[2] Dunne's sly humor and political acumen won the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, a frequent target of Mr. Dooley's barbs.

[3] Dunne's sketches became so popular and such a litmus test of public opinion that they were read each week at White House cabinet meetings.

In the late 19th century, he and Eugene Field garnered attention for the humorous columns they separately published in the Chicago Daily News.

His writing talent became clear to newspaper rivals perusing the pages of the Telegram, and Chicago Daily News managing editor Harry Ten Eyck White lured him away in 1885 at an increase in salary.

[10] Instead of longer editorials, White preferred pithy comments ranging from sentence to paragraph length, and gave Dunne training in this.

Editor White, a humorist of local note and a racing fan, had invented a character, "the horse reporter", who dispensed earthy wisdom to a Chicago newsroom's visitors, and had written a series of sketches about an Irish family living on Archer Avenue, Dooley's future home.

[13] Dunne's city was at this time baseball-mad over the success of the Chicago White Stockings, and in the spring of 1887, the Daily News started covering baseball games (rather than merely printing the final score).

Historian Charles Fanning deemed Dunne's coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions "brilliant" and Times management must have agreed, for they made him city editor, although only aged 21.

Alexander Sullivan, local head of the Clan-na-Gael, was borrowing funds from it for market speculation, something loudly opposed by a member, Dr. John Patrick Cronin, who subsequently vanished after climbing into a vehicle of men who said his services were needed.

[20] About the time Dunne moved to the Tribune, he and other young Chicago journalists formed the Whitechapel Club, named for the locale of the crimes of Jack the Ripper.

The club attracted attention for its stunts, including two semi-humorous mayoral campaigns and the midnight cremation of a member who had committed suicide that was well covered in the papers.

The club provided the venue for frank political discussions among members who generally were far more progressive than their employers, and the young journalists bluntly critiqued each other's writing.

Before the end of the year, he moved again, this time to the Chicago Herald—publisher John R. Walsh and editor James W. Scott were building a staff composed mainly of enthusiastic younger journalists, including Dunne's old colleague from the ballpark, Seymour.

Several Whitechapel members were there, as was future politician Brand Whitlock, who later wrote, "when they induced 'Pete' Dunne to come over from the Tribune, the staff seemed complete".

[23] Dunne was transferred to the Walsh-owned Chicago Evening Post after the 1892 conventions and was put in charge of its editorial page under the paper's editor, Cornelius McAuliff.

[24] Another biographer, Ellis, noted that Abbott, a widow who had lived for some years in Calcutta, was the wittiest woman Dunne had ever met and that she recognized his genius.

Assigned by his paper to cover the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the city appointed him as its representative at a number of events there that had an Irish connection.

[24] The first Dooley articles appeared when Dunne was chief editorial writer for the Chicago Post, and for a number of years, he wrote the pieces without a byline or initials.

[27] In 1899, under the title Mr Dooley in Peace and War, a collection of the pieces was brought out in book form, received rave reviews from the critics.

The two finally met at the Republican Convention in 1900, where Roosevelt, then governor of New York, gave him a news scoop—he would accept the nomination as vice presidential candidate.

Dunne's "Dooley" essays were based on realistic depictions of working-class life, and did not reflect the idealism of most political commentators of the Progressive Era.