John Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist. Reed first gained prominence as a war correspondent during the Mexican Revolution for Metropolitan and World War I for The Masses. He is best known for his coverage of the October Revolution in Petrograd, Russia, which he wrote about in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World.
Reed supported the Soviet takeover of Russia, even briefly taking up arms to join the Red Guards in 1918. He hoped for a similar communist revolution in the United States, and co-founded the short-lived Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. He died in Moscow of spotted typhus in 1920. At the time of his death, he may have soured on the Soviet leadership, but he was given a hero's burial by the Soviet Union and is one of only five Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Reed was born on October 22, 1887, in his maternal grandparents' mansion in what is now the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. His grandmother's household had Chinese servants. Reed wrote of paying a nickel to a "Goose Hollowite" (young toughs in a gang in the working-class neighborhood below King's Hill) to keep from being beaten up. In 2001 a memorial bench dedicated to Reed was installed in Washington Park, which overlooks the site of Reed's birthplace (the mansion no longer exists).
His mother, Margaret Reed (née Green), was the daughter of Portland industrialist Henry Dodge Green, who had made a fortune founding and operating three businesses: the first gas & light company, the first pig iron smelter on the West Coast, and the Portland water works (he was its second owner). SW Green Avenue was named in his honor.
John's father, Charles Jerome Reed, was born in the East and came to Portland as the representative of an agricultural machinery manufacturer. With his ready wit, he quickly won acceptance in Portland's business community. The couple had married in 1886, and the family's wealth came from the Green side, not the Reed side.
A sickly child, young Jack grew up surrounded by nurses and servants. His mother carefully selected his upper-class playmates. He had a brother, Harry, who was two years younger. Jack and his brother were sent to the recently established Portland Academy, a private school. Jack was bright enough to pass his courses but could not be bothered to work for top marks, as he found school dry and tedious. In September 1904, he was sent to Morristown, a New Jersey prep school, to prepare for college. His father, who did not attend college, wanted his sons to go to Harvard. At Morristown Jack continued his poor classroom performance, but made the football team and showed some literary promise.
Reed failed his first attempt at Harvard College's admission exam but passed on his second try, and enrolled in the fall of 1906. Tall, handsome, and lighthearted, he threw himself into all manner of student activities. He was a member of the cheerleading team and the swimming team, served on the editorial boards of the Harvard Lampoon and The Harvard Monthly, was president of the Harvard Glee Club, and founded the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club (then simply the Dramatic Club). In 1910 he held a position in the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and also wrote music and lyrics for their show Diana's Debut. Reed failed to make the football and crew teams, but excelled in swimming and water polo. He was also made "Ivy orator and poet" in his senior year.
Reed attended meetings of the Socialist Club, over which his friend Walter Lippmann presided, but never joined. The group introduced legislation into the state legislature, attacked the university for failing to pay its servants living wages, and petitioned the administration to establish a course on socialism. Reed later recalled:
All this made no ostensible difference in the look of Harvard society, and probably the club-men and the athletes, who represented us to the world, never even heard of it. But it made me, and many others, realize that there was something going on in the dull outside world more thrilling than college activities, and turned our attention to the writings of men like H. G. Wells and Graham Wallas, wrenching us away from the Oscar Wildian dilettantism which had possessed undergraduate litterateurs for generations.
Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910. That summer he set out to see more of the "dull outside world", visiting England, France, and Spain before returning home to America the following spring. To pay his fare to Europe, Reed worked as a common laborer on a cattle boat. His travels were encouraged by his favorite professor, Charles Townsend Copeland ("Copey"), who told him he must "see life" if he wanted to successfully write about it.
Reed had determined to become a journalist and set out to make his mark in New York. Reed made use of a valuable contact from Harvard, Lincoln Steffens, who was establishing a reputation as a muckraker. Steffens quickly appreciated Reed's skills and intellect and landed his young admirer an entry-level position on The American Magazine, where Reed read manuscripts, corrected proofs, and helped with the composition. Reed supplemented his salary by taking an additional job as the business manager of a new short-lived quarterly magazine, Landscape Architecture.
Reed made his home in Greenwich Village, a burgeoning hub of poets, writers, activists, and artists. He came to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it. His formal jobs on the magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Reed sought to establish himself. He collected rejection slips, circulating an essay and short stories about his six months in Europe, eventually breaking through in the Saturday Evening Post. Within a year, Reed had other work accepted by Collier's, The Forum, and The Century Magazine. One of his poems was set to music by composer Arthur Foote, another by Marion Bauer. The editors at The American came to see him as a contributor and began to publish his work.
Reed's serious interest in social problems was first aroused about this time by Steffens and Ida Tarbell. He moved beyond them to a more radical political position than theirs. In 1913, he joined the staff of The Masses, edited by Max Eastman. Reed contributed more than 50 articles, reviews, and shorter pieces to this socialist publication.
The first of Reed's many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of strikers in the New Jersey silk mills. The harsh treatment meted out by the authorities to the strikers and the short jail term he served further radicalized Reed. He allied with the general socialist union, the Industrial Workers of the World. His account of his experiences was published in June as an article, "War in Paterson". During the same year, following a suggestion made by IWW leader Bill Haywood, Reed put on "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden as a benefit for the strikers.
In the autumn of 1913, Reed was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine to report on the Mexican Revolution. He shared the perils of Pancho Villa's army for four months and was with Villa's Constitutional (Constitutionalist) Army (whose "Primer Jefe" political chief was Venustiano Carranza) when it defeated Federal forces at Torreón, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City. Reed adored Villa, but Carranza left him cold.
Reed's reporting on the Villistas in a series of outstanding magazine articles gained him a national reputation as a war correspondent. Reed deeply sympathized with the peons and vehemently opposed American intervention. Reed's reports were collected and published as the book Insurgent Mexico (1914).
On April 30, 1914, Reed arrived in Colorado, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre, which was part of the Colorado Coalfield War between the John D. Rockefeller Jr.-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and United Mine Workers union supporters. There he spent a little more than a week, during which he investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, and wrote an impassioned article on the subject ("The Colorado War", published in July). He came to believe much more deeply in class conflict.