THE EXPOSURE
I
All that fall and winter the quail had been calling from the hills of
Paradise unheeded. Bunny didn’t want to go there. But now it chanced
that Dad had some matters to see to, and his chauffeur had got sent to
jail for turning bootlegger in his off hours. Dad was having spells of
bad health, when he did not feel equal to driving; and this being a
Friday, his son offered to take him.
The Ross Junior tract had nothing left of Bunny but the name. There was
a strange woman as housekeeper in the ranch-house, and the Rascum cabin
had been moved, and the bougainvillea vine replaced by a derrick. Every
one of the fellows who had met with Paul was gone, and there were no
more intellectual discussions. Paradise was now a place where men worked
hard at getting out oil, and kept their mouths closed. There were
hundreds of men Bunny had never seen before, and these had brought a new
atmosphere. They patronized the bootleggers and the pool-rooms, and
places for secret gambling and drinking. “Orange-pickers” was the
contemptuous name the real oil workers applied to this new element, and
their lack of familiarity with their jobs was a cause of endless
trouble; they would slip from greasy derricks, or get crushed by the
heavy pipe, and the company had had to build an addition to the
hospital. But of course that was cheaper than paying union wages to
skilled men!
A deplorable thing happened to Bunny; his reading of a book was
interrupted by a visit from the wife of Jick Duggan, one of the men in
the county jail. The woman insisted on seeing him, and then insisted on
weeping all over the place, and telling him harrowing tales about her
husband and the other fellows. She begged him to go and see for himself,
and he was weak enough to yield—you can see how imprudent it was, on
the part of a young oil prince who was trying to grow his hard-shell, so
that he could be a help to his old father, and enjoy life with a darling
of the world. Bunny knew that he was doing wrong, and showed his guilt
by not telling his father where he was going that rainy Saturday
afternoon.
They let him into the jail without objection; the men who kept the place
being used to it, and unable to foresee the impression it would make
upon a young idealist. The ancient dungeon had been contrived by an
architect with a special genius for driving his fellow beings mad. The
“tanks,” instead of having doors with keys, like other jail cells, were
designed as revolving turrets, and whenever you wanted to put a prisoner
in or take one out, you revolved the turret until an opening in one set
of bars corresponded with an opening in another set. This revolving was
done by means of a hand-winch, and involved a frightful grinding and
shrieking of rusty iron. There were three such tanks, one on top of the
other, and the revolving of any one inflicted the uproar on everybody.
In the course of the jail’s forty years of history, scores of men had
gone mad from having to listen to these sounds at all hours of the day
and night.
Have you ever had the experience of seeing some person you know and love
shut behind bars like a wild beast? It was something that hit Bunny in
the pit of his stomach, and made him weak and faint. Here were seven
fellows, all but two of them young as himself, crowding together like so
many friendly and affectionate deer, nuzzling through the bars and
expecting lumps of sugar or bits of bread. Their pitiful clamor of
welcome, the grateful light on their faces—just for a visit, a few
minutes of a rich young man’s time!
These were all ranch-fellows, outdoor men, that had worked in the sun
and rain all their lives, and grown big and bronzed and sturdy; but now
they were bleached white or yellow, dirty and unshaven, with sunken
cheeks and hollow eyes. Jick Duggan was coughing, just as his wife had
said, and there was not one healthy-looking man in the bunch. If Bunny
had been able to say to himself that these men had done some vile deed,
and this was their atonement, he might have justified it, even while he
questioned what good it would do; but they were there because they had
dared to dream of justice for their fellows, and to talk about it, in
defiance of the “open shop” crowd of big business men!
Bunny had sent them some books—they were allowed to have books that
didn’t look radical to very ignorant jailers, and provided the books
came direct from the publishers, so that they would not have to be
searched too carefully for concealed objects such as saws and dope. Now
they wanted to tell him how much these books had helped, and to ask for
more. And what did Bunny know about their prospects of getting a trial?
Had he seen Paul, and what did Paul think? And what about the union—was
there anything left of it? They were not allowed any sort of “radical”
paper, so they were six or seven months behind the news of their own
world.
II
Bunny came out into the sunshine with a fresh impulse of desperation.
His father was half sick, but even so, his father must have this burden
of pain dumped onto him! The last time they had discussed the matter,
Dad had said to wait, Vernon Roscoe would “see what he could do.” But
now Bunny would wait no longer; Dad must compel Verne to act, or Bunny
would take up the job himself.
He drove his father back to Angel City, and learned that the radicals
had organized a “defense committee,” and there was to be a mass-meeting
of protest, at which funds would be raised for the approaching trial.
Paul was to be the principal speaker—despite the fact that it might
cause his bail privilege to be cancelled. When Bunny got that news, he
served an ultimatum on his father; the meeting was to take place the
following week, and unless Verne had acted in the meantime, Bunny was
going to be one of the speakers, and say his full say about the case.
Dad of course protested. But it was one of those times when his son
surprised him by failing to be “soft.” Bunny went farther than ever in
his desperation. “Maybe you’ll feel I haven’t any right to behave like
this while I’m living on your money, and perhaps I ought to quit college
and go to work for myself.”
“Son, I’ve never said anything like that!”
“No, but I’m putting you in a hole with Verne, and it would be easier if
you could say I’m not living on you.”
“Son, I don’t want to say any such thing. But I do think you ought to
consider my position.”
“I’ve considered everything, Dad—considered till I’m sick at heart. I
just can’t let my love for any one person in the world take the place of
my sense of justice. We’re committing a crime to keep those men in jail,
and I say Verne has got to let them out, and if he don’t, then I’m going
to make it hot for him.”
Verne was on his way back from the east; and Bunny demanded that he
should phone the district attorney his wishes; he might phone the judge,
too, if he thought necessary—it wouldn’t be the first time, Bunny would
wager. If he didn’t do it, then Bunny’s name would be announced as one
of the speakers at that mass-meeting. Upon Dad flashed the memory of
that terrible meeting of Harry Seager’s; he saw his beloved son publicly
adopting that same ferocious mob, clasping that sea of angry faces and
uplifted hands and lungs of leather!
