Wilson Mizner? Thomas Aloysius Dorgan? Tad Dorgan? Bill Downing? Wilton Lackaye? Clare Briggs? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: The initial stages of activities can be quite challenging. This hardship is reflected in following saying: the first year is the hardest. When the required period of endurance is extended to multiple years the saying becomes more outlandish and comical. A wit concocted this extreme statement:
The first hundred years are the hardest.
This saying has been credited to U.S. playwright Wilson Mizner and U.S. cartoonist Thomas Aloysius Dorgan, also known as Tad. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared within a one panel comic by Thomas Aloysius Dorgan in January 1918. A small dog in the lower right of the panel utters the following line. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
WELL, AS BILL DOWNING SAYS THE FIRST 100 YEARS ARE THE HARDEST
QI is unsure of the identity of Bill Downing. Multiple people shared that name in the U.S. in 1918. Perhaps Downing was one of Dorgan’s friends.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Comical statements which fit this template were circulating previously. For example, in 1912 a newspaper in Minnesota reported that an actor employed a jocular statement using “twenty-six years” instead of a “hundred years”:2
Wilton Lackaye is entertaining in Chicago, both in the theater in which he is employed, playing a principal role in “Fine Feathers,” and in the cafes where he occasionally dines and relaxes.
. . .
“The tall- man,” explained Miss Weston, “has been married to the short woman twenty-six years tonight, and they are very, very happy,” Mr. Lackaye glowed. “Fine!” he said; “I’m glad of it. The first twenty-six years are always the hardest.”
In January 1918 a comic strip by Thomas Aloysius Dorgan attributed the quotation to Bill Downing as mentioned above.
In February 1918 the columnist Louis Lee Arms of the “New York Tribune” attributed the quotation to Dorgan:3
As Thomas Aloysius says, the first hundred years are the hardest!
In July 1918 the saying appeared as the title of a comic about golf by cartoonist Clare Briggs. No attribution for the saying was given:4
The First Hundred Years Are the Hardest
In August 1918 an article in “The Buffalo Evening Times” of New York credited an extended version of the saying to Wilson Mizner. This instance used the word “toughest” instead of “hardest”:5
Wilson Mizner, playwright, actor and author of the expression, “Life’s a tough proposition and the first 100 years are the toughest part of it,” was before Magistrate Groenl in the West Side Court yesterday, testifying in a much-involved case.
In September 1918 the widely syndicated New York columnist O. O. McIntyre credited Mizner with a instance using “hardest”:6
Wilson Mizner, White Way boulevardier, and creator of the line “Life is a tough proposition and the first hundred years are the hardest,” has been regaling Broadway while acting as a court witness this week. Mizner swatted a movie actor in a row over a Follies beauty and was arrested.
In October 1918 a columnist in “The Shreveport Journal” of Louisiana credited Mizner with a variant statement:7
Cite07
As Wilson Mizner says, “Why worry about the war?” “The first 100 years are the worst.”
Also, in October 1918 the saying appeared in a song by J. P. McEvoy:8
CHORUS.
The first hundred years are the hardest,
The first hundred years are the worst;
After that I’ll have forgotten
All the troubles and the trottin’
In 1921 journalist and scholar H. L. Mencken published the second edition of “The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States”. Mencken attributed the saying to World War I soldiers:9
The war, as we have seen in the chapter on Slang, produced very little new slang, but the doughboys showed all the national talent for manufacturing proverbs and proverbial expressions, chiefly derisive.
…
Perhaps the favorite in the army was “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” though “They say the first hundred years are the hardest” offered it active rivalry.
In 1949 “The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” edited by Evan Esar attributed the saying to Mizner:10
MIZNER, Wilson, 1876-1933, American dramatist, bon vivant, and wit.
Life’s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest.
