5 years, placing U.S. Senator from Oregon John H. Mitchell in jail. C.J. did not go to lunch anymore at the Arlington Club. Threats were made against his life. When muckraker Lincoln Steffens, who became a close family friend, visited Oregon to cover the sideshow, Charles Reed had the grim honor of hosting the newspaperman at the Club. He pointed to his seat at the head of the table, still vacant, and said: "I would like to see which one of them would have the nerve to think that he could take, hold, and fill my place.” His father’s death in 1912 broke Jack’s heart. He realized how much the family had sacrificed to give him a Harvard education. . Back East the brash, uncouth western boy bumped heads with the etiquette of the eastern social elite. Not knowing how to play the game, the freshman almost flunked out. Failing at football, in his senior year he became a crowd-pleasing cheerleader! Student Reed was encouraged in writing and dramatic skills by an extraordinary professor, Charles Townsend Copeland. “Copey” was a great influence in his life. Reed graduated in the distinguished class of 1910 with T.S. Eliot, Walter Lippmann,Alan Seeger, and Stuart Chase. His father interrupted a losing congressional campaign in Portland to see a dream come true. The summer before graduation was the last fun Reed was to have in the West. He fell in platonic love with an attractive co-ed at the University of Oregon, Frances Nelson. He hiked 200 miles down the primitive Oregon coast with 3 friends— fishing for trout, swimming naked in the ocean. In a letter to Frances he confided that they were like “pagans. . .star-worshipers to the bottom of our souls.” He toyed with the notion of starting a creative commune in Oregon. Then from Cambridge that fall he wrote her again: “The change from West to East is a very great one. Out there the strength of body, here the fire of the mind.” No, he would spend his life in regions of intellect and power. After graduation, and a year in Europe—having shipped over in a stinking cattle boat, wrestling steers in the hold, and partied in Paris and on the Riviera— his father told him he had to go to work. A letter to Lincoln Steffens landed him a part-time job at American magazine. The fledgling writer became a part of the most exciting city in the world. He took rooms as 42 Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Within a mile were all the immigrant races, all social strata, from the Bowery to Fifth Avenue, from gin-mills to the Met. Always he would love New York! Composing poems and literary sketches, he quickly found out they couldn’t be published in the popular magazines. His story “Where the Heart Is,” about the dancehall girl who embarks on a European journey, becomes a mistress and returns to the same night spot, was too controversial! This drove him into journalism, almost by default, because he took writing seriously, Pressing the editor of Everybody's magazine for an explanation of the rejection slips, he got one: “The magazine is bought by the year. The father of children counting on its past record of avoiding the treatment of sex problems, allows the magazine to come into the house.. .. He counts on us to be the censor of it!” Putting together the Dutch Treat Club’s annual dinner show at Delmonico’s, Reed poked fun at this outlook in the farce—Everymagazine, An Immorality Playl The chorus sang: “A silly tale that I've heard That round the town is flying That every monthly organ Is owned by J.P. Morgan." Reed’s political education started in earnest at Mabel Dodge’s Fifth Avenue salon. This wealthy patron, who among other things introduced Gertrude Stein and D.H. Lawrence to American culture, often held intellectual gatherings where persons of diverse background met, talked, and argued. Galvanizing everyone’s attention, Big Bill Haywood eloquently discussed strike cdnditions in Paterson, N.J. Jack and Mabel wondered what could be done. Twenty thousand silk workers had been on strike for 2 months, and the press was ignoring the situation. Detectives had killed striker Valentino Modes- tino. The police were hassling pickets and strangers. Blithely standing by, the young reporter got himself arrested. At the station, Recorder Carroll asked him what his profession was. “Poet," Reed replied. “Twenty days in jail,” Carroll ordered. Almost smiling, getting a chance to see local color, he was shocked by the crowded, dirty conditions in the Passaic County jail. He was placed in a cell with Carlo Tresca, an I.W.W. leader who wouldn’t talk with him, thinking he was a “stoolie,” until Haywood himself vouched for Reed. From this experience, he wrote “Sheriff Radcliff’s Hotel,” a witty, yet to-the-point account of the jail and conversation with the strikers. This led off his extensive career at Metropolitan magazine, a slick major periodical. Editor Carl Hovey was delighted with the sardonic, insightful style of the piece. No one else had written about politics that way! In the radical Masses magazine he expounded point-blank: “There’s a war in Paterson, New Jersey. But it's a curious kind or war. All the violence is the work of one side—the mill owners. Their servants, the police, club unresisting men “There's a war in Paterson, New Jersey. But it's a curious kind or war. All the violence is the work of one side—the mill owners. Their paid mercenaries, the armed detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. ” Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1987 27
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz