Jack Reed

From Kaiserreich

Revision as of 22:23, 10 December 2008

John "Jack" Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 – ) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, famous for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, "Ten Days that Shook the World". He was the husband of the writer and feminist Louise Bryant.

Real History

Early life and education

Reed was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Charles Jerome and Margaret (Green) Reed. His mother was the daughter of a leading Portland citizen who had made a fortune in pig iron manufacturing. His father, who had recently come from the East Coast when they married in 1886, represented an agricultural machinery manufacturer and with his ready wit quickly won acceptance in Portland’s business community.

The young John, universally called Jack, was born in his mother’s mansion and baptized in the fashionable Trinity Episcopal Church. He grew up surrounded by nurses and servants, and his upper-class playmates were carefully selected. He had a brother, Harry, two years his junior. He was sent to the recently-established Portland Academy at the age of nine, which he hated. In September 1904, he was sent to Morristown School, New Jersey, to prepare for college (his father had not gone to college and wanted his sons to attend Harvard). There, he made the football team and although he did poorly in most subjects, showed literary promise. Around this time his father’s social standing fell due to his muckraking activities in exposing the timber industry’s corruption.

Reed entered Harvard College in September 1906 (passing the entrance examination on his second try; something he was allowed to do despite having his poor performance in his classes. He joined an array of student organizations and clubs with great enthusiasm, ranging from athletics to theatre. His mentor, literature professor Charles Copeland, helped develop his budding talents.

He attended meetings of the Socialist Club, which his friend Walter Lippmann founded in May 1908, but never joined; many of the political views held by the Socialists challenged his own views from his upbringing. He failed to make football and crew, but participated in low-prestige sports like swimming and water polo, at which he excelled. He was frustrated by the dismissive attitude of the east coast elite, passing him over for membership in the waiting clubs (which one joined in preparation of the final clubs). Graduating in 1910, he visited England, France, and Spain before moving to New York City in March 1911.

Journalism

He grew to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it. Reed enjoyed the independence he now had from his parents, from Portland (which he hated), and from Harvard snobbery. He joined the staff of the American Magazine in 1911 with Lincoln Steffens' invaluable help, and in 1912 published “Sangar”, probably his finest poem.

Reed began a relationship with Mabel Dodge in the spring of 1913, a married woman eight years older than him. She dominated and suffocated him, threatening suicide several times when he seemed to neglect her. Visiting Europe later that year, they consummated their relationship in Paris. Problems soon developed though- He was very interested in the sights the continent had to offer, buts he was wanted his full attention. Upon their return she continued to try and keep his mind off politics.

His serious interest in social problems was first aroused, at about this time, by the writings of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, eventually even surpassing their radicalism. In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses, edited by Max Eastman, contributing more than fifty articles addressing the social and economic issues in those days.

The first of Reed's many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of the strikers in the silk mills, radicalizing him even more. He allied himself with the Industrial Workers of the World (though he was still not a committed Socialist at this point) to be more in tune with the labor movement. His brilliant account of his experiences appeared in June as "War in Paterson". During the same year, following a suggestion made by Bill Haywood, picked up by Dodge and enthusiastically endorsed by Reed, he put on "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden for the benefit of the strikers.

In the autumn of 1913 he was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine to cover the Mexican Revolution. He went directly to the front lines of the battles, giving him excellent material for his articles. He found himself attracted to the cause of Pancho Villa, and didn't like his chief opponent, Venustiano Carranza. He saw Pancho Villa as a hero to the rural poor of Mexico, which resonated which his own views on America's working poor. He stayed four months with his army, including when Villa's Constitutionalist Army defeated Federal forces at Torreón, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City. His resulting articles brought him national reputation as a war correspondent, collected in the book "Insurgent Mexico" (1914). He would fiercely oppose the United States' intervention in the Civil War to hunt down Pancho Villa after cross-border raids by Pancho, furthering alienating him from the mainstream US political views.

On April 30, 1914, he arrived in Colorado, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre in the midst of a statewide miners' strike. There he spent a little more than a week and investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, wrote an impassioned article on the subject ("The Colorado War", published in July), and came to believe much more deeply in class conflict and pushed him fully into the Socialist mind thought.

Jack Reed would rise to even more infamy when he went to cover the Russian Civil War in 1917, showing support for the Bolsheviks. He would publish his thoughts in his most well known work, "Ten Days Which Shook the World", and reached the peak of his radicalism. He would revisit Russia when the Bolsheviks consolidated their power in 1921. He would remain in the new Soviet state, but gradually became disillusioned with the increasingly authoritarian nature of the new government. He fall ill in the Soviet Union in 1921 from complications of influenza and typhus. Unable to receive medication due to the Allied blockade of the Soviet Union, he would die and be buried in Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Kaisserreich

Due to the defeat of the Red Army by a German intervention in the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union was never realized, and Reed never did do his final second visit. He continued his Socialist works, still charged by the messages of Lenin, fighting for the cause of workers' rights.

Politics

By 1936, if the Combined Syndicates of America organization is not banned yet, Jack Reed will be the presidential candidate for the 1936 elections, representing the Socialist elements of the United States. If he isn't elected, the CSA will stage protests and strikes and eventually secede during the Second American Civil War. If the elections were stopped or the military forms emergency rule in the United States, he will head the CSA in the American Civil War.

If elected, Jack Reed will face opposition from the social conservatives of the America First Union, the fiscal conservatives, as well as much of the military rank and file of the military. Upon assuming power, he will face problems in the South and the West Coast, and will eventually see himself chased out of Washington D.C. by General MacArthur, and goes to Chicago to form the CSA.

References

• Kaisserreich descriptions
• Wikipedia