THE HONEYMOON
I
Bunny was looking for a site for the labor college. It was a much
pleasanter job than seeking oil lands; you could give some attention to
the view, the woods and the hills, and other things you really cared
about; also it wasn’t such a gamble, because you could really find out
about the water supply, and have a chemical analysis of the soil. It
meant taking long rides in the country; and since Rachel was to be one
of the bosses, it was good sense for her to go along. They had time to
talk—and a lot to talk about, since they were going to take charge of a
bunch of young radicals, boys and girls of all ages—twenty-four hours a
day.
They had looked at a couple of places, and there was another farther
from the city, and Bunny remarked, “If we go to that, we’ll be late
getting home.” Rachel answered, “If it’s too late, we can go to some
hotel, and finish up in the morning,” said Bunny, “That would start the
gossips.” But Rachel was not afraid of gossips, so she declared.
They drove to the new site. It was near a village called Mount Hope, in
a little valley, with the plowed land running up the slopes of half a
dozen hills. It was early November, and the rains had fallen, and the
new grain had sprouted, and there were lovely curving surfaces that
might have been the muscles of great giants lying prone—giants with
skins of the softest bright green velvet. There were orchards, and
artesian water with a pumping plant, and a little ranch-house—the
people had apparently gone to town, so the visitors could wander about
and look at everything, and make a find—a regular airdrome of a barn,
gorgeous with revolutionary red paint! “Oh, Bunny, here’s our meeting
place, all ready made! We have only to put a floor in and we can have a
dance the opening night!” Imagine Rachel thinking about dancing!
They climbed one of the slopes, and here was a park, with dark live oaks
and pale grey sycamores, and a carpet of new grass under foot. The
valley opened out to the west, and the sun had just gone down, in a sky
of flaming gold; the quail were giving their last calls, and deep down
in Bunny’s heart was an ache of loneliness—because quail meant Dad, and
those beautiful hills of Paradise, and happiness he had dreamed in vain.
Now it was Rachel dreaming. “Oh, Bunny, this is too lovely! It’s exactly
what we want! Mount Hope College—we couldn’t have made up a better
name!”
Bunny laughed. “We don’t want to buy a name. We must take samples of the
soil.”
“How many acres did you say?”
“Six hundred and forty, a little over a hundred in cultivation. That’s
more than we’ll be able to take care of for quite a while.”
“And only sixty-eight thousand! That’s a bargain!” Rachel had learned to
think on Bunny’s imperial scale, since she had been racing over the
state in his fast car, inspecting millionaire play-grounds and real
estate promoters’ paradises.
“The price is not bad,” said Bunny, “if we are sure about the soil and
water.”
“You could see the state of the growing things, before it got dark.”
“Maybe so. We’ll come back in the morning, and have a talk with the
ranchman. Perhaps he’s a tenant, and will tell us the truth.” Not for
nothing had Bunny spent his boyhood buying lands with his shrewd old
father!
II
Twilight veiled this valley of new dreams, and across the way the hills
were purple shadows. Bunny said, “There’s just one thing worrying me
about our plan now: I’m afraid there’s going to be a scandal.”
“How do you mean?”
“You and me being together all the time, and going off and being missing
at night.”
“Oh, Bunny, what nonsense!”
“No, really, I’m worried. I told Peter Nagle we’d have to conform to
bourgeois standards, and we’re beginning wrong. My Aunt Emma is a
bourgeois standard, and she would never approve of this, and neither
would your mother. We ought to go and get married.”
“Oh, Bunny!” She was staring at him, but it was too dark to reveal any
possible twinkle in his eyes. “Are you joking?”
“Rachel,” he said, “will you take that much trouble to preserve the good
name of our institution?”
He came a step nearer, and she stammered, “Bunny, you don’t—you don’t
mean that!”
“I don’t see any other way—really.”
“Bunny—no!”
“Why not?”
“Because—you don’t want to marry a Jewess!”
“Good Lord!”
“Don’t misunderstand me, I’m proud of my race. But all your friends
would think it was a mistake.”
“My friends, Rachel? Who the devil are my friends—except in the radical
movement? And where would the radical movement be without the Jews?”
“But, Bunny—your sister!”
“My sister is not my friend. Neither did she ask me to pick out her
husband.”
Rachel stood, twisting her fingers together nervously. “Bunny, do you
really—you aren’t just speaking on an impulse?”
“Well, I suppose it’s an impulse. I seem to have to blurt it out. But
it’s an impulse I’ve had a good many times.”
“And you won’t be sorry?”
He laughed. “It depends upon your answer.”
“Stop joking, please—you frighten me. I can’t afford to let you make a
mistake. It’s so dreadfully serious!”
“But why take it that way?”
“I can’t help it; you don’t know how a woman feels. I don’t want you to
do something out of a generous impulse, and then you’d feel bound, and
you wouldn’t be happy. You oughtn’t to marry a girl out of the
sweat-shops.”
“Good God, Rachel, my father was a mule-driver.”
“Yes, but you’re Anglo-Saxon; away back somewhere your ancestors were
proud of themselves. You ought to marry a tall, fair woman that will
stay beautiful all her life, and look right in a drawing-room. Jewish
women bear two or three children, and then they get fat, and you
wouldn’t like me.”