Also Bunny renewed his threat about Annabelle. “You tell Verne with my
compliments, I’m going to lay siege to his girl, and take her to that
meeting. I’ll tell her he’s trying to keep her in a golden cage, and
that’ll make her go; and if ever she hears the full story of those
political prisoners, she’ll make Verne wish he’d known when to quit!”
Dad could hardly keep from grinning. Poor old man, in his secret heart
he was proud of the kid’s nerve!
Whether Dad used the argument about Annabelle, or what he said, this
much is history—two days after Vernon Roscoe arrived from Washington in
his private car, carrying in his own hands the precious documents with
the big red seals of the department of the interior, the district
attorney of San Elido County appeared before Superior Judge Patten, and
entered a “nolle pros” in the eight criminal syndicalism cases. So Vee
Tracy got back her ten thousand dollars, and the seven oil workers were
turned out half-blinded into the sunshine, and Bunny postponed his
premier appearance in the role of that ill bird—whatever may be the
name of it—which is reputed to foul its own nest.
III
Bunny got the news before it was in the papers, and he hastened to take
it to Paul and Ruth. Paul had got work as a carpenter, and they had
rented a little cottage on the rear of a lot. Ruth had started her
nurse’s course in one of the big hospitals, and Paul had got some books,
and there was a little of Paradise transported to a working-class part
of Angel City. And oh, the happiness that shone in Ruth’s face when
Bunny came in with the news! And then the strange mixture of anguish and
pride, as Paul spoke: “It’s good of you, son, to have taken so much
trouble, and I do appreciate it; but I’m afraid you won’t think me very
grateful when you hear what I’m going to do with my freedom.”
“What is it, Paul?”
“I’ve decided to join the Workers’ party.”
“Oh, Paul!” Bunny’s face showed dismay. “But why?”
“Because I believe in their tactics. I always have, ever since my time
in Siberia. I waited, because I didn’t want to hurt the strike; and
after I got arrested, I couldn’t do anything without compromising the
other fellows. But now it won’t hurt anyone but myself, so I’m going to
say what I know.”
“But Paul! They’ll only arrest you again!”
“Maybe so. But this time they’ll arrest me as a Communist, and they’ll
try me that way.”
“But they’ve already convicted so many!”
“That’s the way an unpopular cause has to grow—there’s no other way.
Here I am, an obscure workingman, and nobody pays any attention to what
I think or say; but if they try me as a Communist, I make people talk
and think about our ideas.”
Bunny stole a look at Ruth: a pitiful sight, her eyes riveted upon her
brother, and her hands clasped tight in fear. It was so that she had
looked when Paul was going off to war. It was her fate to see him go off
to war!
“Are you sure there’s nothing more important you can do, Paul?”
“I used to think I was going to do a lot of great things. But the last
few years have taught me that a workingman isn’t very important in this
capitalist world, and he has to remember his place. A lot of us are
going to jail, and a lot more are going to die. The one thing we must be
sure of is that we help to awaken the slaves.”
There was a pause. “You’re quite sure it can’t come peaceably, Paul?”
“The other has to say about that, son. Do you think they were peaceable
during the strike? You should have been there!”
“And you’ve given up hope for democracy?”
“Not at all! Democracy is the goal—it’s the only thing worth working
for. But it can’t exist till we’ve broken the strangle-hold of big
business. That’s a fighting job, and it can’t be done by democracy. Look
at the boobs that Eli has got in his tabernacle, and imagine them
setting out to get the best of Vernon Roscoe!”
Bunny could not avoid a smile. “That’s exactly Verne’s own statement.”
“Well, he’s a practical man, and I’ve a great respect for him. He wants
to do something, and he finds out the way, and he does it. He doesn’t
let the government get in his way, does he? No, he overthrows the
government by bribery. By the way, son, have you seen Dan Irving’s
Washington letter this week?”
“The paper’s at home, but I didn’t stop to look at it.”
“Well, you’ll be interested. Dan says it’s known to all the newspaper
men in Washington that Roscoe and O’Reilly made a deal with the
attorney-general to buy the nomination for Harding, on condition they
were to get these naval reserve leases. They’ve been buying government
officials right and left, and newspaper men also. There’s a clamor for
an investigation, but the gang won’t let it happen.”
There was a pause. Paul, watching his friend’s face, saw an uneasy look,
and added, “Don’t talk to me about it, son—I don’t want to know
anything I’m not free to tell. But you and I both understand—that is
capitalist government, and what has it got to do with democracy?”
Again Bunny didn’t answer; and Paul said, “I think about Verne, as you
call him, because I’ve just had a run-in with him, and he’s the system
to me. I want to take his powers away from him; and how am I going to do
it? I’ve boxed the compass, trying to figure how it can be done legally.
He’s got the courts, and they’ll call anything legal that he says;
they’ll wind you up in a spider’s web of technicalities. He’s got the
machinery for reaching the masses—you can’t tell them anything but what
he wants them to hear. He’s got the movies—people say he has a movie
star for a mistress—maybe you know about that. And you’ve been to
college—O’Reilly attends to that, I’m told. We could never get a
majority vote—because Verne has the ballot-boxes stuffed; even if we
elected anybody, he’d have them bought before they got into office. The
more I think of the idea that he would give up to paper ballots—the
crazier it seems to me.”
“But then, Paul, what can you hope for?”
“I’m going to the workers! Verne’s oil workers are the basis of his
power, they produce his wealth, and they can be reached, they’re not
scattered all over. They have one common job, and one common
interest—they want the wealth that Verne takes from them. Of course
they know that only dimly; they read his newspapers, and go to his
movies. But we’re going to teach them—and when they take the oil wells,
how can Verne get them back?”
“He’ll send troops and take them, Paul!”
“He won’t send troops, because we’ll have the railwaymen. We’ll have the
telegraphers, and they’ll send our messages instead of his. We’ll have
the men in all the key industries—we’re going out to organize them, and
tell them exactly how to do it—all power to the unions.”
