SOURCE: “A Columnist Is Born,” in Heywood Broun: A Biographical Portrait, Current Books, Inc., 1949, pp. 91-102.

In the following excerpt from his biography of Broun, Kramer recounts the development of Broun's career as a newspaper columnist.

One day in the spring of 1919 Broun was dawdling about the high-ceilinged living room of his old-fashioned apartment at Seventh Avenue and 55th Street. Even the fact that Rudyard Kipling had once dwelt in the same rooms was no boon to inspiration. Neither for the moment was a small Shetland terrier named Michael, who was, as usual, angry about something.

Finally Broun sat down, rolled a sheet of copy paper into his typewriter, and hung his big forefingers over the keys. Slowness of inspiration may have been the result of fatigue. The day before he had been to the country looking at farmhouses with an eye to purchasing one.

The subject pressing...