In 1891, Myers went to work as a reporter for the
Philadelphia Record, leaving the next year for
New York City, where he remained for the rest of his life. In the 1890s, Myers became a member of the
People's Party (commonly known as the "Populists"), later joining the
Socialist Party of America (SPA). He published 'The History of
Tammany Hall' in 1901, and to explore his interest in
parapsychology,
Beyond the Borderline of Life in (1910). In the 1910s, he emerged as a leading scholar on
American socialism by authoring a series of volumes for the
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the country's largest publisher of
pamphlets and books on
Marxism. Between 1909 and 1914 Myers published three volumes on the history of family wealth in the
United States, one volume on the same topic for
Canada, and a history of the
Supreme Court of the United States. These publications were frequently cited and used in an academic setting for several decades, with Myers'
History of the Great American Fortunes revived in a single volume format in 1936.
History of the Great American Fortunes was Myers' most important and influential work, documenting at great length the corruption and criminality underlying the formation and accumulation of the great American fortunes of the 19th century. From Astor and Vanderbilt, Jay Gould and Marshall Field, Stanford and Harriman, to Elkins, Morgan and Hill, Whitney, Rockefeller, Dodge, Havemeyer and numerous others, Myers detailed the permanently devastating effects of wealth accumulation on the structure of the American economy, society, and the quality of life of the vast majority of Americans. Myers' approach was by no means
Marxist and he split with the
Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1917 over the SPA's position against
US involvement in World War I. His perspective was to expose the legal and administrative enablement of
financial crimes by legislation and the
corruption of government bodies nominally delegated to enforce it. His work and approach could be compared to the modern political writings of
Noam Chomsky, such as
Manufacturing Consent, which patiently explain the functionality of modern propaganda models through scholarly documentation. In 1918, Myers contributed to the US war effort by publishing a book attacking what he called "Germany's Sinister Propaganda," ''The German Myth: The Falsity of Germany's "Social Progress" Claims.
Myers received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941, which he used to write a book entitled History of Bigotry in the United States''. ==Death ==