Bunny was contemplating once more the vision which his friend had
brought back from Siberia. And Paul went on, with that condescending air
that had always impressed Bunny, and infuriated his sister. “It seems
dreadful to you, because it means a fight, and you don’t want to
fight—you don’t have to. The men for this job are the ones that have
had the iron in their souls—men that have been beaten and crushed,
thrown into jail and starved there. That’s how Verne makes the
revolution, he throws us into jail and lets us rot. We lie there and
have bitter, black thoughts. All the Bolsheviks got their training in
dungeons; and now the masters are giving the same course in America.
It’s not only that we’re tempted and made hard—it’s that we become
marked men, the workers know us; the poor slaves that don’t dare move a
hand for themselves, they learn that there are fellows they can trust,
that won’t sell them out to Vernon Roscoe! I’m going back to Paradise,
son, and teach Communism, and if Verne has me arrested again, the Moscow
program will go into the court records of San Elido county!”
IV
The newspapers announced a social event of the first importance, the
engagement of Miss Alberta Ross, only daughter of Mr. J. Arnold Ross, to
Mr. Eldon Burdick, a scion of one of the oldest families of the city,
and recently chosen president of the California Defense League. A few
days later came the announcement that Mr. Burdick had been appointed a
secretary to the American embassy at Paris; and so the wedding was a
state occasion, with more flowers than were ever seen in a church
before, and Bunny all dolled up for a groomsman, and Dad looking as
handsome as the ringmaster of a circus, and Aunt Emma, who considered
that she had made this match, assuming the mental position of the
bride’s mother, with the proper uncertain expression, half elation and
half tears. “Mrs. Emma Ross, aunt of the bride, wore pink satin
embroidered in pastel colored beads and carried pink lilies”—thus the
newspapers, which set forth the importance of the Burdick family, and
all about the Ross millions, and never mentioned that the father of the
bride had once been a mule-driver, nor even that he had kept a general
store at Queen Center, California!
And when the excitement was all over, and bride and groom had set out
for their post of duty, then a funny thing happened; Aunt Emma, uplifted
by her success as match-maker, turned her arts upon Bunny! The occasion
was the world premiere of “The Princess of Patchouli,” a sort of family
event. Had not Dad and Bunny been present at the inception of this
sumptuous work of art? Had not Dad been king? By golly, he had, and he
had told Aunt Emma about it at least a dozen times—and so, what more
natural than that he should escort her upon his arm, following
immediately behind the star of the occasion and her Bunny-rabbit? And
what more natural than that Aunt Emma should meet Vee Tracy, and fall in
love with her at first sight, and tell her darling nephew about her
feelings?
In short, Bunny became aware that he was being manipulated by the
proverbial tact of woman to think that Vee Tracy made a perfect princess
on the screen, she was a natural-born aristocrat in both appearance and
manner. It is part of the proverbial intuitive powers of woman, that she
will be able to say exactly how an aristocrat will look and act, even
though she has never been outside the state of California, and never
laid eyes upon a single aristocrat in all her fifty years.
Bunny said, yes, Vee was all right; she was a good-looker. With the
proverbial unresponsiveness of the selfish male, he did not warm up to
his aunt’s hints and tell about his love-affair. In fact he was rather
shocked, because he thought she was too old to know about anything
improper. So Aunt Emma had to come right out with it, “Why don’t you
marry her, Bunny?”
“Well, but Aunt Emma, I don’t know that she’d have me.”
“Have you ever asked her?”
“Well, I’ve sort of hinted round.”
“Well, you stop hinting, and ask her plain. She’s a lovely girl, and
you’re getting old enough to be serious now, and I think it would make a
very distinguished marriage, and I know it would please your father—I
believe he’ll propose to her himself if you don’t.” Aunt Emma was quite
charmed with this naughtiness, giving the younger generation to
understand that they needn’t be laying the old folks away on the shelf
quite yet!
Bunny always liked to oblige; so he went off and thought it over, and
half made up his mind to talk it over with Vee. But alas, the next time
they met they got into one of those disputes that were making it so hard
for them to be happy. Vee had just come from Annabelle Ames, and
reported that Annabelle was in distress, because some rascal journalist
was writing letters from Washington, accusing Verne of having bought the
presidency of the United States, denouncing the Sunnyside lease as the
greatest steal of the century, and demanding that Verne be prosecuted
for bribery. Some thoughtful friend had cut out a copy of this printed
article, and marked it all with red pencil and mailed it to Annabelle’s
home, marked “Personal.” The article was most abusive, and the name of
the writer sounded familiar to Vee—Daniel Webster Irving, where had she
heard of Daniel Webster Irving? Of course Bunny had to tell her at
once—because she’d be bound to find it out, and would think he was
hiding it from her: Dan Irving was his former teacher at the university,
and head of the labor college that had failed.
So then Vee went up into the air. This fellow had been worming secrets
out of Bunny! And when Bunny stated firmly that he had never mentioned
the matter to Dan or to any other of his radical friends, Vee cried,
“Oh, my God! My God! You poor, naive, trusting soul!” She went on like
that, it was proof positive of the cunning of these dangerous reds, that
they should be able to keep him in ignorance while they used him for an
oil well and pumped him dry! In Vee’s view of the matter, it now became
of the utmost urgency that Annabelle and Verne should not find out that
Bunny knew this rascal journalist, and had actually helped to support
him. If they found out, it would be all over with their friendship, they
would be sure they had been basely betrayed, or at least that Bunny was
such a scatter-brain that it was unsafe to have him about. Vee wanted to
be loyal and romantic and melodramatic, just like one of her
“continuities.” And Bunny was bored, and told her that Dad had probably
told Verne all about the matter, at the time that he, Bunny, had told
his father.
So the young oil prince did not ask the “natural-born aristocrat” to
marry him. No, he went off and was wretchedly unhappy; because he ached
for Vee whenever he was away from her, and yet they seemed to be always
having violent emotional crises, and having to make it up with tears.
