Rogers taught himself to draw[2] and began submitting political cartoons to Midwestern newspapers in his teens.

[1] At the age of fourteen, his first cartoons appeared in a Dayton, Ohio-based newspaper, to which Rogers' mother had earlier submitted a selection of his sketches.

[2] In 1877, he was hired by Harper's Weekly to draw the magazine's political cartoons after the departure of Thomas Nast.

[5] Walt Reed, author of The Illustrator in America: 1860-2000, writes that while Rogers cartoons "never quite approached Nast's in power, his ideas were strongly presented and his drawings somewhat more skillful.

[6] After leaving Harper's Weekly, Rogers was hired by the New York Herald, where he drew cartoons daily for a total of twenty years.