He attended De La Salle Institute with his twin brother Victor F. Ridder and graduated from Columbia College in 1907.
[3][4] After graduating from Columbia, Ridder worked in the press room of the Staats-Zeitung, which his father recently acquired.
Ridder worked for Henry Ford until his father's death in 1915, when he rejoined his brothers at the family newspaper.
[2] During World War II, Ridder was staunchly pro-American and defended his family paper from accusations of pro-German sympathies.
He became president and operating head of the Journal of Commerce and filed many dispatches from Germany after World War II.