There was no way for him to avoid trouble, except to give up the radical
movement; and it was a fact that intellectually nothing else appealed to
him. He wanted to see Paul, and argue with him, and present a score of
new objections to the Workers’ party! He wanted to take Rachel to meet
Paul and Ruth, and hear the arguments that would fly fast and furious,
when Rachel set forth her opinion of the left wing insanity! He wanted
to go to the meetings of the “Ypsels,” the Young Peoples’ Socialist
League, of which Rachel had recently taken on the duties of
secretary—here was real education, young folks who actually wanted to
use their minds, and took ideas with the seriousness that other students
reserved for football and fraternity politics!
V
Of all the people Bunny knew, it appeared just now that only one was
perfectly successful and completely happy, and that was Eli Watkins,
prophet of the Third Revelation. For the Lord had carried out to the
letter the promise revealed to the runners of the Bible Marathon; he had
caused a great banker, Mark Eisenberg, who ran the financial affairs of
Angel City, to reflect upon the importance of Eli’s political influence,
and to put up a good part of the money for the new tabernacle. Now the
structure was completed, and was opened amid such glory to the Lord as
had never been witnessed in this part of the world.
Southern California is populated for the most part by retired farmers
from the middle west, who have come out to die amid sunshine and
flowers. Of course they want to die happy, and with the assurance of
sunshine and flowers beyond; so Angel City is the home of more weird
cults and doctrines—you couldn’t form any conception of it till you
came to investigate. To run your eye over the pages of performances
advertised in the Sunday newspapers would cause you to burst into
laughter or tears, according to your temperament. Wherever three or more
were gathered together in the name of Jesus or Buddha or Zoroaster, or
Truth or Light or Love, or New Thought or Spiritualism or Psychic
Science—there was the beginning of a new revelation, with mystical,
inner states of bliss and esoteric ways of salvation.
Eli had advantages over most of these spiritual founders. In the first
place, he had been a real shepherd of flocks and herds, and there are
age-old traditions attaching to this profession. Also it was
symbolically useful; what Eli had done to the goats he was now doing to
the human goats of Angel City, gathering them into the fold and guarding
them from the cruel wolf Satan. He had taken to carrying a shepherd’s
crook on the platform, and with his white robes and the star shining in
his yellow hair, he would call the flocks, just as he had done upon the
hills, and when he passed the collection plate, they would do the
shearing of themselves.
Eli possessed a sense of drama and turned it loose in the devising of
primitive little tableaux and pageants, which gave rapture to his simple
minded followers. When he told how he had been tempted of the devil, the
wicked One came upon the scene, hoofs, horns and tail, and with a red
spotlight on him; when Eli lifted up the cross on high, the devil would
fall and strike his forehead on the ground, and the silver trumpets
would peal, and the followers would burst into loud hosannas. Or perhaps
it would be the command, “Suffer little children to come unto me”; there
would be hundreds of children, all robed in white, and when Eli lifted
his shepherd’s crook and called, they came storming to the platform,
their fresh young voices shouting, “Praise the Lord!” And of course
there was the regular mourners’ bench, and the baptisms in the marble
tank. You were never allowed to forget that you had a soul, and that it
was of supreme importance to you and to Jesus and that you were having
it saved by Eli’s aid. You were always being called upon to do
something—to stand up for the Lord, or to clap your hands for
salvation, or to raise your right hand if you were a new-comer to the
tabernacle.
But the great advantage Eli had over the other prophets was the pair of
leathern bellows he had developed out on the hills of Paradise. Never
was there such an electrifying voice, and never one that could keep
going so long. All day Sunday it bellowed and boomed—morning,
afternoon, evening; there were week-day services every evening but
Saturday, and in the mornings and afternoons there were prayer meetings
and Bible schools and services of song and healing blessings and
baptismal ceremonials and thank offerings and wholesale weddings and
Bride of the Lamb dedications—you just couldn’t keep track of all that
was going on in the many rooms and meeting-halls of this half million
dollar tabernacle.
Science had just completed a marvelous invention; the human voice became
magnified a hundred million-fold, it could be spread over the whole
earth. The population of America had gone wild over radio, and everybody
had rushed to get a set. The first great public use made of this
achievement in Angel City was to open a new three million dollar hotel
for the pleasure of the very rich, and the opening ceremonies were
broadcasted, and the newspapers were full of the wonder of it; but it
proved to be dreadful, because everybody in the hotel got drunk, and the
manager of the institution placed himself in front of the microphone and
poured out a stream of obscenities such as farmers’ wives from Iowa had
never dreamed in all their lives. So it was felt that the new invention
needed to be sanctified and redeemed, and Eli proceeded to install one
of the biggest and most powerful broadcasting stations. Through the
Lord’s mercy, his words were heard over four million square miles, and
it was worthwhile to preach to audiences of that size, praise Jesus!
Eli’s preaching had thus become one of the major features of Southern
California life. You literally couldn’t get away from him if you tried.
Dad had been told by his doctor that he needed more exercise, and he had
taken to walking for half an hour before dinner; he declared that he
listened to Eli’s sermons on all these walks, and never missed a single
word! Everybody’s house was wide open in this warm spring weather, and
all you had to do was to choose a neighborhood where the moderately poor
lived—and 90 percent of the people were that. You would hear the
familiar bellowing voice, and before you got out of range of it, you
would come in range of another radio set, and so you would be relayed
from street to street and from district to district! In these houses sat
old couples with family bibles in their hands and tears of rapture in
their eyes; or perhaps a mother washing her baby’s clothes or making a
pudding for her husband’s supper—and all the time her soul caught up to
glory on the wings of the mighty prophet’s eloquence! And Dad walking
outside, also exalted—because, don’t forget that he was the man who had
started this Third Revelation—he had invented all its patter, that day
he had tried to keep old Abel Watkins from beating his daughter Ruth!
VI
Bunny received a letter from Dan Irving, telling about his new job. It
was a simple matter to be a radical press correspondent in Washington
these days; the regular newspaper fellows were loaded up with material
they were not allowed to handle. All but a few of the “hard guys” were
boiling over with indignation at what they saw, and when they met Dan,
they boiled over on him. The only trouble was, his labor press service
had so little space, and only a score or two of radical papers that
would look at its material.
