Goldberg's first public hit was a comic strip called "Foolish Questions", beginning in 1908. The invention cartoons began in 1912. The "New York Evening Mail" was syndicated to the first newspaper syndicate, the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, giving Goldberg's cartoons a wider distribution, and by 1915 he was earning $25,000 per year and being billed by the paper as America's most popular cartoonist. Arthur Brisbane had offered Goldberg $2,600 per year in 1911 in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to move to William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain, and in 1915 raised the offer to $50,000 per year. Rather than lose Goldberg to Hearst, the "New York Evening Mail" matched the salary offer and formed the Evening Mail Syndicate to syndicate Goldberg's cartoons nationally.