Charles Edward Russell

He was born in Davenport, Iowa, a transportation center on the Mississippi River on the far eastern border of the state. His father, Edward Russell, was editor of the Davenport Gazette and a noted abolitionist. The Russell family was staunchly religious Christian Evangelicals, with Charles' grandfather a Baptist minister and his father a Sunday school superintendent and a leader of the Iowa YMCA.[1]

Russell attended St. Johnsbury Academy (Class of 1881), in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, for his high school education and also worked under his father at the newspaper.[2]

Russell wrote for the Minneapolis Journal, the Detroit Tribune, the New York World, William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan, and the New York Herald. He was employed as a newspaper writer and editor in New York and Chicago from 1894 to 1902, working successively for the New York World, the New York American, and the Chicago American.[3] In 1912 he appears as one of the editors of The Coming Nation, a socialist newspaper published by J. A. Wayland and Fred D. Warren in Girard, Kansas.[4]

Russell as drawn by Art Young in 1912.

In his memoirs, Bare Hands and Stone Walls, Russell stated that "transforming the world... to a place where one can know some peace... some joy of living, some sense of the inexhaustible beauties of the universe in which he has been placed" was the purpose that inspired his work and his life. Russell felt very strongly about the well-being of others after seeing the struggles that people all over New York had to undergo like the unfair working conditions and wages that people from all walks of life were forced to endure. People were placed into cramped working spaces with few, if any, breaks. Aside from the physical conditions, most big employers did not value the well-being of their employees, especially immigrants. With those horrendous mental images in place, Russell became inspired.[5]

Russell was one of a group of journalists at the turn of the 20th century who were called muckrakers. They investigated and reported not with cold detachment but with feeling and rage about the horrors of capitalism. The muckraker movement helped to jumpstart numerous reforms that included prison conditions, railroads and church-building conditions.[5]

In Soldier for the Common Good, an unpublished dissertation on Russell's life, author Donald Bragaw wrote, "Historian Louis Filler has called Russell the leader of the muckrakers for contributing 'important studies in almost every field in which they ventured.'" Shortly after his hiatus from writing because of the death of his first wife, Russell wrote one of his best books, "The Greatest Trust in the World," exposing the horrific ways of the meatpacking industry.[5]

Russell's reports on the corrupt practices and inhuman conditions at Chicago stock yards were the inspiration for Upton Sinclair's powerful novel The Jungle, which caused a national uproar that led to inspection reforms. Comparable to the writings of Sinclair, Russell's most controversial exposé was fixated on the Trinity Church. It was detrimental to the church's reputation, as it accused the church of being one of the leading slum landlords in New York City.

That accusation resulted in the church taking swift action to the report by cleaning up or selling the worst of their properties.[5] After traveling all over the world in investigative journalism, Russell's beliefs about capitalism began to be stronger and stronger. He believed that capitalism itself was quite faulty and that the financial endeavors of the United States that led the economy were corrupt. As his convictions became deeper, Russell recognized that his beliefs were in line with that of the Socialist Party, leading him to join in 1908.[5]

In 1909, Russell was one of the 63 people who worked together to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in the aftermath of a race riot at Springfield, Illinois, in August 1908.[6] Russell's participation in the founding of the NAACP stemmed from his experiences with violence and racism as a child. One of the most memorable experiences included his father nearly being hanged simply for opposing slavery.[5] Russell served and participated on the board of directors for the NAACP for the remainder of his life.

In 1908, Russell joined the Socialist Party of America.[6]

Russell was its candidate for Governor of New York in 1910 and 1912, and for U.S. Senator from New York in 1914. He also ran for Mayor of New York City. Russell's belief that Germany was an undeniable threat to the US in 1915 made him unexpectedly come out in support of President Woodrow Wilson's war "preparedness campaign." That decision painted Russell into a tight corner politically as the majority of the party's rank and file remained strongly antiwar. Its leader, Eugene Debs believed that Russell's decision to support Wilson's move for rearmament probably cost Russell the party's presidential nomination in 1916. Later that year, Russell separated from his party and became a part of a group known as "prowar socialists."[5] Debs disagreed profoundly with Russell on the issue but applauded him for the courage of his convictions.[7]

Russell would ultimately be expelled from the Socialist Party in 1917 for supporting American intervention in the First World War.[6]

Charles Edward Russell with other members of the US diplomatic mission sent to Russia in 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson.

Aligning himself with Sinclair, among others in the right wing of the party, Russell continued to agitate for "responsible... Marxian" positions inside the Socialist Party until 1917.[8]

After the February Revolution, Russell was named by Wilson to join a mission led by Elihu Root that was intended to keep the Russian Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky in the war. The mission report recommended for George Creel's Committee on Public Information to conduct pro-war propaganda efforts in Russia. Russell personally lobbied Wilson to use the relatively-new medium of film to influence the Russian public.[9] Wilson was receptive, and the Committee on Public Information then developed film and distribution networks in Russia over the next few months.[10] Russell appears as himself in the 1917 film The Fall of the Romanoffs, directed by Herbert Brenon, which may have been a product of those efforts.[11]

Participation in the Root Mission was effectively a burning of bridges with the Socialist Party, which remained solidly opposed to the war. Russell left it to join the Social Democratic League of America. He also worked with the American Federation of Labor to help found the patriotic American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, an organization that agitated on behalf of American participation in the war among the country's workers.[12]

Russell subsequently became an editorial writer for social democratic magazine The New Leader.[13]

He died on April 23, 1941, in Washington, D.C., at 80.

Russell's papers are housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.[14]

• Barrett, James R. (2002). Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894–1922. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Merriam, Charles E. (1919). "American Publicity in Italy". American Political Science Review. 13 (4): 541–555. doi:10.2307/1944209. JSTOR 1944209. S2CID 147293730.
• Miraldi, Robert (2003). The Pen is Mightier: The Muckraking Life of Charles Edward Russell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ruotsila, Markku (2006). "Neoconservatism Prefigured: The Social Democratic League of America and the Anticommunists of the Anglo-American Right, 1917–21". Journal of American Studies. 40 (2): 327–345. doi:10.1017/S002187580600140X. JSTOR 27557795. S2CID 143619941.
• Schultz, Stanley K. (1965). "The Morality of Politics: The Muckrakers' Vision of Democracy". Journal of American History. 52 (3): 527–547. doi:10.2307/1890846. JSTOR 1890846.
• Thompson, J. A. (1971). "American Progressive Publicists and the First World War, 1914–1917". Journal of American History. 58 (2): 364–383. doi:10.2307/1917605. JSTOR 1917605.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Edward Russell.

• Works by or about Charles Edward Russell at Internet Archive
• Jose Gutieerrez, "Charles Edward Russell and Insurgent Journalism." Green Left.org, 1994.