving and executing a cartoon. Up to 11 or 12 o'clock each day his mind was busy with ideas for possible cartoons in the midst of the distractions of other duties. These ideas he would sketch out in the crudest way with a soft pencil, each rudimentary cartoon on its own sheet of ordinary rough paper. With the penciled sheets, usually numbering from three to half a dozen, he would come to my room, usually a little before noon, and we would talk over these ideas and perhaps other ideas would be developed.

Questions of clearness, appropriateness, vigor, unity and timeliness would commonly arise and often there was a choice to be made among a number of acceptable subjects. Frequently several different methods of treating the same subject would be considered and each would be sketched out in pencil or rearranged on the sheet with a few swift strokes by Bradley in the course of the conversation. The fertility of Bradley's mind, enriched by much reading of history, biography and other substantial works, and broadened by travel and observation as well as by thought which had produced in him strong convictions, was continually in evidence at such times. I frequently said to him in our discussions that I conceived it to be