Gustavus Myers

Gustavus Myers (1872–1942) was an American journalist and historian associated with the muckraking movement. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised in poverty, he worked as a newspaper reporter in New York and was for a time a member of the Socialist Party. The History of Tammany Hall (1901), written from court records and legislative inquiries, could at first find no publisher willing to risk it. His History of the Great American Fortunes (1910), tracing the Astor, Vanderbilt and other fortunes to fraud and privilege, was his most influential work, followed by histories of the Supreme Court, of Canadian wealth and of American idealism.