Part 22

I charge, and I intend to prove in court, that you are carrying out the conspiracy of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association to smash the harbor strike by brutal defiance of law. I was in the office of I. H. Rice, president of this Association, and heard him getting his orders from Hammond of the Hammond Lumber Company, and heard his promise to Hammond that the job would be done without delay. It is you who are doing the job for Rice, and the cruelties you are perpetrating would shock this community if they were known, and they will be punished if there is a God in Heaven to protect the poor and friendless. You did all you could to keep me from contact with the strikers in jail; nevertheless I learned of one horror that was perpetrated only yesterday--fifty men crowded into one small space, and because they committed some slight breach of regulations, singing their songs, they were shut in this hole for two hours without a breath of air, and almost suffocated. Also I saw the food that these men are getting twice a day, and you would not feed it to your dog. And now the city council has voted for money to build a “bull-pen” for strikers, and day by day the public is told that the strike is broken, and the men, denied every civil right, have no place to meet to discuss their policies, and no one to protect them or to protest for them. That is what you want--those are the orders you have got from the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association; the men are to go back as slaves, and the Constitution of the United States is to cease to exist so far as concerns workingmen.

All I can say, sir, is that I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and that meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit that when I see a line of a hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country. I have received a telegram from the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, asking me if I will speak at a mass meeting of protest in Los Angeles, and I have answered that I will do so. That meeting will be called at once, and you may come there and hear what the citizens of this community think of your efforts to introduce the legal proceedings of Czarist Russia into our free Republic.

UPTON SINCLAIR

The ending of this episode: We hired a good-sized hall in Los Angeles by the week and held crowded meetings every afternoon and evening. The Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union was formed, and a Congregational minister, Reverend Clinton J. Taft, resigned from his pulpit and served as director for the next twenty years or so. At the end of a couple of weeks the editor of the Los Angeles _Examiner_ called me on the telephone and said, “Sinclair, how long is this thing going on?” I answered, “Until we have civil liberties in Los Angeles.” “What, specifically, do you mean by that?” he asked, and I said, “For one thing, Chief Oaks must be kicked off the force; and we must have the assurance that there will never again be mass arrests of strikers.” The editor said, “You may count upon both these conditions being met.” I asked, “What guarantee have we?” He said, “I have talked it over with the half-dozen men who run this town, and I have their word. You may take mine.”

So we called off the meetings. A few days later we read in the newspapers that Chief Oaks had been expelled from the force, having been found parked in his car at night with a woman and a jug of whisky. So far as I can recall, there have been no mass arrests of strikers in the past twenty-nine years.

V

Moved by the cruelties I had seen, I indulged myself in the pleasure of writing two radical plays--“radical” was a terrible word in those days. _Singing Jailbirds_ portrayed the Industrial Workers of the World, of whom we had met many; they sang in jail and were put “in the hole” for it. They were called “wobblies” because in the early days they had done their first organizing in a restaurant kept by an old Chinaman who could not say IWW but made it “I-wobble-wobble.”

I started with that scene, and then had the wobblies in jail recalling the battles they had fought and the evils they had suffered. There was a lot of singing all through, and the play made a hit when it was produced in Greenwich Village by a group of four young playwrights--one of them was Eugene O’Neill and another was John Dos Passos, who now after forty years has evolved from a rampant radical into a rampant conservative. I was writing for Bernarr Macfadden’s _Physical Culture_ in those days (at $150 per article). I took my boss to the show, and he put up a thousand dollars to keep it going. I, of course, got nothing.

The other play was in blank verse and was called _Hell_. It portrayed the devils as being bored, and amusing themselves by sending a messenger up to earth to create a great deposit of gold and set all the nations to warring over it. (This was just after World War I, of course.) My fastidious friend, George Sterling, was outraged by my verse, but I had a lot of fun. I found myself a solitary spot on the edge of the Arroyo Seco, and there paced up and down composing it and laughing over it. Dear old Art Young made a delightful cover drawing, and I published the play in pamphlet form; I still have copies, and--who can tell?--somebody might produce it before World War III comes and ends all producing.

Joking aside, I hope to live to see it.

VI

The only house we went to in Pasadena was that of Mrs. Gartz. This was a couple of miles up the slope from our home, and occupied a whole block of beautiful grounds, like a park. The house was built around a central court containing palm trees, ornamental plants, and a swimming pool. On the front of the house was a wide veranda and a flight of stone steps. The veranda looked out over the whole of Pasadena, and it was a pleasant place to sit and listen to arguments over the future of mankind.