He burst out laughing. “I have attended the weddings of some of those
tall, fair Anglo-Saxon women; and the priest pronounces, very solemnly,
‘Into this holy estate the two persons now present come now to be
joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be
joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his
peace.’”
“Bunny,” she pleaded, “I’m trying to face the facts!”
“Well, dear, if you must be solemn—it happens that I never loved a fair
woman. The two I picked out to live with were dark, the same as you. It
must be nature’s effort to mix things. I suppose you know about Vee
Tracy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Vee had the looks all right, and she’ll keep them—she makes a
business of it. But you see, it didn’t do me any good, she threw me over
for a Roumanian prince.”
“Why, Bunny?”
“Because I wouldn’t give up the radical movement.”
“Oh, how I hated that woman!”
There was a note of melodrama in Rachel’s usually serene voice, and
Bunny was curious. “You did hate her?”
“I could have choked her!”
“Because she struck you?”
“No! Because I knew she was trying to take you out of the movement; and
I thought for sure she would. She had everything I didn’t have.”
Bunny was thinking—by golly, it was queer! Vee had known it—and he
hadn’t! Oh, these women! Aloud he said, politely, “No, she didn’t have
quite everything.”
“What is there that I have, Bunny? What do I mean to you?”
“I’ll tell you—I’m so tired of being quarreled with. You can’t have any
idea—my whole life, since I began to think for myself, has been one
wrangle with the people who loved me, or thought they had a right to
direct me. You can’t imagine what a sense of peace I get when I think of
being with you; it’s like settling down into nice soft cushions. I’ve
hesitated about it, because of course I’m not very proud of the Vee
Tracy episode, and I didn’t know if you’d take a man second-hand—or
third-hand it really is, because there was a girl while I was in high
school. I’m telling you my drawbacks, to balance your getting fat!”
“Bunny, I don’t care about the other women—they will always be after
you, of course. I was heartsick about Miss Tracy, because I knew she was
a selfish woman, and I was afraid you’d find it out too late, and be
wrecked. At least, I told myself that was it—I suppose the truth is I
was just green with jealousy.”
“Why, Rachel! You mean that you love me?”
“As if any woman could help loving you! The question is, do you love
me?”
“I do—yes, truly!”
“But Bunny—” there was a little catch in her voice. “You don’t show
it!”
So then he realized that he had been wasting a lot of time! He had to
take only one more step, and put his arms about her, and there she was,
sobbing on his shoulder, as if her heart would break. “Oh, Bunny, Bunny!
Can I believe it?”
So to make her believe it, he began to kiss her. She had been such a
sedate and proper little lady, such a manager in the office and all
that, he had been in awe of her; but now he made the discovery that she
was exactly like the other women who had been in love with him; as soon
as she was sure that she might let herself go, that it was not some
blunder, or some crazy dream—why, there she was, clinging to him in a
sort of daze of happiness, half laughing, half weeping. As he kissed
her, there was mingled in his emotion the memory of how brave she had
been, and how loyal, and how honest; yes, it was worth while making a
girl like that happy! To mingle love with those other emotions, that
appeared to be safe! And she was just as passionate as either Eunice or
Vee had been, not a particle more sedate or reticent! “Oh, Bunny, I love
you so! I love you so!” She whispered it in the darkness, and her
embraces said more than her words.
“Dear Rachel!” he said, with a happy little laugh. “If you feel that
way, let’s go find a preacher or a justice of the peace.”
She answered, “Foolish Bunny! I want to know that you love me, and that
I’m free to love you. What do I care about preachers or justices?”
So then he caught her tighter, and their lips met in a long kiss. If she
tried to voice any more doubts, he would stop the sounds, he would find
a way to convince her! And what better place for their love than this
mysterious grove, the scene of their future labors? Yes, they would have
to buy this ranch now, regardless of soil deficiencies! It would be a
haunted place; in after years, while the young folks had their games and
pageants in this grove, Bunny and Rachel would look on with a secret
thrill. Had it not been in ancient oak-groves that mystic rites had been
celebrated, and pledges made, and holy powers invoked!
III
They found the justice of the peace next morning; and then they finished
the inspection of the ranch, and drove back to Angel City and made
arrangements for a first payment on the purchase price. After which they
had the thrills of telling all their friends about having got
married—strictly in the interest of the college, of course, and to
avoid scandals in the bourgeois press!
Bunny went to see Ruth, and tell her; and strange to say, this
embarrassed him. Bertie and Vee had planted in his mind the idea that
Ruth had been in love with him for the past ten years; and now Rachel
was certain of it; and these women had all proved to be right about each
other every time! Also, there was a fact which he had not mentioned to
Rachel: there had been a while on the way back from Paris, when he was
debating in his mind whether it was Rachel or Ruth he was going to
invite to become his wife! He had a deep affection for Ruth, the same
still quiet feeling that she herself manifested. But the trouble was,
there was Paul. Ruth was bound by steel chains to her brother—and that
meant the Communist movement, and so Bunny had to wrestle over that
problem some more.
Sooner or later you had to decide, and take your place with one party or
the other. Were you going to overthrow capitalism by the ballot or by
“direct action”? This much had become clear to Bunny—the final decision
rested with the capitalist class. They were getting ready for the next
war; and that meant Bolshevism in all the warring nations, at the end of
the war, if not at the beginning. The Socialists would try to prevent
this war; and if they failed, then the job would be done in Paul’s way,
by the Third International. But meantime, Bunny was drawn to the
Socialists by his temperament. He could not call for violence! If there
was to be any, the other side must begin it!
