The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-12-03
BY EARL BROWDER


BY EARL BROWDER
ONE thing said here this evening
v the fact that John Reed was
the first swallow in the springtime
of the leftward moving intellectuals
causes me to recall at the same
moment that John Reed Yves some
what different, I think, from all
our leftward moving intellectuals,
in that he did not so much move
toward the Communist Party.
That would be stretching 1t little
bit when you remember that John
Reed was one of thea founders of
the Communist Party in the United
States. So it would be a mistake
to classify John Reed as a fellow
traveller. He was a graduated rev.
olutionist.
The figure Of John Reed grows
bigger as the years pass by. Prob
ably very few of us realize when
Reed was here that we had a big
man amongst us, and for most Of
us it took many years afterwards
to understand just how big and
how significant he was. Mike Gold
has described very well the social
environment out of which he came,
and it has been a great puzzle to
many people as to homecoming
out of this environment-John Reed
could have found his way to Petro-
grad on Nov. z, 1917, and stood at
the side of Lenin and the Bolshevik
Central Committee that led the &C.
tober Revolution. In my opinion,
it was no accident that Reed, PAM
pered son of the aristocracy Of the
Pacific Coast, found his way to
the center Of the Russian Revolu-
ton. No accident at all.
HELPED FOUND
COMMUNIST PARTY
1 think if we examine the history
of John Reed we will see that for a
good many years Reed had been
searching very feverishly for some
thing. And the reason why he was
searching for something was be-
cause he was profoundly disguised
with the society in which he had
been born and from which he had
dropped away long before he be-
came a revolutionist. This turning
away from the respectable bour-
geoisie life of John Reed was one
of the symptoms that the capitalist
system had well entered into
period of its decay even before the
outbreak Of the World War, and at
that period we saw being born out
Of the very heart Of the ruling class
the forces of revolution that are
going to destroy this bourgeois
ruling class and create new So
ciety. This is one of the most sig
nificant phases of John Reeds life.
Another significant side of John
Reed is the fact that he showed
throughout his life that in the COM
ing American Revolution we are
going to have fused together with
the power of the working class
everything that is best and most
sensitive and most understanding
and honest from the other classes
of society, and as inevitably as steel
filings will respond to a magnet,
every sound, honest, intellectual
mind must move toward the Revo-
luton in this country also. BY
identifying himself with the revo-
lutionary class and fusing himself
with this revolutionary class-the
working class-Jofn Reed BECAME
not only a fellow traveller but one
Of the organizers and founders in
America Of that Party which will
make the revolution in this coun-
try and bring a profound social
transformation which has already
well ripened here.
.
IT is true that John Reed was not
theoretician in the sense that
he wrote heavy books. Most Of us
became acquainted with John Reed
through what has been described
here tonight as d great piece of re-
porting, Ten Days That Shook the
World" That book was mag
nificent piece of reporting. It was