President Harding had brought with him a swarm of camp followers, his
political bodyguard at home; the newspaper men knew them as “the Ohio
gang,” and they were looting everything in sight. Barney Brockway had
given one of his henchmen a desk in the secret service department; this
was the “fixer,” and if you wanted anything, he would tell you the
price. The Wilson administration had grown fat by exploiting the
properties seized from enemy aliens; and now the Harding administration
was growing fat out of turning them back! Five percent was the regular
“split”; if you wanted to recover a ten million dollar property, you
turned over half a million in liberty bonds to the “fixer.” Bootlegging
privileges were sold for millions, and deals were made right in the
lobbies of the Capitol. Dan heard from insiders that more than three
hundred millions had already been stolen from the funds appropriated for
relief of war veterans—the head of that bureau was another of the “Ohio
gang.” And the amazing fact was, no matter how many of these scandals
you might unearth, you couldn’t get a single big newspaper or magazine
in the country to touch them!
Bunny took that letter to his father, and as usual it meant to the old
man exactly the opposite of what it meant to Bunny. Yes, politics were
rotten, and so you saw the folly of trusting business matters to
government. Take business away from the politicians, and turn it over to
business men, who would run it without graft. If those oil lands had
been given to Dad and Verne in the beginning, there wouldn’t have been
any bribing—wasn’t that clear? Dad and Verne were patriots, putting an
end to a vicious public policy!
Did Dad really believe that? It was hard for Bunny to be sure. Dad had
lies that he told to the public; and perhaps he had others that he told
to his son, and yet others that he told to himself. If you laid hold of
him and tore all those lies away, he would not be able to stand the
sight of his nakedness.
His enemies, the “soreheads” in Congress, were busily engaged in
depriving him of these spiritual coverings. There was one old senator in
Washington by the name of LaFollette—his head had been sore for forty
years, and no way could be found to heal it. Now he was denouncing the
oil leases, and demanding an investigation. The Harding machine had
blocked him, but it couldn’t keep him from making speeches—he would
talk for eight hours at a stretch, and the galleries would be full, and
then he would mail out his speeches under government frank. Dad would
grumble and growl—and then in the midst of it he would realize that his
own dear son was on the side of these trouble-makers! Instead of
sympathizing with his father’s lies, Bunny was criticizing them, and
making his father ashamed!
Then a painful thing happened. There was a newspaper publisher in a
western city, one of those old pirates of the frontier type, who had
begun life as a bartender, and delighted to tell how he would toss a
silver dollar up to the ceiling, and if it stuck it belonged to the boss
and if it came down it belonged to him. By this means he had got rich,
and now he owned a paper, and he got onto this scandal of the oil
leases. There came to him a man who had some old claim to part of the
Sunnyside lease, and the publisher made a deal with this man to go
halves, and then he served notice on Verne that they had to have a
million dollars. Verne told him to go to hell, and the result was, this
newspaper opened up with front page exposures of the greatest public
steal in history. And this was no obscure Socialist sheet, this was one
of the most widely read newspapers in the country, and copies were being
mailed to all members of Congress, and to other newspapers—gee, it was
awful! Dad and Verne and the rest held anxious conferences, and suffered
agonies of soul; in the end they had to give up to the old pirate, and
paid him his million in cold cash—and the great newspaper lost all its
interest in the public welfare!
When Bunny was a youngster, he had read the stories of Captain Mayne
Reid, and he remembered one scene—a fish-hawk capturing a fish, and
then a swift eagle swooping down from the sky and taking the prize away.
Just so it was in the oil-game—a world of human hawks and eagles!
VII
Bunny no longer felt comfortable about going to the Monastery. But Vee
would not let him quit, she argued and pleaded; Annabelle was so kind
and good, and would be so hurt if he let horrid political quarrels break
up their friendship! Bunny answered—he knew Verne must be sore as the
dickens; and imagine Verne being tactful or considerate of a guest!
When you went out into society and refused to take a drink, you caused
everybody to begin talking about prohibition. In the same way, when you
did not join in denunciation of the “insurgent” senators in Washington,
you caused some one to comment on your sympathy for bomb-throwers. The
little bunch of “reds” in Congress were interfering with legislation
much desired by the rich, and they were denounced at every dinner-table,
including Vernon Roscoe’s. The great Schmolsky said, what the hell were
they after, anyhow? And Verne replied “Ask Jim Junior—he’s chummy with
them,” Annabelle had to jump in and cry, “No politics! I won’t have you
picking on my Bunny!”
Then, later in the evening, when Harvey Manning got drunk, he sat on
Bunny’s knee, very affectionate, as he always was, and shook one finger
in front of Bunny’s nose and remarked, “You gonna tell’m ’bout me?” And
when Bunny inquired, “Tell who, Harve?” the other replied, “Those
muckrakin friends o yours. I aint gonna have ’em tellin on me! My ole
uncle fines out I get drunk he’ll cut me out o his will.” So Bunny knew
that his intimacy with the enemy had been a subject of discussion at the
Monastery!
There had been a series of violent outbreaks in Angel City. The members
of the American Legion, roused by the “red revolutionary raving,” had
invaded the headquarters of the I. W. W. and thrown the members down the
stairs, and thrown their typewriters and desks after them. Since the
courts wouldn’t enforce law and order, these young men were going to
attend to it. They had raided bookstores which sold books with red
bindings, and dumped the books into the street and burned them. They had
beaten up newsdealers who were selling radical magazines. Also they were
taking charge of the speakers the public heard—if they didn’t like one,
they notified the owner of the hall, and he hastened to break his
contract.
John Groby, one of Verne’s oil associates from Oklahoma, was at the
dinner-table, and he said, that was the way to handle the rattle-snakes.
Groby may not have known that one of the snakes was sitting across the
way from him, so Bunny took no offense, but listened quietly. “That’s
the way we did the job at home, we turned the Legion loose on ’em and
cracked their heads, and they moved on to some other field. You’re too
polite out here, Verne.”
