MISSOURI: Death of a Fighter

Missouri’s Jim Reed died last week as he had lived—fighting. In 18 years in the U.S.Senate (1911-29) he had heaped fire & brimstone on the League of Nations, Prohibition, women suffragists, Federalism and numberless other targets. His last attack was on the doctors who wanted to hospitalize him. Hale & hearty almost to the last, he had spent a strenuous summer fishing at his north Michigan ranch. Now, at 82, he preferred to die in his spacious log house, doctors notwithstanding.

When Jim Reed retired in 1929, an acid flavor, very American, went out of U.S. political life. Bill Borah was a greater orator. But none could surpass Jim Reed in righteous anger or in—as newsmen at the time called it—the “rhinestone rhythm” of his speech. He was the delight of the galleries, the despair and envy of his foes. Woodrow Wilson, often his foe, called him a marplot.

Rid Us of Reed. In the Senate fight on the League, Jim Reed was the leader of the “irreconcilables.” When Wilson stumped the country on his ill-fated tour, Jim Reed stumped after him, city by city, pouring invective, satire and bitterness over the Wilson converts, scourging them back into line.

For this action, Missouri Democrats read him out of the party, denied him a seat at the 1920 national convention. Two years later, when he was up for reelection to the Senate, virtually every pro-League advocate in the country joined in the chorus: “Rid Us of Reed.” Woodrow Wilson himself marshaled the anti-Reed forces from his Washington sickbed.

Jim Reed welcomed the fight. He stumped the state, rolling up his sleeves, tearing off his tie, then his collar, as he denounced the League. His arguments struck home. Reporting the campaign, the Kansas City Star’s Roy Roberts overheard the remark of a Reed convert: “Well, I guess Jim’s right. If there are going to be any furriners in this League of Nations, we’d better stay out.” When the returns were in, Jim Reed had won.

562 Amendments. Ohio-born and Iowa-reared, Jim Reed came to the Senate after four turbulent years as Kansas City’s reform mayor. He fought Wilson early & late. In 1913, a Democrat-loaded House rubber-stamped Wilson’s Federal Reserve Bill through in 13 hours. Senate Democrats were all set to do the same. Reed balked. Wilson’s anger boiled over. But by the time the bill became law, it had 562 amendments, mostly added by Reed; and Reed had a letter from a chastened Wilson admitting that the law had been strengthened.

One of Reed’s great moments came in the historic fight over the seating of Senator-elect Truman H. Newberry in 1921. (Newberry had spent over $100,000 to buy his way into the Senate). A Senate committee had approved Newberry’s seating. Outraged, Reed cried: “You say this is a thing black with infamy. Therefore we will spread it as a mantle over the Senate chamber. You say this office was sold for money. Therefore he who bought it shall be confirmed in his title.” Newberry was confirmed, but promptly resigned.

After retiring, undefeated, from the Senate, Jim Reed went back to Kansas City and the law. A lover of courtroom jousts, he took all cases. Most celebrated: the famed Bridge Table Murder of 1929. A Mrs. Myrtle Bennett, after a bridge-table argument with her husband resulting from an overbid, shot him dead as he was standing in the bathroom. At the trial, Jim Reed, then 69, wept copiously. His client was acquitted.*

Jim Reed went on fighting. From Kansas City came furious tirades against the Supreme Court packing plan, child labor laws, the Montgomery-Ward seizure, the Second Term, the Third Term, the Fourth Term.

Not long ago he wrote his epitaph: “I have been fighting, fighting, fighting ever since I was a child.”

* Most ardent chronicler of the Bennett case was the late AlexanderWoollcott. Some years after the trial, he dug up a possibly apocryphalfootnote. Mrs. Bennett was again playing bridge. This time her partner,a young man unacquainted with her past, overbid. As he laid down hishand, he casually murmured: “Partner, I’m afraid you’ll want to shootme for this.” Commented Woollcott: “Mrs. Bennett had the good taste tofaint.”