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David Graham Phillips Research Paper

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David Graham Phillips “Treason is a strong word, but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be” (Proquest). This quote basically describes David Graham Phillips and how great of an American writer he was. David Graham Phillips was considered one of the great muckrakers and American Journalists of the muckraker era. He and other muckrakers worked to expose the abuses of power in politics, business, and many other aspects of American life. He was born on October 31st, 1867 in Madison Indiana. During his childhood, he grew very close to his sister Carolyn and he had a very happy childhood. He was …show more content…

They were Chauncey M. Depew and Nelson W. Aldrich. Depew worked as a lawyer until age 29 when he became the Secretary of State of New York. He also had a great relationship with the Vanderbilts, especially with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was in charge of the New York Central Railroad company at the time. He then had an incident when he reported the population of New York smaller than it actually was so the representation of the Democratic party could be decreased. This incident caused Depew to not be re-elected and he went on to work for the New York Central Railroad company, which would benefit the Vanderbilts greatly because once Depew was hired, he was put into a lobbyist-type position, which meant trying to bribe certain …show more content…

Since his first story sold so well, Phillips decided to leave journalism and concentrate on writing fiction. He worked long hours constantly, and he worked on a brutal, daily schedule every day. Many of his novels showed journalistic techniques to examine a story behind a dramatic situation and he had a lot of interest in the variety of social problems that were going on in the world at the time. In one of his stories, he talked about the wealth of certain social classes and their virtues. He was very interested in the corruption of money and the rise of American Democracy. He also wrote about the social and economic situation of women in three of his novels called Old Wives for New, which he wrote in 1908, The Hungry Heart which he wrote in 1909, The Price She Paid which he wrote in 1912, and arguably his best-known novel, Susan Lenox, which he wrote in 1917 and it’s basically about the story of a girl rising to success after she was from an illegal country, working as a prostitute. In the end of his career, he ended up writing 22 novels, a play, and a series of essays. Then at the end of his life, tragedy

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