Whatever Ruth may have thought or felt about the news of his marriage,
she gave no sign but of pleasure. She had expected it, she said; Rachel
was a fine girl, who agreed with his ideas, and that was the main thing.
Then she told him that Paul was expected back tomorrow, and was to speak
at a meeting—his supporters had got him into the Labor Temple by much
diplomacy, and he would have a chance to tell the workingmen about what
he had seen in Russia. Bunny and Rachel must come and hear him; and
Bunny said they would.
This was the Sunday before election day, the end of a long political
campaign. The workers had heard no end of appeals for their votes—but
here was something different, more important than any election issues.
However hostile the leaders of labor might be, it was impossible for the
rank and file to resist the contagion of this miracle that was happening
on the other side of the world—a vast empire where the workers ruled,
and were making their own laws and their own culture. Paul was fresh
from these scenes; his words were vivid, he brought the things before
your eyes: the red army, and the red schools, and the red papers, the
white terror, and the resistance to capitalist siege on ten thousand
miles of front.
Oh, the fury of the capitalist press next day! They didn’t report the
meeting, but they published protests about it, and stormed in
editorials. The LaFollette “reds” were bad enough, but this was an
intolerable outrage—an avowed Moscow agent, who had been expelled from
France, permitted to hold a meeting in Angel City and incite union labor
to red riot and insurrection! What was our police department for? Where
were our patriotic societies and our American Legion and our other
forces of law and order?
Bunny called up Ruth next morning; he wanted to see Paul, to talk about
the proposed college. Ruth said that Paul had gone down to the harbor,
to see about addressing meetings of the longshoremen. These men had had
a big strike while Bunny was abroad, and had taken their full course in
capitalist government. Six hundred of them had been swept up off the
street, for the crime of marching and singing, and had been packed into
tanks with all ventilation shut off, to reduce them to silence. A score
of the leaders had been sent to state’s prison for ten or twenty years
for “criminal syndicalism”; so the rest ought to be ready to listen to
the Communist doctrine, that the workers had to master the capitalist
state. There was to be an entertainment that night in the I. W. W. hall
at the harbor; there would be music and refreshments, and Paul thought
it would be a good chance to get acquainted with the leaders. Bunny said
that he and Rachel were going down to Beach City, and they might run
over and bring Paul back with them.
IV
Bunny had yielded to the importunities of his sister: wouldn’t he have
the decency to help out the estate in at least one way—look into those
reports which Vernon Roscoe had rendered concerning the Prospect Hill
field? Verne asserted that more than half the wells were off production,
and Bertie suspected one more trick to rob them. Bertie wouldn’t know an
oil well off production from a hen-coop; but Bunny would know, and
couldn’t he go down there, and snoop around a bit, and find out what
other oil men thought about the field and its prospects? Bunny took
Rachel with him—she went everywhere with her new husband, of course.
They had got one of the oldest of the Ypsels to run the magazine office,
and Rachel was just manager and editor, very high and mighty. Bunny was
a one-arm driver again, and the automobile was lopsided, and Rachel was
nervous when he drove fast, because the gods are jealous of such rapture
as hers.
Rachel had never seen an oil field at close range. So Bunny took her to
the “discovery well,” and told how Mr. Culver had had his ear-drums
destroyed, trying to stop the flow with his head. He showed her the
first well that Dad had drilled, and on which Bunny had helped to keep
the mud flowing. That had been the beginning of Dad’s big wealth; he and
perhaps a score of others had got rich, and to balance it, there were in
Beach City many thousands of people who had their homes plastered with
mortgages, representing losses from the buying of “units.” That was the
way most of the money had been made in Prospect Hill—selling paper
instead of oil. It was a fact, as Paul had cited, that more money had
been put into the ground than had been taken out of it. Here had been a
treasure of oil that, wisely drilled, would have lasted thirty years:
but now the whole field was “on the pump,” and hundreds of wells
producing so little that it no longer paid to pump them. One sixth of
the oil had been saved, and five-sixths had been wasted!
That was your blessed “competition,” which they taught you to love and
honor in the economics classes! Another aspect of it was those frightful
statistics, that of all the thousands of men who had worked here,
seventy-three out of every hundred had been killed or seriously injured
during the few years of the field’s life! It was literally true that
capitalist industry was a world war going on all the time, unheeded by
the newspapers.
Bunny did his checking up of the Ross wells; he couldn’t do any
“snooping,” because some of the old hands knew him, and came up to greet
him. He talked with a number of men, and found their reports about the
same as Verne’s. Then, towards evening, as he and Rachel were getting
ready to leave, they came to a bungalow, dingy and forlorn, black with
oil stains and grey with dust, with a storage-tank in the back yard, and
a derrick within ten feet on the next lot, and on the other side a shed
which had housed the engine of another derrick. Bunny stopped, and read
the number on the front of the bungalow, 5746 Los Robles Blvd. “Here’s
where Mrs. Groarty lives! Paul’s aunt—it was in that house we had the
meeting about the lease, and I first heard Paul’s voice through the
window there!”
