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Henry Beach Needham

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Henry Beach Needham (August 10, 1871 – June 17, 1915) was an American journalist, author, and war correspondent known for his contributions to muckraking and investigative journalism in the early 20th century. He gained prominence through his articles that exposed corruption and social injustices, particularly the brutality in college football.[1][2][3][4] Known for his friendship and occasional coverage of President Theodore Roosevelt,[5][6][7][8][9] he also wrote extensively about baseball manager Connie Mack.[10] He authored two books[11] and contributed to notable magazines such as McClure's Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, [12] and Collier's Weekly.[13][14] Needham was killed in a plane crash while covering World War I as a journalist.[15][16]

Early life and education

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Needham was born on August 10, 1871, in Castile, Wyoming County, New York.[17] He was the son of Charles Willis Needham, a lawyer who served as the solicitor general for the Interstate Commerce Division.[18] and later became the President of George Washington University from 1902 to 1910.[19]

The Needham family relocated to Chicago in 1874, where his father pursued his legal career. In 1890, they moved again to Washington D.C.,[20] where his father continued to practice law and eventually became a professor of comparative constitutional law and interstate commerce law at American University. [21]

He studied at Brown University for three years before moving on to study law at George Washington University, where he was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia in 1894. In 1896, he left the legal profession to pursue a career in journalism.[22]

Career

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Needham's muckraking articles helped him gain attention as an investigative journalist. He wrote for several notable publications, including McClure’s Magazine, where his work often focused on exposing corruption[4] and advocating for reform.[23]

One of his most notable contributions was his two-part article "The College Athlete" published in 1905 in McClure's Magazine. This exposé brought national attention to the brutality and corruption in college football, leading to significant reforms in the sport.[2][3][8][4][24]

Needham also published two books: Divorcing Lady Nicotine (1913) and The Double Squeeze (1915).[11]

In 1906, Needham approached Connie Mack, the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, about shadowing him and the team for a profile in McClure’s Magazine.[10] Over the years, the two became close friends.

Relationship with Theodore Roosevelt

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Needham's career intersected notably with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.[25] Their relationship was underscored by correspondence,[26] including letters exchanged on matters of mutual interest. Their close relationship allowed Needham to write detailed and personal profiles of Roosevelt's political and domestic activities.[7][27] Roosevelt's support for Needham's journalistic work was instrumental in the impact of his exposés,[8] particularly his noteworthy article on football, leading to his involvement in efforts to reform the sport.[1][3][9]

In 1908, Roosevelt appointed Needham to a special commission to investigate labor and accommodation conditions during the construction of the Panama Canal. During his tenure, he examined the living conditions of the workforce, assessed the scale and efficiency of construction operations, and evaluated the development of essential infrastructure on the Isthmus of Panama. His findings highlighted significant challenges in housing, healthcare, and logistical operations, which informed comprehensive recommendations aimed at improving the well-being and productivity of the workers engaged in the project.[28][29]

War correspondent and death

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During World War I, Needham served as a war correspondent in Europe for The Independent and Collier's Weekly.[18][13] While researching an aviation article on June 17, 1915, he was killed in a plane crash near Paris alongside the British aviator Sub-Lieutenant Reginald "Rex" Warneford.[16] [15]

Books

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  • Divorcing Lady Nicotine: Getting the Upper Hand of the Smoking Habit. Chicago: Forbes, 1913.
  • The Double Squeeze. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1915. (Internet Archive)

Personal life

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Needham was married to Mary Master Needham, a fellow journalist and writer.

