Ray Stannard Baker

Ray Stannard Baker. “David Grayson.” [Born] 1870. Author.

In his fifty years of professional work he reported with straight vision and intellectual integrity the major events and trends of his time—excepting only the second World War—beginning with the March of Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike of 1894. As a “muckraker”—now a term of honor—he exposed the failures of American democracy, the corruption of municipal and state governments, the abuses of economic privilege that were the legacies of the so-called Gilded Age. Yet, as the serene “David Grayson,” he was also a gentle philosopher of contentment and of the satisfactions of right living and of love of man for man.

His final great work was as the editor and spokesman and authorized biographer of President Wilson.

Up Amherst way they speak of him as an unassuming and kindly neighbor who carried his many distinctions lightly, as a good listener always ready for a sidewalk conference, and as a devoted champion of the well-being of his fellow men.

In the Century, where he came whenever he was in New York, that also is the way we remember him.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1946 Memorials