Carl Sandburg: Poet and Journalist

In 1911 E. W. Scripps decided to publish a newspaper that was completely free of advertising. The tabloid-sized newspaper was called The Day Book, and at a penny a copy, it aimed for a working-class market, crusading for higher wages, more unions, safer factories, lower streetcar fares, and women’s right to vote. It also tackled the important stories ignored by most other dailies. Carl Sandburg was employed by Scripps in 1913. As a socialist, Sandburg enjoyed working for the The Day Book. According to Duane C. S. Stoltzfus, the author of Freedom from Advertising (2007): "The Day Book served as an important ally of workers, a keen watchdog on advertisers, and it redefined news by providing an example of a paper that treated its readers first as citizens with rights rather than simply as consumers." The newspaper ceased publication in 1917.

Sandburg also contributed poems and articles to The Masses, a socialist journal edited by Max Eastman and run by a co-operative of radical writers and artists. Other members of the group included Floyd Dell, John Reed, William Walling, Sherwood Anderson, Upton Sinclair, Michael Gold, Amy Lowell, Louise Bryant, John Sloan, Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Robert Minor, K. R. Chamberlain, Stuart Davis, Lydia Gibson, George Bellows and Maurice Becker.


Sandburg's reputation as a major poet was established in 1916 with the publication of Chicago Poems. The book, with its urban themes and Sandburg's use of colloquialism, heralded a new development in American poetry. Sandburg produced several collections of poems over the next fifteen years including Cornhuskers (1918), Smoke and Steel (1920), Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) and Good Morning, America (1928).

As well as his poetry, Sandburg is known for series of books on the life of Abraham Lincoln. This included Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926), a book for children, Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928), Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932) and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939). This work won a Pulitzer Prize as did his Complete Poems (1950). Other books include the novel, Remembrance Rock (1948) and an autobiography of his early life, Always the Young Strangers (1952).

Sandburg continued to write poetry and some critics believe that Honey and Salt (1963) published when the author was 85, contains some of his best work.

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