Annabelle had put Bunny beside her, so that she might protect him from
assaults. Now she started telling him about her new picture, “A Mother’s
Heart.” Such a sweet, old-fashioned story! Bunny would call it
sentimental, perhaps, but the women would just love it, and it gave her
a fine part. Also Vee had a clever scenario for her new picture, “The
Golden Couch.” Quite a fetching title, didn’t Bunny think? And all the
time, above the soft murmur of Annabelle’s voice, Bunny heard the loud
noise of John Groby blessing the Legion. Bunny longed to ask him what
the veterans would say to the “Ohio gang,” stealing the funds from their
disabled buddies.
Someone mentioned another stunt of the returned soldiers—their setting
up a censorship of moving pictures. One Angel City theatre had started
to show a German film, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and this Hun
invasion had so outraged the Legion men, they had put on their uniforms
and blockaded the theatre, and beaten up the people who tried to get in.
Tommy Paley laughed—the courage of each of those veterans had been
fortified by a five-dollar bill, contributed by the association of
motion picture producers! They didn’t want foreign films that set them
too high a standard!
Then Schmolsky. He was too fat to comprehend such a thing as irony, and
he remarked that the directors were mighty damn right. Schmolsky, a Jew
from Ruthenia, or Rumelia, or Roumania, or some such country, said that
we didn’t want no foreign films breaking in on our production schedules.
An hour or so later Bunny heard him telling how the Hollywood films were
sweeping the German market—it wouldn’t be three years before we’d own
this business. “Vae victis!” remarked Bunny; and Schmolsky looked at
him, puzzled, and said, “Huh?”
VIII
From such a week end Bunny would return to Angel City, and accompany
Rachel to a meeting of the Young People’s Socialist League. In an
obscure hall twenty-five or thirty boys and girls of the working-class
met once a week, and read papers, and discussed problems of politics and
economics, the labor movement and the Socialist party. Rachel had grown
up with this organization, and had prestige with it because she had got
a college education, and because she brought “Comrade Ross” with her.
The most thoroughly “class-conscious” young people could not help being
thrilled by a spectacle so unusual as a millionaire who sympathized with
the workers and had helped to bail out political prisoners.
With these young Socialists, as with the old ones, it was right wing
versus left; everybody argued tactics, and got tremendously excited. The
Communists also had an organization, the Young Workers’ League, and the
two rivals carried on sniping operations; sometimes they held formal
debates, and young people would jump up and down in their seats, and
carry on the controversy in their homes and working places for weeks
afterwards. It was Moscow versus Amsterdam, the Third International
versus the Second, the “reds” against the “pinks,” as the mild
Socialists were called. And this same struggle was going on in the soul
of Bunny. Paul Watkins would pull him forward, and then Rachel Menzies
would haul him back; and his trouble seemed to be, he was of the opinion
of the one he talked with last. He was so prone to see the other
fellow’s point of view, and lose himself in that! Why couldn’t he have a
mind of his own?
Theoretically it was possible to bring about the change from Capitalism
to Socialism by peaceable, one-step-at-a-time methods. Anyone could lay
out the steps. But when you came to take the first one, you confronted
the fact that the capitalists didn’t want to be evolved into Socialism,
and wouldn’t let you take any step. It was a fact that so far they had
outwitted the workers at every turn; they had even forced the government
to retrace the steps which had been taken in the emergency of war. It
was also true, as Paul contended, that the capitalists would not permit
the workers to be peaceable; they resorted to violence every time, and
set aside the laws and the constitution when it suited their
convenience.
To Bunny that seemed a pathetic thing about the Socialists. Take a man
like Chaim Menzies; he had the long vision, the patience of the elderly
worker; with ages of toil behind him, and ages ahead of him, he did not
shrink from the task of building an organization. But he was never
allowed to finish the building, the masters would knock it down
overnight; they sent in spies, they bribed the officials and sowed
discord, and in time of strikes their police and gunmen raided the
offices, and jailed the leaders, and drove the workers back into
slavery. So here was a curious situation—the masters in their blindness
working as allies of the Communists! Verne and his oil operators and the
rest of the open shop crowd saying to the working people, “No, don’t
listen to the Socialists, they are a bunch of old fogies. The Communists
are the fellows who can tell you what we are like, and how we are going
to behave!”
One thing Bunny had felt certain about—the workers ought to determine
their tactics without bitterness and internal strife. But now he was
beginning to doubt if even that were possible. The quarrel between the
two factions was implicit in the nature of the problem. If you believed
in a peaceable transition, your course of action would be one thing, and
if you didn’t so believe, it would be another thing. If you thought you
could persuade the masses of the voters, you would be cautious and
politic, and would avoid the extremists, whose violent ways would repel
the voters. So you would try to keep the Communists out of your
organization, and of course that would make them hate you, and denounce
you as a compromiser and a “class collaborator,” and insist that you
were in the pay of the bosses, who hired you to keep the workers under
their yoke.
And then the Socialists would counter with the same charge of bribery.
Chaim Menzies never failed to declare that some of the Communists were
secret agents, paid by the bosses to split the movement, and expose it
to raids by the police. Bunny knew, from talk he heard among his
father’s associates, that these big business men had elaborate secret
agencies for the disrupting of the labor movement. And these agencies
would work either way; they would hire old line leaders to sell out the
workers, calling off strikes, or calling premature strikes that couldn’t
win; or they would send in spies to pose as reds and split the
organizations and tempt the leaders into crime. Incredible as it might
seem, the government secret service, under that great patriot, Barney
Brockway, was up to the neck in such work. At the trial of one group of
Communists the federal judge presiding remarked that apparently the
whole direction of the Communist party was in the hands of the United
States government!
IX
Bunny was always having the beautiful dream that his friends were going
to be friends with one another. Now he took Rachel to call on Paul and
Ruth; he liked them so, and they must share his feelings. But alas, they
didn’t seem to! Both sides were reserved, and avoided talking politics
as carefully as if they had been visiting at the Monastery! But Bunny
wanted them to talk politics, because he was trying to settle his own
inner debate, and he felt that they were qualified, they were members of
the working-class, while he was only an outsider. Perhaps one might
convert the other; but which one he wanted to be the converter, and
which the converted, it would have been hard for him to say!
