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Charles Edward Russell (25 September 1860 -- 23 April 1941) was an American muckraking journalist, author, and activist. he was born in Davenport, Iowa, and died in Washington, DC. His father was a newspaper editor at the Davenport Gazette, and a noted abolitionist. He attended St. Johnsbury academy, Vermont, for his high school education. He wrote a number of books of biography and social comment. In 1928 he won the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas. He wrote for the Minneapolis Journal, the Detroit Tribune, the New York World, William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan, and the New York Herald. He was a newspaper editor from 1894-1902 in New York and Chicago.
Work as a Journalist In his memoirs, Bare Hands and Stone Walls, Russell stated that "transforming the world...to a place where can 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. He was one of a group of journalists at the turn of the century who were called muckrakers. They investigated and reported--not with cold detachment--but with feeling and rage about the horrors of capitalism. In Soldier for the Common Good, an unpublished dissertation on Russell's life, author Donald Bragaw writes: "Historian Louis Filler has called Russell the leader of the muckrakers for contributing 'important studies in almost every field in which they ventured.' Most of Russell's work was of a 'pioneering nature: beef trusts...railroads...tenements...and the farm problem....His real topic was injustice, wherever it was to be found." Russell's reports on the corrupt practices and inhuman conditions at Chicago stockyards were the basis for Upton Sinclair's powerful novel The Jungle, which caused a national uproar that led to inspection reforms. Politics Russell was a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. • He was a member of the Socialist Party before World War I, operating the party's speakers bureau. He was twice a candidate for Governor of the State of New York on the Socialist ticket, and he also ran for Mayor of New York City. In 1915 he unexpectedly came out in support President Woodrow Wilson's war "preparedness campaign". The majority of the party remained strongly anti-war,• leading to calls for Russell's expulsion. • Socialist leader Eugene Debs believed that Russell's decision to support Wilson probably cost him the party's presidential nomination in 1916.• Aligning himself with Upton Sinclair, among others on the right-wing of the party, Russell continued to agitate for "responsible...Marxian" positions inside the Socialist Party through 1917. •. After the February Revolution, he joined a United States goodwill mission led by Elihu Root intended to keep the Russian Provisional Government in the war. The mission report recomended that George Creel's Committee on Public Information conduct pro-war propaganda efforts in Russia. Russell personally lobbied Wilson to use the relatively new medium of film to influence the Russian public. • • Wilson was receptive and the CPI subsequently developed film and distribution networks in Russia over the next few months. • • Russell appears as himself in the 1917 film The Fall of the Romanoffs, directed by Herbert Brenon, which may have been a product of these efforts. • He left the Socialist Party to join the Social Democratic League of America, which joined with the AFL to found the patriotic American Alliance for Labor and Democracy. • Russell subsequently became an editorial writer for left-liberal magazine The New Leader. • Books Selected articles Sources Further reading | ||||||||
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