He told the story of that night, describing the characters and how they
had behaved. Paul said it was a little oil fight, and the world war had
been a big oil fight, and they were exactly the same. While they were
talking, the door opened, and there emerged a stout, red-faced woman in
a dirty wrapper, and Bunny exclaimed, “There’s Mrs. Groarty!” Out he
hopped—“Hello, Mrs. Groarty!” How many years it had been since she had
seen him; he had to tell her who he was, that little boy grown up, and
with a wife—well, well, would you believe it, how time does fly! And so
Mr. Ross was dead—Mrs. Groarty’s husband had read the sad news out of
the paper. She knew that he had got to be very rich, so she was thrilled
by this visit, and invited them in, but all in a flutter because her
house wasn’t in order.
They went in, because Bunny wanted Rachel to see that staircase, and to
have a laugh on her afterwards, because she wouldn’t notice anything,
but would think the staircase led to a second story—in a one-story
bungalow! There was the room—not a thing changed, except that it seemed
to have shrunk in size, and the shine was all gone. There was the window
where Bunny had stood while he listened to Paul’s whispered voice. And,
by golly, there was “The Ladies’ Guide, a Practical Handbook of
Gentility,” still on the centre-table, faded and fly-specked gold and
blue! Along side was a stack of what appeared to be legal papers, a pile
at least eight inches high, and fastened with ribbons and a seal. Mrs.
Groarty caught his glance at it; or perhaps it was just that she was
longing for someone to tell her troubles to. “That’s the papers about
our lot,” she said. “I just took them away from the lawyer, he takes our
money and he don’t do nothing.”
So then she was started, and Rachel continued her education in oil
history. The Groarty’s had entered a community agreement, and then
withdrawn from it and entered a smaller one: then they had leased to
Sliper and Wilkins, and been sold by those “lease-hounds” to a
syndicate; and this syndicate had been plundered and thrown into
bankruptcy; after which the lease had been bought by a man whom Mrs.
Groarty described as the worst skunk of them all, and he had gone and
got a lot of claims and liens against the property, and actually, people
were trying to take some money away from the Groartys now, though they
had never got one cent out of the well—and look at the way they had had
to live all these years!
Here was the record of these transactions, community agreements and
leases and quit-claim deeds and notices of release and notices of
cancellation of lease, and mortgages, and sales of “percents,” and
mechanic’s liens and tax receipts and notices of expiration of
agreement—not less than four hundred pages of typewritten material,
something like a million and a half of words, mostly legal jargon—“the
undersigned hereby agrees” and “in consideration of the premises herein
set forth,” and “in view of the failure of the party of the first part
to carry out the said operations by the aforesaid date,” and so on—it
made you dizzy just to turn the pages. And all this to settle the
ownership of what was expected to be ten thousand barrels of oil, and
had turned out to be less than one thousand! Here you saw where the
money had gone—pale typists shut up in offices all day transcribing
copies of this verbiage, and pale clerks checking and rechecking them,
or looking them up, or recording them—there were men up in Angel City
who had become mighty magnates by employing thousands of men and women
slaves, to transcribe and check and recheck and look up and record
literally millions of documents like these!
V
Bunny and Rachel had dinner, and then strolled on the waterfront; it was
one of those warm nights that come now and then in Southern California;
there was a moon on the sea, and a long pier with gleaming lights, and
the sound of an orchestra drawing the lovers. At the entrance to the
pier was a big bare hall, owned by the city, where very proper dancing
was chaperoned by a religious city government. Bunny and his bride
danced—oh, surely it was all right to dance a little bit, in this well
chaperoned place on what ought to have been their honeymoon!
But in between the dances, while the orchestra was still, something
shook the hall, a dull, sombre blow, like distant thunder, making the
windows rattle, and jarring your feet. “What’s that?” exclaimed Rachel.
“An earthquake?”
“The guns,” answered Bunny.
“Guns?” And he had to explain, the fleet was practicing. There were a
score or so of battleships stationed at the harbor, facing some unnamed
enemy; and now they were at night target-practice. You heard them now
and then, day and night, if you lived near the coast.
So Rachel couldn’t dance any more then. Each time she heard that dull
boom, she saw the bodies of young men blown into fragments. The
capitalists were getting ready for their next war; what business had the
Socialists to be dancing?
They drove along the boulevard which follows the harbor-front. It is
fifteen or twenty miles, and there are towns and docks and bridges and
railroad tracks and factories, and inland the “subdivisions” for the
homes of working people. It is one of the world’s great ports in the
swift making; and those who have charge of the job, the masters of
credit, see rearing before them that monstrous spectre known as “direct
action” or “criminal syndicalism.” The “Industrial Workers of the World”
had a headquarters, where they met to discuss this program; and the
masters made incessant war upon them.
The address which Ruth had given to Bunny was an obscure street in a
working-class quarter. There was a fair-sized hall, with lights in the
windows, and the sound of a piano and a child’s voice singing. Among the
cars parked along the curb Bunny found a vacant space, and backed into
it, and was just about to step from his car, when Rachel caught him by
the arm. “Wait!” There came rushing down the street a squadron of
motor-cars, two abreast and blocking the way entirely; and from them
leaped a crowd of some fifty men, carrying weapons of various sorts,
clubs, hatchets, pieces of iron pipe. They made a rush for the entrance,
and a moment later the music ceased, and there came the sound of
shrieks, and the crash of glass and battering of heavy blows.
