David Graham Phillips was an American novelist and muckraker journalist. Phillips was born in Madison, Ind. After graduating from high school, Phillips enrolled at Asbury College (now DePauw University) and eventually earned a degree from Princeton in 1887. After finishing his studies, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio, before relocating to New York City, where he was a reporter for The Sun from 1890 to 1893, and then a columnist and editor for the New York World until 1902. In his leisure time, he wrote a novel called The Great God Success, which was released in 1901. The royalty income enabled him to work as a freelance journalist while also writing fiction. Phillips' novels typically addressed current social issues and recounted occurrences based on his own journalistic experiences. He was regarded as a Progressive, and for exposing corruption in the Senate, he was called a muckraker. In March 1906, Phillips published an article in Cosmopolitan titled "The Treason of the Senate," which exposed campaign contributors who were rewarded by select members of the United States Senate. The story sparked a harsh attack on Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and gave Phillips a lot of national attention. This and other similar pieces contributed to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established popular rather than state-legislative election of U.S. Senators.