Every Sunday afternoon Mrs. Gartz would invite some lecturer, and after she met Craig, all these lectures dealt with the so-called radical movement. It appeared that when the very rich become radical they go the whole way. She became far more radical than we were, and it was Craig’s function to tone her down; but, alas, this service was not appreciated by Mrs. Gartz’s husband, who blamed us for all his troubles. I could tell many funny stories of those meetings in a millionaire’s palace with a raging millionaire husband roaming through the rooms, growling and grumbling to himself.

The whole of the class struggle was represented in that tormented home. Wobblies, when they got out of jail, would come and tell Mrs. Gartz their stories; the tears would come into her eyes, and she would write indignant letters to the newspapers--which the newspapers did not print. Also, there were the pacifists of all varieties, and later the communists, who finally “captured” the gullible great lady.

Mrs. Gartz took up the practice of writing to public officials about these outrages against civil liberty, and as her letters were not always coherent she would bring them to Craig to revise. Craig would take occasion to tone them down a bit; so presently she was in charge of all the great lady’s public relations. Craig hit upon the idea of publishing a little volume entitled _Letters of Protest_. This made a hit, and thereafter every year there would be a little volume that Mrs. Gartz distributed to everyone on her mailing list. In all there were seven pretty little books, and no doubt they helped somewhat to diminish the stodginess of our millionaire city.

VII

I have given a few glimpses of Mary Craig’s skill as a social practitioner. I must also tell a little about her as a homemaker.

To the north of the “brown house” we had bought, there extended seven lots rising slightly to a corner, from which the view over the Arroyo was still more attractive. Craig said nothing to me about her plans, but she bought those lots on installment payments. When I started the magazine it was on our dining-room table; so she went out traveling on foot about the town and found an old house that she bought for a hundred and fifty dollars and had moved onto the lot next to ours. She had a carpenter build a long table, and that was where the magazines were wrapped and prepared for the mail. One little cubbyhole in that house became my office, and several books were written there.

Of course, as the subscriptions came in we had to have still more help. We had no car in those days, but somehow Craig found another house and had it moved and connected up with the first one. Before she got through, she had bought four houses and fitted them in a row on two lots, and bought a fifth house to be wrecked for lumber to join the other houses together. I wrote an article about it in my magazine, _Upton Sinclair’s_, and printed a photograph of the houses.

It made a really funny story, because every house was a different color. I described the consternation of the neighbors; but they recovered when the job was finished, for Craig really made a beautiful home of it, with a long porch along the front and, of course, a uniform coat of paint. It was an especially good home for us because Craig could have her room at the south end and I could practice my violin at the north end.

There was an old carpenter named Judd Fuller who worked for Craig, making old houses into new. Many a time I sat on a roof with him, nailing down shingles; and all the time we talked politics, and the state of the world. I tried to make a socialist out of an old-style American individualist, and I learned how to deal with that kind of mind. Some years later I wrote a pamphlet called _Letters to Judd_, and of course made him very proud. I printed something over a hundred thousand of the pamphlet, and with the help of Haldeman-Julius distributed them over the country.

VIII

I decided to muckrake world literature. I had read a mass of it in the one language my mother had taught me, in the three that my professors had failed to teach me--Latin, Greek and German--and in the two I had taught myself--French and Italian. To me literature was a weapon in the class struggle--of the master class to hold its servants down, and of the working class to break its bonds. In other words, I studied world literature from the socialist point of view.

That had been done here and there in spots; but so far as I knew it had not been done systematically, and so far as I know it has not been done since. Of course, _Mammonart_ was ridiculed by the literary authorities; and of course I expected that. It was all a part of the class struggle, and I had set it forth in the book. Great literature is a product of the leisure classes and defends their position, whether consciously or by implication. Literature that opposes them is called propaganda. And so it is that you have probably never heard of my _Mammonart_.

I had now studied our culture in five muckraking books: _The Profits of Religion_, _The Brass Check_, _The Goose-Step_, _The Goslings_, _Mammonart_. After that, I took up American literature, mostly of my own time. I had known many of the writers, and some liked me and some didn’t, according to which side they were on. I had published the five earlier books myself--in both cloth and paper; but there were not so many libel suits in the field of literature, so now I found a publisher. From that time on for many years my arrangement was that the publisher had his edition and I had mine, always at the same price. I had a card file of some thirty thousand customers.

I called the new book _Money Writes!_ Its thesis was that authors have to eat; in order to get food they have to have money, and for that to happen the publisher has to get more money. So, in a commercial world it is money that decides what is to be written. My discussion of this somewhat obvious truth gave offense to many persons.