“They’re raiding them!” cried Bunny, and would have run to the scene;
but Rachel’s arms were flung about him, pinning him to his seat. “No!
No! Sit still! What can you do?”
“My God! We must do something!”
“You’re not armed, and you can’t stop a mob! You can only get killed!
Keep still!”
The sounds from within had risen to a bedlam; the hall must have been
crowded, and everyone inside yelling at the top of his lungs. And that
horrible drumming of blows—you couldn’t tell whether they were falling
on furniture or on human bodies. Bunny was almost beside himself,
struggling to get loose, and Rachel fighting like a mad thing—he had
never dreamed that she had such strength. “No, Bunny! No! For God’s
sake! For my sake! Oh, please, please!” She knew in those dreadful
minutes the terror that was to haunt the rest of her life—that some day
in this hideous class war there would come the moment when it was her
husband’s duty to get himself killed. But not yet, not yet! Not on their
honeymoon!
It was like the passing of a tornado, that is gone before you have time
to realize it. The attacking party emerged from the hall, as quickly as
they had entered. They were dragging half a dozen prisoners, and threw
these into the cars, of which the engines were still going; then down
the street they went roaring, and silence fell.
It was permissible for Bunny to get out now, and run into the hall, with
Rachel at his heels. He had one thought, the same as on that night when
he had run over Mrs. Groarty’s place, crying, “Paul! Paul!” They were
certain to have taken Paul away on that lynching party; and how could
Bunny save him?
The first thing he saw, in the doorway, was a man with a great gash
across his forehead, and the blood streaming all over him; he was
staggering about, because he couldn’t see, and crying, “The
sons-o’-bitches! The sons-o’-bitches!” Near him was another man whose
hand had been slashed across, and a woman was tearing her skirt to make
a bandage. A little girl lay on the floor, screaming in agony, and some
one was pulling off her stockings, and the raw flesh was coming with
them. “They threw her into the coffee!” said a voice in Bunny’s ear.
“Jesus Christ, they threw the kids into the boiling coffee!”
Everywhere confusion, women in hysterics, or sunk upon the floor
sobbing. There was not a stick of furniture in the place that had not
been wrecked; the chairs had been split with hatchets; the piano had
been gutted, its entrails lay tangled on the floor. Tables were overset,
and dishes and crockery trampled, and the metal urn or container in
which the coffee had been boiling had been overset, and its steaming
contents running here and there. But first they had hurled three
children into it, one after another, as their frantic parents dragged
them out. The flesh had been cooked off their legs, and they would be
crippled for life: one was a ten years old girl known as “the wobbly
song-bird;” she had a sweet treble, and sang sentimental ballads and
rebel songs, and the mob leader had jerked her from the platform,
saying, “We’ll shut your damned mouth!”
What was the meaning of this raid? According to the newspapers, it was
the patriotic indignation of sailors from the fleet. There had been an
explosion on one of the battleships, and several men had been killed,
and the newspapers had printed a story that one of the wobblies had been
heard to laugh with satisfaction. It is an ancient device of the master
press. In old Russia the “Black Hundreds” were incited by tales of
“ritual murders” committed by the Jews, Christian babies killed for
sacrifice. In Britain now the government was forging letters attributed
to the Soviet leaders, and using them to carry an election. In America
the deportations delirium had been sanctified by a great collection of
forged documents, officially endorsed.
It was a spontaneous mob, said these law and order newspapers. But this
fact was noted: on all other occasions there had been policemen at these
wobbly meetings, to take note of criminal utterances; but this night
there had been no policeman on hand. Nor were there any afterwards;
Bunny and the other “reds” might besiege the police department and the
city government, and offer the names of the principal mob leaders, but
there would be no step taken to punish anyone for this murderous raid!
VI
Bunny didn’t expect to find Paul, but there he lay, flat on his back,
with several people bending over him. His left eye was a mass of blood,
and seemed as if destroyed by a blow; he lay, limp and motionless, and
when Bunny called his name he did not answer. But he was alive, gasping
with a kind of snoring sound.
A doctor! A doctor! There were several in the neighborhood, and people
rushed away to look for them. From the days of Bunny’s residence in
Beach City he knew the name of a surgeon, and hurried to a phone, and
was so fortunate as to find the surgeon at home. Bunny told what had
happened, and the other said he would come at once; in the case of
injury to skull or other bones, X-ray pictures would be needed, so he
gave the name of doctors who did such work, and Bunny did more
telephoning, and arranged for one of these to be at his laboratory and
await developments. Also he ordered an ambulance from a hospital.
Then back to the hall, where Paul lay in the same condition. Rachel had
laid a clean handkerchief over the battered eye, and put a pillow under
his head. The other victims had been carried away, and the door of the
wrecked hall shut against the curious crowd.
The surgeon came, and said it was concussion of the brain. There was
evidence of a heavy blow at the base of the skull—either Paul had been
struck in the eye, and had hit the back of his head in falling, or else
he had been knocked down by a blow from behind, and later struck or
trampled over the eye. The first thing was a picture; so the unconscious
body was taken to the X-ray laboratory, and pictures were made, and the
surgeon showed Bunny and Rachel the line of a fracture at the base of
the skull, running to the front above the oral cavity. There was nothing
to be done, it was impossible to operate in such a place. It was a
question of how the brain had been affected, and as to that only time
could tell. They must keep the patient quiet.
