Early Career
Lasker started working as a newspaper reporter while a teenager. He assisted the successful Congressional campaign of the Republican Robert Hawley in 1896. Although Texas politics had been dominated by the Democratic Party since shortly after Reconstruction, in this election, many voters split between the Democrats and the Populist Party, and Hawley won with less than 50% of the votes.
In 1898 his father persuaded Lasker to move to Chicago to try an advertising position at Lord & Thomas. After he worked as an office boy for a year, one of the agency's salesmen left, and Lasker acquired his territory. During this time, Lasker created his first campaign. He hired a friend, Eugene Katz, to write the copy for a series of Wilson Ear Drum Company ads. They featured a photograph of a man cupping his ear. George Wilson, president of the Ear Drum company, adopted the ads and his sales increased.
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