Richard Washburn Child

Richard Washburn Child
Born	(1881-08-05)August 5, 1881 Worcester, Massachusetts
Died
Nationality	American
Education	Harvard University Harvard Law School

Richard Washburn Child (August 5, 1881 – January 31, 1935) was an American author and diplomat.

Early life and career

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Child went to Harvard University and Law School where he graduated in 1906 to become a business lawyer. Child founded the Progressive Republican League in Massachusetts, a forerunner of the Progressive Party, and during World War I, he worked first as a correspondent in Europe and Russia, then for the U.S. Treasury, writing propaganda.

In 1916 he published a book, calling for U.S. investment in Russia. After the war he became editor of Collier's Weekly (1919). In 1920 he wrote campaign material for Presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, who rewarded him with the ambassadorship in Italy (from May 1921 to February 1924), where among other diplomatic activities he encouraged Benito Mussolini to start his March on Rome, as he records in his memoir A Diplomat looks at Europe (1925). He also promoted U.S. investment in Italy under Mussolini, especially from the J. P. Morgan bank. After his return to the USA, he became editor for The Saturday Evening Post and served on the National Crime Commission in 1925. In 1926 he divorced.

In 1928 he became a paid propaganda writer for Benito Mussolini, whose notes he ghostwrote and serialized as My Autobiography in The Saturday Evening Post, and whose politics he praised in numerous articles for the Hearst press. Together with Thomas W. Lamont he rates as one of the most influential American promoters of Italian fascism until his death in 1935. Child also wrote a number of crime stories and promotional tracts throughout his career.

Further reading

• American National Biography. Vol. 4 (1999)
• D'Agostino, Peter R., Rome in America. Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risoregimento to Fascism. U of North Carolina P, 2004.
• Diggins, John P., Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1972.
• Lindberg, Kathryn V., Mass Circulation versus The Masses. Covering the Modern Magazine Scene. In: National Identities- Postamerican Narratives. Ed. Donald E. Pease. Duke UP, 1994, 279-310.
• Sinclair, Upton., Money Writes! New York: Boni, 1927, 62-68.

External links

• Works by Richard Washburn Child at Project Gutenberg