There was a private hospital in the town; so before long Paul was lying
on a bed, with a bandage over his eye, and his head in a sling to avoid
pressure on the injured place; and Bunny and Rachel were sitting by the
bedside, gazing mournfully. Womanlike, Rachel was reading his thoughts.
“Dear heart, are you going to blame yourself all your life because you
didn’t rush in and get your skull broken, too?” No, he couldn’t have
prevented the harm, he knew it; but oh, why did it have to be Paul’s
brain—the best brain that Bunny had ever known! He sat with a
horrified, brooding stare.
But there was another ordeal to be faced. Rachel reminded him, “We’ve
got to tell Ruth.” She offered to attend to it, to spare his feelings.
She got her brother Jacob on the phone—he had just got home from a
committee meeting, and now he must call a taxi, and drive to Ruth’s home
and bring her to the harbor.
Two hours later Ruth came running up the stairs, her face like a mask of
fright. “How is he? How is he?” When she entered the room, and saw Paul,
she stopped. “Oh, what is it?” And when they told her—“Is he going to
live?” She drew nearer, never taking her eyes off his face. Her hands
would stretch out to him, and then draw back, because she might not
touch him; they would go out again, as if they had a will of their own.
Suddenly her knees gave way, and she sank to the floor, and covered her
face with her hands, sobbing, sobbing.
They tried to comfort her, but she hardly knew they were there. She was
alone, in the dreadful corridors of grief. Bunny, watching her, felt hot
tears stealing down his cheeks. It wasn’t natural for a girl to feel
that way about a brother, Vee had said; but Bunny knew how it was—Ruth
was back in those childhood days on the lonely hills of Paradise, when
Paul had been her only friend, a refuge from a family of fanatics, with
a father who beat her to make her think like him. Back there she had
known that Paul was a great man, and had followed him all these years;
she had watched his mind unfolding, and learned everything she knew from
it—and now, to see it destroyed by a brute with a piece of iron pipe!
VII
It was long after midnight; and Rachel sought to draw Bunny away. There
was nothing more they could do, either for Paul or his sister. There was
a small hotel a few doors away, they would get a room there, and rest,
and the hospital nurse would notify them if there were any change. And
Bunny yielded: he must not be unfair to Rachel. He knew there was
something unnatural about his own devotion to Paul, the subjection of
his mind to everything that Paul thought, the exactness of his memory of
everything Paul had said. Yes, Bertie had told him that, and then
Vee—and now Rachel!
He could not sleep. So, lying a-bed in the hotel room, he explained it
to her; how Paul had come when Bunny was groping for something different
and better in his life. Paul had given him an ideal—something stern and
hard—self-sufficiency, independence of judgment, determination to face
life and understand it, and not be drawn away in pursuit of money or
pleasure. Bunny had not been able to follow that ideal—no, he had lived
in luxury, and gone chasing after women; but he had had the vision, the
longing to be like Paul.
And then, at each new crisis in his life, Paul would come along, a sort
of standard by which Bunny could measure himself and what he was doing,
and realize how little success he was having. Paul had taught him about
the workers, and how they felt; Paul had been the incarnation of the
new, awakening working-class. Paul’s mind had been a searchlight,
illumining the world-situation, showing Bunny what he needed to know.
Now the light was out, and Bunny would have to see by his own feeble
lantern!
“Dear, he may get well,” Rachel whispered; but Bunny moaned, no, no, he
was going to die. Like a jagged flash of lightning before his mind was
that X-ray picture of the crack at the base of Paul’s skull. The light
was out, at least from this world; a brute with a piece of iron pipe had
extinguished it.
Rachel put her arms about him and sought to beguile him with caresses.
And she succeeded, of course; he could not refuse her love. So presently
he slept a little. But Rachel did not sleep, she lay holding him in her
arms, because he would jump and start in his sleep, his limbs would
quiver—just the way she felt when the great guns went off!
What was Bunny doing? Fighting those brutes with their clubs and
hatchets and iron pipe? Or back in the old days, when he had hovered
over Paul and Ruth, watching events that wrung his soul? Watching Dad
deprive the family of their land; watching the oil operators crush the
first strike; watching the government tear Paul away and make him into a
strike-breaker for Wall Street bankers; watching Vernon Roscoe throw
Paul into prison; watching capitalism with its world-wide system of
terror drive Paul here and there, harry him, malign him, threaten
him—until at last it hired the brute with the iron pipe!
VIII
Morning came, and they went back to the hospital room. Nothing was
changed. Paul still lay, breathing hoarsely; and Ruth sat in a chair by
the bedside, her eyes fixed upon him, her hands clasped tightly. She was
whiter, that was all, and her lips were quivering, never still. The
hospital nurse begged her to lie down and rest, but she shook her head.
No, she was used to watching the sick; she was a nurse too. The other
answered that all nurses slept when they could; but no, please—Ruth
wanted to stay right here.
The surgeon came again. There was nothing he could do, time would have
to tell. Bunny took him aside and asked what were the chances.
Impossible to say. If Paul were going to get well, he would return to
consciousness. If he were going to die, there might be a meningitis, or
perhaps a blood clot on the brain.