In 1953 Alva Johnston published “The Legendary Mizners”, and he credited the saying to Wilson Mizner:11
Many of Mizner’s lines have passed into the language. Some, like “Life’s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest,” are passing out again after long and hard service. His rules “No opium-smoking in the elevators” and “Carry out your own dead,” which he put into effect as manager of the Hotel Rand, in New York, in 1907, have become standard hotel practice.
In 1971 Leonard Louis Levinson published “Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations”, and he credited himself, i.e., LLL, with a variant saying:12
The first hundred years are the heartiest. LLL
In 1990 “American Literary Anecdotes” by Robert Hendrickson contained an entry for Dorgan:13
Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (1877-1929)
TAD, as the New York Journal reporter and cartoonist was known (after the initials of his name), may well have been the most prolific of American word and phrase coiners. He is credited with originating many expressions, including, “The first hundred years are the hardest” …
In conclusion, the earliest match in January 1918 located by QI appeared in a comic by Thomas Aloysius Dorgan; hence, he helped to popularize the expression, but Dorgan credited Bill Downing. There is evidence that Wilson Mizner used the expression by August 1918, but the Dorgan’s comic occurred earlier. Several other people used the saying in 1918, so any ascription is tentative. Also, citations discovered by future researchers may provide additional illumination.
Image Notes: Detail from January 9, 1918 “Indoor Sports” comic by Thomas Aloysius Dorgan. The image has been cropped.
Acknowledgements: “The ‘Quote…Unquote’ Newsletter” of October 2024 edited by Nigel Rees discussed a family of expressions about aging such as “the first 80 years are the worst”. This discussion inspired QI to create this article about a related saying. Thanks to “The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs” compiled by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro which contained two pertinent entries. The entry for “The first hundred years are the hardest” listed a helpful citation dated July 29, 1918. The entry for “The first five (six, etc.) years are the hardest” listed a helpful citation dated February 1918. Also, thanks to “The Quote Verifier” by Ralph Keyes which noted that the saying had been credited to both Wilson Mizner and Tad Dorgan.
- 1918 January 9, The Fort Wayne News And Sentinel, One Panel Comic: Indoor Sports by Tad (Thomas Aloysius “Tad” Dorgan), Quote Page 14, Column 2, Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1912 December 29, The Sunday Journal, Section 8: Society, Just a Jest Or Two, Quote Page 8, Column 5, Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 February 12, New York Tribune, Listening In by Louis Lee Arms, Short Editorial, Quote Page 12, Column 4, New York. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 July 25, Grand Forks Herald, The First Hundred Years Are the Hardest: (Title of comic strip signed Briggs – Clare Briggs), Quote Page 4, Column 3, Grand Forks, North Dakota. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 August 29, The Buffalo Evening Times, Mizner in Street Row Over an Actress, Quote Page 8, Column 6, Buffalo, New York. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 September 21, Coshocton Tribune, New York Day-By-Day by O. O. McIntyre, Quote Page 2, Column 3, Coshocton, Ohio. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 October 8, The Shreveport Journal, On the Spur of the Moment by Roy K. Moulton, Quote Page 4, Column 3, Shreveport, Louisiana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1918 October 20, Chicago Tribune, Slams of Life by J. P. McEvoy, Song Title: The first hundred years are the hardest, Section 7, Quote Page 9, Column 4, Chicago, Illinois. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1921, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States by H. L. Mencken (Henry Louis Mencken), Second Edition Revised and Enlarged, Section: Appendix, Chapter 3: Proverb and Platitude, Quote Page 425, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. (Internet Archive at archive.org) ↩︎
- 1949 Copyright, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Edited by Evan Esar, Section: Wilson Mizner, Quote Page 146, Bramhall House, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1953, The Legendary Mizners by Alva Johnston, Chapter 4: The Sport, Quote Page 66, Farrar, Straus and Young, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1971, Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations by Leonard Louis Levinson, Topic: Twisted Proverbs, Quote Page 306, Cowles Book Company: Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1990, American Literary Anecdotes by Robert Hendrickson, Section: Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (1877-1929), Quote Page 56, Facts on File, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