Bunny questioned Paul, and learned that he had given up his carpentry
job—the Workers’ party was paying him a small salary to give all his
time to organizing. Paul had met Joe and Ikey Menzies, the young “left
wingers”; and Bunny told about how he and Rachel had helped to put Ben
Skutt out of business at the trial. How he wished the Socialists and the
Communists might work together like that, instead of making things
easier for the enemy!
Thus led on, Rachel said that she would be interested to understand the
ideas of Comrade Watkins. (Whenever a Socialist wanted to be very polite
to a Bolshevik, she called him by that old term, which had applied
before the family row broke out!) How could a mass uprising succeed in
America, with the employing class in possession of all the arms and
means of communication? They had poison gas now, and would wipe out
thousands of the rebel workers at a time. The one possible outcome would
be reaction—as in Italy, where the workers had seized the factories,
and then had had to give them up because they couldn’t run them.
Comrade Watkins replied that Italy had no coal, but was dependent on
Britain and America, which thus had the power to strangle the Italian
workers. As a matter of fact the Fascist reaction in Italy had been made
by American bankers—Mussolini and his ruffians had not dared to move a
finger till they had made certain of American credits. We had played the
same role there as in Hungary and Bavaria; all over the world, American
gold was buttressing reaction. Paul had seen it with his own eyes in
Siberia, and he said, with his quiet decisiveness, that nobody could
understand what it meant unless he had been there. Paul didn’t blame
Comrade Menzies for feeling as she did, that was natural for one who had
been brought up under peace conditions; but Paul had been to war, he had
seen the class struggle in action.
“Yes, Comrade Watkins,” said Rachel, “but if you try and fail, things
will be so much worse!”
“If we never try,” said Paul, “we can never succeed; and even if we
fail, the class-consciousness of the workers will be sharpened, and the
end will be nearer than if we do nothing. We have to keep the
revolutionary goal before the masses, and not let them be lured into
compromise. That is my criticism of the Socialist movement, it fails to
realize the intellectual and moral forces locked up in the
working-class, that can be called out by the right appeal.”
“Ah,” said Rachel, “but that is the question—what is the right appeal?
I want to appeal to peace rather than to violence. That seems to me more
moral.”
Paul answered, that to make peace appeals to a tiger might seem moral to
some, but to him it seemed futile. The determining fact in the world was
what the capitalist class had done during the past nine years. They had
destroyed thirty million human lives, and three hundred billions of
wealth, everything a whole generation of labor had created. So Paul did
not enter into discussions of morality with them; they were a set of
murderous maniacs, and the job was to sweep them out of power. Any means
that would succeed were moral means, because nothing could be so immoral
as capitalism.
When Bunny went out with Rachel, she said that Paul was an extraordinary
man, and certainly a dangerous one to the capitalist class. He was a
case of shell-shock from the war, and those who had made the war would
have to deal with him. Then Bunny asked about Ruth, and Rachel said she
was a nice girl, but a little colorless, didn’t Comrade Ross think?
Bunny tried to explain that Ruth was deep, her feelings were intense,
but she seldom expressed them. Rachel said Ruth ought to think for
herself, because she would have a lot of suffering if she followed Paul
through his Bolshevik career. Bunny suggested that Rachel might help to
educate her, but Rachel smiled and said that Comrade Ross was too naive;
surely Paul would not like to have a Socialist come in and steal his
sister’s sympathy from him. In spite of all Bunny could do, his women
friends would not be friends!
Then later on Bunny saw Paul, and got Paul’s reaction to Rachel. A nice
girl, well-meaning and intelligent, but she wouldn’t keep her
proletarian attitude very long. The social revolution in America was not
going to be made by young lady college graduates doing charity work for
the capitalist class! What she was doing among the “Ypsels” was mostly
wasted effort, according to Paul, because these Socialist organizations
spent their efforts fighting Communism. The capitalists ought to be glad
to hire her to do such work!
But somehow it wasn’t that way, Bunny found; the capitalists were
narrow-minded, and lacking in vision! A few days later Bunny learned
that Rachel was facing a serious dilemma. She had taken her four years
course at the university with the idea of making a career as a social
worker; but now a woman friend, upon whose advice she was acting, had
warned her that she was throwing away her chances by her activity with
these “Ypsels.” It was hard enough for a Jewish girl, and one from the
working-classes, to have a professional career, without taking on the
added handicap of Socialism. Rachel should at least wait till she had
got a position, and got herself established.
So there were more troubles! What was Rachel going to do? The answer was
that she was not going to desert her beloved young Socialists. It was
all very well to say wait, but that was the way all compromising began;
once you started, you never knew where to stop. No, Rachel would take
her chances of the “Ypsels” being raided by the police, or placarded in
the newspapers as a conspiracy to undermine the morals of youth! If it
turned out that her friend was right, and the bourgeoisie wouldn’t have
her as a dispenser of their charities, she would find some sort of job
in the labor movement. And Bunny went off to keep an engagement to a
dinner party with Vee Tracy; he went with a sober face and a troubled
conscience, neither of which he was clever enough to hide!
X
Graduation time was at hand, and all the grave old seniors had the job
of choosing their future careers. Dad asked Bunny if he had made up his
mind, and Bunny answered that he had. “But I hate to tell you, Dad,
because it’s going to make you unhappy.”
“What is it, son?” A look of concern was upon the old man’s round but
heavily lined features.
“Well, I want to go away for a year, and take another name, and get
myself a job as a worker in one of the big industries.”
“Oh, my God!” A pause, while Dad gazed into his son’s troubled eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“Just that I want to understand the working people, and that’s the only
way.”
“You can’t ask them what you want to know?”
“No, Dad they don’t know it themselves—except dimly. It is something
you have to live.”
“Good Lord, son, let me help you! I’ve been there. It means dirt and
vermin and disease—I thought I was saving you from it, and making
things easier for you!”
“I know, Dad, but it’s a mistake; it doesn’t work out as you thought.
When a young fellow has everything too easy for him, he gets soft, he
has no will of his own. I know what you’ve done, and I’m grateful for
it, but I have to try something different, for a time.”