Rachel said the family ought to be notified. So Bunny sent a telegram to
Abel Watkins at Paradise, telling him to engage an auto and bring the
family at Bunny’s expense. He debated whether it was his duty to
telegraph Eli, and decided not to. Old Mr. Watkins might do it, but
Bunny would be guided by what Paul would have wished. Then he got the
morning papers, and read their exultant account of the night’s events:
the reds had been taught a much-needed lesson, and law and order were
safe at the harbor.
It was the morning of election day: the culmination of a campaign that
had been like a long nightmare to Bunny. Senator LaFollette had been
running, with the backing of the Socialists, and the great issue had
been the oil steals; the indicted exposers of the crime against the
criminals in power. At first the exposers had really made some headway,
the people seemed to care. But the enemy was only waiting for the time
to strike. In the last three weeks of the campaign he turned loose his
reserves, and it was like a vast cloud of hornets, the sky black with a
swarm of stinging, turning, poisoning lies!
It was the money of Vernon Roscoe and the oil men, of course: plus the
money of the bankers and the power interests and the great protected
manufacturers, all those who had something to gain by the purchase of
government, or something to lose by failure to purchase. Another fifty
million dollar campaign; and in every village and hamlet, in every
precinct of every city and town, there was a committee for the
distribution of terror. The great central factories where it was
manufactured were in Washington and New York, and the product was
shipped out wholesale, all over the land, and circulated by every
agency—newspapers and leaflets, mass-meetings, parades, bands, red fire
and torchlights, the radio and the moving picture screen. If LaFollette,
the red destroyer, were elected, business would be smashed, the workers
would be jobless; therefore vote for that strong silent statesman, that
great, wise, noble-minded friend of the plain people known as “Cautious
Cal.” And now, while Paul Watkins lay gasping out his life, there was a
snow-storm of ballots falling over the land, nearly a thousand every
second. The will of the plain people was being made known.
IX
It was a day like midsummer, and the windows of the hospital room were
open. Next door, some twenty feet away, was an apartment house, and in
the room directly across this space, by the open window, was one of the
two hundred thousand radio sets which are in use in the state of
California. The occupant of the apartment was one of those two hundred
thousand housewives who are accustomed to perform their domestic duties
to the tune of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” or else of “Flamin’ Mamie,
Sure-fire Vamp.” There are a dozen broadcasting stations within range,
and some are always going, and you can take your choice. This housewife
had catholic tastes, and the watchers at Paul’s bedside were beguiled by
snatches from the Aloha Hawaiian Quartette, and the Organ Recital of the
First Methodist Church, and the Piggly Wiggly Girls’ Orchestra, and
Radio QXJ reporting that a large vote was being cast in the East, and
Radio VZW offering second-hand automobiles for sale, and an unidentified
orator exhorting all citizens to hurry to the polls, and Miss Elvira
Smithers, coloratura soprano, singing, “Ah loves you mah honey, yes Ah
doo-oo-oo-oo.”
There came telephone calls from the Workers’ party, and from the
wobblies at the harbor. And newspaper reporters, who politely listened
to Bunny’s indignation at the raid, and made a few notes, but published
nothing, of course. The newspapers of Angel City have a policy which any
child can understand—they never print news which injures or offends any
business interest.
A telephone call from Paradise; Meelie Watkins, now Mrs. Andy Bugner,
calling. Her father and mother, with Sadie, had gone to attend a revival
meeting. Meelie didn’t know just where it was, but would try to locate
them. How was Paul? And when Bunny told her, she asked had they summoned
Eli. Whether they believed in him or not, it was a fact that Eli was a
great healer; he had cured all sorts of people, and surely should have a
chance with his own brother! So Bunny sent a telegram to Eli at the
Tabernacle, telling him of Paul’s condition; and two hours later a large
and expensive limousine stopped at the hospital door.
Eli Watkins, Prophet of the Third Revelation, wore a cream white flannel
suit, which made his tall figure conspicuous. He had adopted a
pontifical air in these days of glory and power. He did not shake hands
with you, but fixed you with a pair of large, prominent, bright blue
eyes, and said, “The blessings of the Lord upon you.” And when he was in
the presence of his brother, he stood gazing, but asking no questions;
he was not interested in X-ray pictures of skulls, the Lord knew all
that was needed. Finally he said, “I wish to be alone with my brother.”
There was no evident reason for denying that request, so Bunny and
Rachel and Ruth went out.
It didn’t make any difference to Ruth where she was—there was nothing
to do but stare in front of her, with that terrible quivering of her
lips, that wrung your heartstrings. A picture of dreadful grief! The
doctor of the hospital begged her to drink a little milk, and the nurse
brought a glass, and Ruth tasted, but she could not swallow it. There
came a rush of tears to her eyes. You couldn’t talk to her, or do
anything with her at all.
Eli went away without saying a word; the ways of the Lord being not
always understandable by common mortals. There was no apparent change in
Paul’s condition. Ruth went back to her vigil; but now the doctor gave
an order, she must take a sleeping powder and lie down; he would not
permit her to kill herself in his establishment. Being trained to take
the orders of doctors, Ruth was led away, and Bunny and Rachel kept the
vigil.