IX

When I was working on a book, my secretary had orders never to disturb me. But one day she did disturb me by bringing in a visiting card attached to a hundred-dollar bill. (She judged I would consider that a fair price for an interruption.) I looked at the card and saw the name, King C. Gillette, familiar to all men who use a safety razor. Some years earlier I had noted on the shelves of the Pasadena Public Library two large tomes entitled _World Corporation_ and _Social Redemption_. I had taken them down and examined them with curiosity; they were written by a man who apparently had never read a socialist book but had thought it all out for himself. (I could guess that I might be the only person who had ever taken those tomes from the library shelf.)

Gillette, of course, was pleased to hear that I knew his books. He was a large gentleman with white hair and mustache and rosy cheeks; extremely kind, and touchingly absorbed in the hobby of abolishing poverty and war. But I discovered that he had a horror of the very word _socialism_. To him that meant class struggle and hatred, whereas he insisted that his solution could all be brought about by gentle persuasion and calm economic reasoning. He would take the time to explain this to anyone on the slightest occasion. I discovered that the joy of his life was to get someone to listen while in his gentle pleading voice he told about his two-tome utopia.

He had come to me for a definite purpose. He knew that I had an audience, and he wanted me to convert that audience to his program. He had a manuscript, and he wanted me to take it and revise it--of course, not changing any of his ideas. For this service he was prepared to pay me five hundred dollars a month; and a little later when he met my wife he raised his offer. He said, “Mrs. Sinclair, if you will get him to do this for me you will never have to think about money again as long as you live.” That had a good sound to Craig, and she said I would do it.

She told me so, and of course I had to do what she said. Little by little I discovered what it meant: Mr. Gillette was coming for two mornings every week to tell me his ideas--the same ideas over and over again. He was a bit childish about it. He didn’t remember what he had said a week or two previously and said it again, most seriously, impressively, and kindly. It became an endurance test. How often could I listen to the same ideas and pretend that they were new and wonderful? The time came when I could stand no more, not if he had turned over to me all the royalties from Gillette razors and blades. I had to tell him that I had done everything I could do for him.

I had helped him to get his manuscript into shape, but, alas, he had scribbled all over it and interlined it. I had it recopied, and with his permission submitted it to Horace Liveright, my publisher at that time. Horace couldn’t very well refuse it because Gillette offered to put up twenty-five thousand dollars for advertising. The book was published, and in spite of all the effort it fell flat.

But the dear old gentleman never gave up. He would come to see us now and then and invite us to his home. He had one down at Balboa Beach, and another far up in the San Fernando Valley. When Sergei Eisenstein came, we took him and a party up to meet Gillette, but the family were away. We had a picnic under one of the shade trees on the estate and carefully gathered up all the debris.

X

Writing books involves hard labor of both brain and typewriter. I have mentioned more than once the subject of tennis--the device by which I was able to get the blood out of my brain and into my digestive apparatus. All through those years I used to say that I was never more than twenty-four hours ahead of a headache. I had read somewhere in history that it was the law in the armies of King Cyrus that every soldier had to sweat every day. I found that I could get along with sweating three times a week. (Out of curiosity I once weighed before and after a hard tennis match in Pasadena’s summer weather, and discovered that I had parted with four and a half pounds of water.)

Tennis is a leisure-class recreation, and on the courts I met some of the prominent young men of my City of Millionaires. I was amused to note that their attitude toward me on the court was cordial and sometimes even gay, but we did not meet elsewhere. Sometimes their wives would drive them to the court and call for them when the game was over; but never once was I invited to meet one of those wives. I quietly mounted my bicycle and pedaled a couple of miles, slightly uphill, to my home. On Sunday morning I had a regular date with three men: one of the town’s leading bankers, one of the town’s leading real-estate men, and another whose high occupation I have forgotten. We played at the ultrafashionable Valley Hunt Club, but never once was I invited to enter the doors of that club. When the game was over, I mounted my bicycle and pedaled away.

One of these cases is especially amusing, and I tell it even though it leads me ahead of my story. I had a weekly tennis date with a young man of a family that owned a great business in Los Angeles. The young man, who lived in Pasadena, called me “the human rabbit,” because I scurried across the court and got shots that he thought he had put away. Every time we played, his wife would be waiting in her car, and I dutifully kept my distance.

