Charles H. Jones, journalist and politician of the Gilded Age

Biographer Thomas Graham traces Jone's development in three broad areas: ideas, journalism, and politics. Drawn to two great intellectual movements of the late 1800s, Jones espoused first a conservative Social Darwinism, later a Bryanist progressivism. One of a vanishing breed of politician-journalists, he was a force both in business and in state politics. Graham details, for example, Jones's machinations in the 1884 Florida election (a case study in preprimary election politics) as well as his problems at Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union with news gathering, advertisers, and competing newspapers. Of interest to historians and political scientists as well as journalists of all stripes and stations, Graham's biography of the colorful and influential C.H. Jones is particularly welcome in light of the current interest in turn-of-the-century journalism history.