Russell, Charles Edward

Russell, Charles Edward, 1860–1941, American author, b. Davenport, Iowa. He was a prominent newspaper editor (1894–1902) in New York and Chicago. A member of the Socialist party before World War I, he declined the party's presidential nomination in 1916. His many books include The Uprising of the Many (1907), Why I Am a Socialist (1910), These Shifting Scenes (1914), and the biography The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas (1927, Pulitzer Prize).

Bibliography

See his autobiography, Bare Hands and Stone Walls (1933).

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Russell, Charles Edward (1860–1941) journalist, reformer, Socialist; born in Davenport, Iowa. Convinced that free trade was a cure for social ills, he founded the Iowa Free Trade League (1881). He then combined journalism with reform as city editor of the New York World (1894–97), managing editor of the New York American (1897–1900), and publisher of the Chicago American (1900–02). In the following years he became a well-known "muckraker," writing magazine articles exposing problems in American society. He became a prominent Socialist (1910), ran three times for office unsuccessfully, wrote 27 books, and won the Pulitzer Prize (for nonfiction) (1927). Widely traveled and cosmopolitan, he combined a world outlook with Midwestern egalitarianism. As a reporter/editor, his wide-ranging curiosity, passion for facts, and boundless optimism influenced a generation, forcing penal reform in Georgia and tenement reforms in New York.