Life in the Midwest gave Briggs the source material for the small town Americana that he later depicted in his cartoons.

One day he ordered me to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem, and while I was giving the problem a hard but losing battle, he remarked: 'Briggs, sit down, you don't know anything.'

He began his career as a newspaper sketch artist in St. Louis, Missouri with the Globe-Democrat, which sent him off to cover the Spanish–American War as an editorial cartoonist.

He lived in to the suburban community of New Rochelle, a well-known art colony and home to a majority of the top commercial illustrators of the day.

[4] During the 1920s, the New Rochelle Art Association commissioned its best known artists to create a series of signs on major roadways to mark the borders, including "New Rochelle The Place To Come When a Feller Needs a Friend", which was created by Briggs representing one of his major comics, "When a Feller Needs a Friend".

The Mr. and Mrs. radio series, based on Briggs' strip, starred Jack Smart and Jane Houston as Jo and Vi.

National catchphrases caught on from the titles of some of his newspaper cartoon features: Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Movie of a Man, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone's Always Taking the Joy Out of Life, There's at Least One in Every Office and When a Feller Needs a Friend.

[9][10] In September 1929, neuritis of the optic nerve led Briggs to Baltimore for treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Briggs' death in 1930 prompted Franklin P. Adams to write: I feel acutely the loss of a cartoonist whose work I have enjoyed hugely for 30 years.