Ray Stannard Baker became both a leading muckraking journalist of the Progressive era and an acclaimed writer of nonfiction books and pastoral prose. A native of Michigan, he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Record from 1892 to 1897 and joined the staff of the innovative and popular McClure's magazine in 1898. His influential articles, including "The Right to Work" (1903) and "The Railroads on Trial" (1905-1906), helped make the magazine the nation's foremost muckraking journal. Known for his fair-mindedness, Baker exposed both union and corporate malfeasance. In 1906 he helped form the American Magazine, also devoted to progressive causes, and co-edited it until 1916. From 1906 to 1942, under the pseudonym of David Grayson, Baker wrote an extremely popular series of novels celebrating the rural life. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for his eight-volume biography of Woodrow Wilson.

Further Reading:

Baker, Ray Stannard. Native American: The Book of My Youth. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941.

——. American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945.

Bannister, Robert C., Jr. Ray Stannard Baker: The Mind and Thought of a Progressive. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966.

Semonche, John E. Ray Stannard Baker: A Quest for Democracy in Modern America, 1870-1918. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1969.