An award-winning author and muckraking journalist, he was also a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His 1927 biography, The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. In an early article for Everybody's magazine, he condemned the Beef Trust. In his 1908 publication, Lawless Wealth, he also spoke out against the Tobacco Trust.