After several years I learned from the newspapers that he had divorced his wife. Then Craig read an advertisement that all the furniture of an elegant home was being offered for sale. She wanted a large rug for the living room, so I drove her to the place and waited outside while she went in. It proved to be a long wait, but I always carry something to read so I didn’t mind. Craig bought a rug, and told me that the lady who was doing the selling was the ex-wife of my tennis friend! She was a chatty lady and had told her varied social adventures, including this:

“I almost caught Neil Vanderbilt. He drove up to a boulevard stop right alongside me, and I caught his eye. If that red light had lasted fifteen seconds longer, I’d have nailed him!”

(I myself with Craig’s help had already “nailed” Neil, and I shall have a bit to tell about him later on. He is the possessor of an enchanted name, which has brought him much trouble. I know only one man equally unfortunate--Prince Hopkins. When he traveled in Europe, the bellboys hit their foreheads on the ground; he changed his name to Pryns to avoid the sight.)

XI

In some trading deal Craig had come into possession of two lots on Signal Hill, near Long Beach; and now in the papers she read the electrifying news that oil had been discovered under that wide hill. I drove her down there to find out about it, and she learned that lot owners in the different blocks were organizing, since obviously there could be no drilling on a tiny bit of land. I must have taken Craig a dozen times--a distance of twenty miles or so--and I sat for that many evenings listening to the arguments. I hadn’t a word to say of course; the lots belonged to Craig, and she was the business end of the family.

It was human nature in the raw, and this was the first time I had seen it completely naked. There were big lots, and there were little lots; there were corner lots--these had higher value for residences, but did they have more oil under them? Cliques were formed, and tempers blazed--they never quite came to blows, but almost. And there sat a novelist, watching, listening, and storing away material for what he knew was going to be a great long novel. He listened to the lawyers and to the oilmen who came to make offers; they told their troubles. They wanted the lease as cheaply as possible, and they had no idea they were going to be in a novel with the title _Oil!_--including the exclamation point. The book was going to be taken by a book club, translated into twenty-seven languages, and read all over the world--but all they wanted was to get that lease more cheaply.

One of them offered in exchange a goat ranch somewhere down to the south, and so we drove there; I looked at the hills, and the goats, and the people who raised them. A crude country fellow, he too was going to be translated into twenty-seven languages, of which he had never even heard the names.

I told Craig what I was doing, of course; and it pleased her because it would keep me out of mischief for a year. She got tired of the oil game herself and sold her lots for ten thousand dollars each.

Into the novel I put not merely the oil business but Hollywood, where the wealthy playboys go; also the labor struggle, which is all over America. It made a long novel, 527 closely printed pages; when it was published, a kind Providence inspired the chief of police of Boston to say that it was indecent, and to bar it from the city. After that, of course, the publishers couldn’t get the books printed fast enough; and they besieged me to go to Boston and make a fight. “Would you trade on the indecency of your book?” demanded Craig; and I answered that I wished to trade on its decency. So she let me go.

In Grand Central Station when I took the train for Boston, I learned that the bookstand there couldn’t keep a supply of the books; everyone bound for Boston took copies for his friends. When I reached the city, I interviewed the chief of police, an elderly Catholic gentleman who told me which passages he objected to. I had those passages blacked out in some copies and sold them on the street--the fig-leaf edition, a rare collector’s item now. What shocked the Catholic gentleman most was the passage in which an older sister mentions the subject of birth control to a younger brother. I recall the soft voice of the old chief, pleading: “Now surely, Mr. Sinclair, nobody should write a thing like that.” I told him I earnestly wished that someone had done me that favor when I was young. I believed in birth control, and practiced it, and I am sure that the salvation of the human race will depend on it--and soon.

XII

During my stay in Boston I paid a visit to Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had been in prison at that time for about six years, and whom I had visited not long after his arrest. He was one of the wisest and kindest persons I ever knew, and I thought him as incapable of murder as I was. After he and Nicola Sacco had been executed, I returned to Boston and gathered material for a two-volume novel dealing with their case.

I had developed what the doctor called a plantar wart under one heel, so it was hard for me to walk; but I got myself into a Pullman car, and when I reached Boston I hobbled around the streets with a crutch, talking with everyone who had been close to the case.

I had a story half formed in my mind. Among Mrs. Gartz’s rich friends I had met an elderly lady, socially prominent in Boston; Mrs. Burton was her name, and she enjoyed telling me odd stories about the tight little group of self-determined aristocrats who ruled the social life of the proud old city. Judge Alvan T. Fuller and President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard belonged to that group--and Bartolomeo Vanzetti didn’t. Mrs. Burton had come to California, seeking a new life, and I delighted her by saying that she would be my heroine--“the runaway grandmother,” I would call her.