George Ade: Hoosier, Author, Playwright and Humorist
Early Career
Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry.
George Ade, "The Fable in Slang of the Brash Drummer and the Daughter Who Learned That There Were Others," 1899
Ade's writing career did not begin until after he graduated from Purdue. He briefly thought about becoming a lawyer and studied law for about seven weeks before he quit and joined the Lafayette newspaper, The Morning News, as a reporter. However, the News went out of business and Ade found work with another Lafayette newspaper, The Call. Ade soon developed a friendly newspaper rivalry with the Courier's star reporter, George Barr McCutcheon. George Barr, John McCutcheon's older brother, was also a Purdue alumnus, and would later gain fame as the author of many books including Graustark and Brewster's Millions
. The two reporters enjoyed a playful rivalry; in order to amuse each other on slow days, they often inserted quotations from their favorite play characters into local news stories. Ade eventually left the Call in search of higher pay and went to work in a patent medicine business where he was in charge of promoting several products, among them a smoking cure called No-Tobac. The first instruction in Ade's promotional pamphlet was to quit using tobacco immediately.
In 1889, John T. McCutcheon graduated from Purdue and moved to Chicago where he was hired as an illustrator for the Morning News, which later became the Chicago Record. McCutcheon repeatedly urged Ade to join him and the following year Ade moved to Chicago and began working for the Record as a weather reporter.
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