David Graham Phillips

David Graham Phillips was an American novelist and journalist born on October 31st, 1867. He was born in Madison, Indiana. His tradition when it came to writing was the muckracker tradition. 

Education & Career

He graduated high school and went on to attend Asbury College, which is now known as Depauw University. After graduating college he went on to receive a degree from  Princeton University in 1887. His first job after obtaining a degree was in Cincinnati, Ohio as a newspaper reporter. From 1890 to 1893 he was a reporter for The Sun in New York City. Phillips then became the editor and a columnist at New York World until 1902. 

During his free time he wrote a novel called The Great God Success which produced enough revenue for him to become a freelance journalist as well as a fiction writing. Throughout his years of freelance he gained a reputation for being an excellent investigative journalist. He was considered, as stated earlier, a muckracker as well as a Progressive. A Progressive was someone that had the political idea that "the idea of progress" went with technology and science. A muckracker is someone that mostly wrote for popular magazines but it was investigative pieces.

In March of 1906 he wrote an article for Cosmopolitan called "The Treason of the Senate" which gave him a lot of national exposure. The article threw certain members of Congress under the bus by providing facts where these members of Congress were receiving payments and rewards from campaign contributors. This article, along with a few others, were the reason the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was created. Phillips also exposed big business corruption by the Standard Oil Company.

All of his investigative work paid off. His boss, William Randolph Hearst, asked that Phillips and his co-workers investigate corruption within the United States Senate. After months of investigation they discovered that two Senators from New York, Thomas Collier Platt and Chauncey M. Depew, were being very corrupt. Just Depew had received $50,000 from other companies. This work also prompted and inspired the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

Death

His reputation cost him his life. On January 24th, 1911, Phillips was shot outside the Princeton Club in Gramercy Park in New York City. The murderer was a paranoid man that thought Phillips had used his sister as a character in one of his stories. After Phillips died, his sister put together his final manuscript and had it published. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graham_Phillips