References

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  1. ^ a b Beschloss, Michael (2014-08-01). "T.R.'s Son Inspired Him to Help Rescue Football". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-14. T.R. was increasingly unsettled by muckraking reporting of the sport’s deadly excesses — which foreshadowed today’s alarms about the long-term dangers of football concussions — but he was also determined to stop what he called the 'baby act' of Harvard’s president, Charles William Eliot, and other college officials, who were trying to abolish the game altogether.
  2. ^ a b "McClure's magazine v.25 1905 May-Oct". HathiTrust. hdl:2027/mdp.39015011718304. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  3. ^ a b c Davis, Kenneth C. (2010-12-25). "Opinion | Schools of Hard Knocks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-14. A crusading journalist named Henry Beach Needham brought the controversy to the forefront of national debate. In a sensational two-part article, 'The College Athlete', in the June and July 1905 issues of McClure’s magazine, he exposed the brutality and scandalous practices then engulfing the college game.
  4. ^ a b c Dirlam, Zach. "There's No Crying in College: The Case Against Paying College Athletes". Bleacher Report. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Henry Beach Needham outlined some fairly alarming issues college athletics faced in its early years in a 1905 piece titled 'The College Athlete', which was published in McLure’s Magazine. The biggest scandal at the time was Columbia University paying non-students to compete.
  5. ^ "Henry Beach Needham". Baseball History Daily. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Henry Beach Needham was a journalist and fiction writer, best known for being a long-time friend, and occasional biographer of President Theodore Roosevelt.
  6. ^ "TR Center - Letter from Henry Beach Needham to Theodore Roosevelt". Theodore Roosevelt Center. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  7. ^ a b "to Henry Needham." Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Writes to Neeham, of McClure's magazine, describing his hobbies and interests. He writes, 'I am not an athlete; I am simply a good,...out-of-doors man.' Copy of a letter with written corrections not in Roosevelt's hand.
  8. ^ a b c Davis, Kenneth C. (2010-12-25). "Opinion | Schools of Hard Knocks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-14. The McClure’s article might have blown over, except that Needham was a friend of the 'first fan', President Theodore Roosevelt. And Roosevelt was a staunch promoter of vigorous athletics. Too small to play in college himself, he was still a football enthusiast who believed the sport built character, and his son Ted played for his alma mater, Harvard. As the fervent cry to ban football rang out in response to Needham’s exposé, Roosevelt took to his bully pulpit. Delivering Harvard’s 1905 commencement speech, he railed at football’s dark side.
  9. ^ a b "Inventing Modern Football". American Heritage. Retrieved 2024-07-15. The author was a close friend of the President, and Roosevelt no doubt read Needham’s two-part series. Soon after the first article had appeared, Roosevelt criticized flagrant disregard for the rules in his June commencement address at Harvard, and on his return trip he met with Needham.
  10. ^ a b "Henry Beach Needham". Baseball History Daily. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Needham would write many profiles of his friend Mack in pages of McClure’s Magazine, and syndicated in many newspapers.
  11. ^ a b "Needham, Henry Beach, 1871-1915". The Online Books Page. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  12. ^ "Image 11 of World War history : daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-18. Henry Beach Needham was widely known through his work for McClure’s Magazine, Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post, much of which prior to the present war had been of a political and economic character.
  13. ^ a b "Image 11 of World War history: daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-15. With the beginning of the war Mr. Needham was engaged by Collier’s as war correspondent.
  14. ^ "Image 11 of World War history: daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-15. Henry Beach Needham was widely known through his work for McClure’s Magazine, Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post, much of which prior to the present war had been of a political and economic character.
  15. ^ a b "Image 11 of World War history : daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-21. Henry Beach Needham, the American writer, in Europe to get impressions of the Avar, was a passenger with Warne ord. He too Avas killed.
  16. ^ a b Becque, Fran (2017-03-07). "Mary Master Needham, Alpha Chi Omega, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2017". Fraternity History & More. Retrieved 2024-07-15. While there as a war correspondent for The Independent, Henry Beach Needham was killed in a plane crash on June 17, 1915. [...] While there as a war correspondent for The Independent, Henry Beach Needham was killed in a plane crash on June 17, 1915. He had asked the storied young British aviator Sub-Lieutenant Reginald ‘Rex’ Warneford to take him for a ride. While on the joy ride, the plane crashed. It was reported that his wife was pregnant at the time and later delivered a still-born baby.
  17. ^ "Image 11 of World War history : daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-18. Mr. Needham was born at Castile, N. Y., on August 10, 1871
  18. ^ a b "Image 10 of The Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.), July 6, 1915". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
  19. ^ "Charles Willis Needham papers, 1902-1910, 1930." George Washington University. Retrieved 2024-07-18. Charles Willis Needham was the seventh President of The George Washington University from 1902 to 1910.
  20. ^ "Charles Willis Needham papers, 1902-1910, 1930." George Washington University. Retrieved 2024-07-18. Needham practiced law in Chicago and then in Washington, D.C.
  21. ^ "Charles Willis Needham papers, 1902-1910, 1930." George Washington University. Retrieved 2024-07-18. After leaving the university Needham taught law at American University and was solicitor general for the Interstate Commerce Commission, retiring from that position in 1933.
  22. ^ "Image 11 of World War history: daily records and comments as appeared in American and foreign newspapers, 1914-1926 (New York), June 18, 1915, (1915 June 18-21)". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2024-07-15. He was a student at Brown University for three years, studied law at the George Washington University and was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia in 1894. Two years later he gave up the practice of law for newspaper work and joined
  23. ^ Henry Beach Needham, "High Cost of Living in Washingtom," The Saturday Evening Post, vol. 186, no. 9, August 30, 1913, pp. 4–5. Published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society. (Internet Archive.) Accessed July 14, 2024.
  24. ^ "The College Athlete". McClure's Magazine. Vol. 25, no. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-14 – via Modernist Journals Project.
  25. ^ "Where Roosevelt Stands; The Colonel Explained His Attitude in a Pullman Car to H.B. Needham". The New York Times. 1911-04-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Col. Roosevelt, in an interview with Henry Beach Needham, published in The Saturday Evening Post, explains just where he stands at this time upon a number of national issues, including himself. The interview was given on a Pullman car while the Colonel was eastbound from Grand Rapids after delivering a Lincoln's Birthday address.
  26. ^ "TR Center - Letter from Frank Harper to Henry Beach Needham". Theodore Roosevelt Center. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  27. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Great-heart: The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt, by Daniel Henderson". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Ted was a sheer boy in these days, and a sheer boy he remained until he went to college. Concerning him an old Long Island stage-driver, in whose stage Ted often rode, remarked to Henry Beech Needham: 'He was a reg’lar boy. Always outdoors, climbin’ trees and goin’ bird-nestin’! I remember him particular, because he had queer things alive in his pockets. Sometimes it was even a snake!'
  28. ^ "Needham, Henry Beach". Smithsonian Libraries. 2015. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  29. ^ "TR Center - Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Beach Needham". Theodore Roosevelt Center. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
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