“You can’t possibly find anything hard enough for you in the job of
running an oil industry?”
“I might, Dad, if I could really run it. But you know I can’t do that.
It’s yours; and even if you gave it to me, Verne and the operators’
federation wouldn’t let me do what I’d want to do. No, Dad, there’s
something vitally wrong with the oil industry, and I can never play the
game with the rest. I want to go off and try something on my own.”
“You mean to go alone?”
“There’s another fellow has the same idea, and we’re going together.
Gregor Nikolaieff.”
“That Russian! Couldn’t you possibly find an American to associate
with?”
“Well, it just happens, Dad, that none of the Americans are interested.”
There was a long pause. “And you really mean this seriously?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m going to do it.”
“You know, son, the big industries are pretty rough, most of them. Some
of the men get badly hurt, and some killed.”
“Yes; that’s just the point.”
“It’s pretty hard on a father that has only one son, and had hopes for
him. You know, I’ve really thought a lot about you—it’s been the main
reason I worked so hard.”
“I know, Dad; and don’t think I haven’t suffered about it; but I just
can’t help doing it.”
Another pause. “Have you thought about Vee?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told her?”
“No, I’ve been putting it off, just as I did with you. I know she won’t
stand for it. I shall have to give her up.”
“A man ought to think a long time before he throws away his happiness
like that, son.”
“I have thought, all I know how. But I couldn’t spend my life as an
appendage to Vee’s moving picture career. I should be suffocated with
luxury. I have convictions of my own, and I have to follow them. I want
to try to help the workers, and first I have to know how they feel.”
“It seems to me, son, you talk like one of them—I mean the red ones.”
“Maybe so, Dad, but I assure you, it doesn’t seem that way to the reds!”
Again there was a silence. Dad’s supply of words was running short. “I
never heard of such a thing in my life!”
“It is really quite an old idea—at least twenty-four hundred years.”
And Bunny went on to tell about that young Lord Siddhartha, in far off
India, who is known to the western world as Buddha; how he gave up his
lands and his treasures, and went out to wander with a beggar’s bowl, in
the hope of finding some truth about life that was not known at court.
“The palace which the king had given to the prince was resplendent with
all the luxuries of India; for the king was anxious to see his son
happy. All sorrowful sights, all misery, and all knowledge of misery
were kept away from Siddhartha, and he knew not that there was evil in
the world. But as the chained elephant longs for the wilds of the
jungle, so the prince was eager to see the world, and he asked his
father, the king, for permission to do so. And Shuddhodana ordered a
jewel-fronted chariot with four stately horses to be held ready, and
commanded the roads to be adorned where his son would pass.” And then
Bunny, seeing the bewildered look on Shuddhodana’s face, began to laugh.
“Which would you rather I became, Dad—a Buddhist or a Bolshevik?”
And truly, Dad wouldn’t have known what to decide!
XI
There has been during the present century a new universe opened up to
knowledge—the subconscious mind—and many strange things are told about
it. It is accustomed to make determined efforts to have its own way; and
sometimes when it is balked it will go to such lengths as to make the
body ill. A jealous wife will suffer nervous collapse, a quite genuine
case, thus retaining the attentions of her husband; and so on through a
catalog of strange phenomena. But the Freudian theories, not being
consistent with Methodist theology, had not yet penetrated into Southern
Pacific. So Bunny was entirely unsuspicious when it happened, just after
his graduation, and before he set out with Gregor Nikolaieff, that Dad
came down with a severe attack of the flu. Of course Bunny had to
postpone his leaving, and was able to find all the trouble he needed at
home. There were several days when it was not certain if Dad would live;
and Bunny felt all the remorse that Vernon Roscoe had foretold. Also he
faced the alarming prospect, he might have to take over control of all
those millions of Dad’s money!
The old man pulled through; but he was very weak, and pitiful, and the
doctor warned his family that the flu was apt to leave the heart in bad
condition, and he would have to be guarded and kept from shock. Down in
the deeps of Dad there must have been a merry chuckling, for now it was
impossible for Bunny to go away. The father clung to his boy’s hand like
a child, and Bunny must sit and read to him the sad and tender story of
the young Lord Siddhartha. Had Dad said something to Vee about the plot,
or was it a telepathic contact between two subconscious minds? She came
frequently to the house, and was so kind and sympathetic—the wild
elephant in Bunny’s spirit was tied down with a million silken cords.
And then, when Dad was able to be about, and to sit on the porch in the
sunshine, his shrewd conscious mind started work, and presently he had a
scheme. “Son, I’ve been thinking about your problem, and I realize that
you have a right to express your ideas. I’ve been wondering if we
mightn’t work out a compromise, and let me help.”
“How, Dad?”
“Well, you might have some money that you could use in your own way, and
wouldn’t feel you were taking from mine. Of course, I wouldn’t feel it
was right to help you do anything that was against the law; but if there
is some kind of education that isn’t for violence, why, that would be
all right, and if you had an income of a thousand dollars a month that
you might use for such propaganda—would that help?”
A thousand dollars a month! Gee whiz! Bunny forgot the standards of his
own class, according to which a thousand dollars a month would not keep
a string of polo-ponies or a small racing yacht; he thought according to
the standards of the radicals, to whom a thousand dollars a month meant
a whole labor college or a weekly paper! Nothing was said about Bunny’s
staying at home, but he understood that the offer was a bribe; he would
have to administer the fund! He yielded to the temptation, and hastened
to phone Rachel—he had a job in sight for her!
He invited her to lunch; and all the way as he drove to the place, his
busy mind was flying from scheme to scheme. Rachel would remain
secretary of the “Ypsels,” and be paid a salary for her work, the same
as she would have got as a social worker. The young Socialists would
hire a larger hall, and would publish a weekly paper, aimed at the high
schools and colleges of Angel City. Bunny was now free from the promise
he had made to Dr. Cowper, not to make propaganda in Southern Pacific.
And he was going to make it, you bet! The students of that university
and all others would learn something about modern thought, and about the
labor movement, and about Socialism, and—well, not too much about
Communism, of course, because Dad would call that violence, and it might
be breaking the law!