Jacob A. Riis, who had been the police-headquarters reporter of the _Tribune_ since 1877, went to the _Evening Sun_ in 1890, coincident with the publication of his first popular work, “How the Other Half Lives.” Other of his works, including “The Children of the Poor” and “Out of Mulberry Street,” were written while he was the chief police reporter of the _Evening Sun_. Riis’s work was valuable, not only to the paper, but to the city itself. His writings attracted the attention of Theodore Roosevelt when the future President was head of the police board of New York (1895–1897), and the men became close friends. Together they worked to improve conditions in the tenement districts, and Roosevelt called Riis “New York’s most useful citizen.” [Illustration: WILL IRWIN ] [Illustration: FRANK WARD O’MALLEY ] [Illustration: EDWIN C. HILL ] Thomas M. Dieuaide, whose work for the _Sun_ in the Spanish War has been referred to in this volume, and who became city editor of the _Evening Sun_, was one of Riis’s colleagues. Dieuaide was the author of the _Evening Sun’s_ broadside against the black vice of the East Side. Printed in 1901, shortly before the beginning of a mayoralty campaign, it was a prime factor in the election of a reforming administration. Richard Harding Davis was not the only fiction-writer to graduate from the _Evening Sun’s_ school. Irvin S. Cobb got his start in the North as an _Evening Sun_ reporter. He came to New York from Paducah, Kentucky, rented a hall room, and sat down and wrote to the managing editor of the _Evening Sun_ a letter of application so humorous that he was employed immediately. His report of the peace conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, following the Russo-Japanese War, attracted wide attention. Stephen French Whitman and Algernon Blackwood, the novelists, were also _Evening Sun_ men. The _Evening Sun’s_ list of former dramatic critics includes Acton Davies and Edward Fales Coward, both playwrights, and Charles B. Dillingham, the theatrical manager. Arthur Woods, recently police commissioner of New York, and Robert Adamson, recently fire commissioner, were old _Evening Sun_ men. Frederick Palmer, Associated Press correspondent with the British forces in the great war, and Arthur Ruhl, a special correspondent at the front, are _Evening Sun_ alumni. In the early years of the _Evening Sun_ the chief editorial writer was James T. Watkins, whom Mr. Laffan had known in California as a man of wide scholarship and an economic expert. He was so prolific that it was a common saying in the office that, with Watkins at his desk, the _Evening Sun_ needed no other writers of editorial articles. Frank H. Simonds, who had been an editorial writer for the _Sun_ since 1908, became chief editorial writer for the _Evening Sun_ in 1913. In 1914 his war articles attracted wide attention. He was afterward editor of the _Tribune_.