The Clarion

1914. American author, Adams was a reporter for the New York Sun, who at the urging of his friend Ray Stannard Baker, joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. Adams also wrote a series of articles for Collier's Weekly, in which he exposed patent medicines; these pieces were credited with influencing the passage of the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. A prolific writer, Adams produced both fiction and nonfiction. His best-known novel, Revelry, was based on the scandals of the Harding administration. The Clarion begins: Between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. A soft breeze, playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk on the ground. Shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of the platform, accentuated, as in bronze, the bosses of the face, and gleamed deeply in the dark, bold eyes.