Evening star., 1941-04-24

newspaper career to the magazine
field, he joined distinguished group
of journalists known as muck
| rakerS,' who for a decade exposed
| political, economic and social COR
ruptiOn wherever they could find it.
Mr.. Russell concentrated his at
taCkS on corporations. as Lincoln
Steffens specialized in municipal
corruption and Ida Tarbell in oil
companies. He dealt especially with
meat packers and railroads, touch
ing also on woman's suffrage, Trinity
Church'S tenementS, Southern prison
camps and prison conditions in the
North. Michigan copper strikes and
New York election laws.
Friend of Woodrow Wilson.
One Of the last survivors of the
group which also included Henry
Demarest Lloyd. Ray Stannard
Baker, David Graham Phillips,
Thomas w Lawson and John L.
Matthews, Mr. Russell was char
acterized by Mr.. Steffens as "one
of the most earnest, emotional and
gifted of the 'muckrakers'.
A personal friend of Woodrow
Wilson, Mr. Russell represented the
| United States with the diplomatic
/ mission sent to Russia under Elihu
| Root after the 1917 revolution to
greet the Kerensky government In
1918 he went to London as British
| commissioner for the Committee on
! Public Information, and the next
! year he was a member of the Presi-
dents industrial commission.
His SocialiStiC activities began in
| 1908, when he was one of the first
| OF the radical writer's to become ac-
tive politically with the radical
! group. Socialist candidate for New
York Governor in 1910 and 1912, for
| New York City mayor in 1913 and
for United States Senator in 1914,
he was nominated for Socialist cam
| dldate for President in 1916 but de-
/ cllned to run. In 1917 he was ex-
/ PEELED from the party for advocating
/ the United States entry into the
! World War.
When the party split into right
and left wing groups in 1886, he was
invited by the right wing to rejoin
| and became head of the wing in
| Washington.
Barred From Italy.
Mr.. Russells crusading activities
/ spread abroad also, to the extent
/ that Italy refused him admission
early in the '20s because of his at
tacks on Mussolini. England re-
! fused him admission at Plymouth
in 1926 unless he promised not to
go to Ireland, whose cause of Irish
republicanism he had eSpoused.
His interest in Ireland extended
back 46 years when as a cub re-
porter on his fathers Davenport
Gazette he covered a speech by
Charles Stewart Parnell as he
| pleaded for the cause of Irish free
dom and specifically for famine re-
lief in the country.
Mr.. Russell was covering Ireland
in 1916 at the time of the Easter
rebellion. He greeted Eamon de
Valera, now Prime Minister of Ire
land, when he came to the United
States after escaping from prison
and was the only Journalist to in
tervlew him in hiding during 1928.
Mr.. Russell was born in 1860 in
Davenport, Iowa. Last September
Is he was rendered an anniversary
| dinner here. Among the speakers
was Charles Harris, sentenced to
death in 1885 on a murder charge.
but who was instead imprisoned for
life and finally pardoned through
efforts of Mr.. Russell and other
Washington citizens.
Mr.. Russell was graduated from
the st. Johnsbury (Vt) Academy in
1881, and became telegraph editor
of the Davenport Gazette, where he
had spent his free boyhood hours
learning to set type and do chores.
In 1884 he became night editor of
the Minneapolis Tribune and later
managing editor of the Minneapolis
Evening Journal.
After a brief period in 1886 as
managing editor of the Detroit
Tribune, he joined the reportorial
staff of the New York Commercial
Advertiser, next the New York
Times. World and Herald. He was
city editor of the World, 1894-7, and
one of the managing editors of the
New York American until 1900.
When he left the newspaper field
after his health broke in 1902, he
was publisher of two Hearst news
papers in Chicago, the American
and Examiner.
One of his most noted efforts in