X
Night fell. The householder who occupied the apartment opposite their
window came home and had his supper, and now, comfortable in his
shirtsleeves, with pipe in mouth, he sat in a deep wicker chair in front
of his radio set, and proceeded to explore the circumambient ether. So
the watchers by Paul’s bedside got the news of the election without
leaving their posts. Owing to difference in time, California gets
returns from the east before it gets its own; but it was all the same
this Tuesday evening, east and west, the fifty million dollar campaign
fund had done its work, and wherever you listened, you learned that more
voters had cast their ballots for the strong silent statesman than for
all his opponents put together. And since that was the thing ardently
desired by the broadcasting stations, and the great newspapers and
churches and temples and tabernacles which own them, there was a tone of
jocularity in the announcements, and after you had learned that
Massachusetts was going three to one for her favorite son, you would
hear the Six Jolly Jazz Boys proclaiming, “Got a hot little gal in a
railroad town!”—or perhaps the Chicago Comet, chuckling, “My cutie’s
due at two-to-two!” It made a cheerful atmosphere to die in; but
unfortunately Paul wasn’t hearing it.
The Tabernacle of the Third Revelation on the air. Eli’s followers were
not concerned with elections, being soon to wing their way to celestial
regions which are conducted upon the monarchical principle. They opened
with an organ recital, and the householder didn’t care for that, but
preferred Radio VKZ, program sponsored by the Snow Baby Soap Company,
introducing the first appearance in Angel City of the Pretty Pet Trio,
singing their latest popular melody hit, “My Little Jazz-baby, Razz-baby
Coon.” But later the householder tried the Tabernacle again, and there
was the bellowing voice of Eli, that all California householders love.
So Bunny and Rachel learned what had been the meaning of Eli’s visit.
“Brethren, the Lord has vouchsafed a wonderful proof of His mercy to me.
Glorious tidings He gives to the world tonight! I have an older brother,
the helpmate of my boyhood, Paul by name, and he was brought up in the
fear of the Lord; the voice of the Most Highest was familiar to him on
the lonely hills where we tended our father’s flocks together. Shepherd
boys we were, sitting under the stars, awaiting a sign of the Lord’s
mercy, and praying for the lost ones of this world to be saved from the
devices of the great Tempter.
“Brethren, this brother grew up, and he strayed from the faith of his
childhood, he fell into evil company, and became a scoffer at the Lord’s
Word. The love of our Savior Jesus Christ was no longer in his heart,
but hatred and strife and jealousy of those to whom the Lord has
revealed His Truth. And, brethren, the ruin which this misguided brother
sought to bring upon others has fallen upon his own head, and tonight he
lies dying, struck down by the evil passions which he himself incited.
It was my painful task to go to his bedside, and see him lying in a
stupor.
“But oh my friends, who can foresee the Wisdom of the Lord? Who can
understand His ways? It was His Will to answer my prayers, and permit my
lost brother to open his eyes, and hear the voice of the Lord speaking
by my lips, and to answer, and confess his transgressions, and repent,
and be healed, and washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Glory hallelujah!
Glory! Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall become as white as snow,
blessed be the name of the Lord! Brethren, rejoice with me; for I have
found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you that likewise joy shall be
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine
just persons, which need no repentance. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
All through this discourse you were aware of the murmur and stir of a
great crowd. They would break into ejaculations at every pause in the
prophet’s words; and now at the end they drowned him out with a chorus
of rejoicing, “Glory! Glory, hallelujah!” And in the doorway of the
hospital room stood Ruth Watkins, having awakened from her sleep. She
was staring at Bunny with horrified eyes, and whispering, “Oh, what a
lie!”
Yes, Bunny suspected that it was a lie; but he could not prove it; and
even if he could, what then? The radio is a one-sided institution; you
can listen, but you cannot answer back. In that lies its enormous
usefulness to the capitalist system. The householder sits at home and
takes what is handed to him, like an infant being fed through a tube. It
is a basis upon which to build the greatest slave empire in history.
XI
The householder shifted his dial. The returns from California were
beginning to come in. “Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Angel
City, California.” The announcer had a soft, caressing voice, worth a
thousand dollars a month to him; it had a little chuckle which caused
the children to adore him—he went by the name of “Uncle Peter,” and
told them bed-time stories. Now he was applying his humor to the
returns. “Rosario, California. Hello! The home town of Bob Buckman,
secretary to the Chamber of Commerce! Let’s see what Bob’s been doing!
Rosario, 37 precincts out of 52 give LaFollette 117, Davis 86, Coolidge,
549. Well, well! If Bob Buckman is listening in on VXZ, congratulations
from Uncle Peter—you’re a great little booster, Bob!”
And then, startling the watchers by the bedside—“Paradise, California.
Now what do you think of that? The location of the Ross Junior oil
field, owned by Bunny Ross, our parlor Bolshevik! Bunny’s the boy that
bails out the political prisoners, as he calls them; he publishes a
little paper to dye our college boys and girls pink. Let’s see what
Little Bunny’s town has to say to him. Paradise, California, 14
precincts out of 29 give LaFollette 217, Davis 98, Coolidge 693. Well,
well, Bunny—you’ve got some more boring from within to do!”
The householder shifted again. “Radio QXJ, the Angel City Evening
Roarer, banjo solo by Bella Blue, the Witch of Wicheta.”
Plunkety-plunkety—plunkety-plunkety—plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk!
Paul’s lips were beginning to move. There was a trace of sound, and Ruth
bent close to him. “He’s coming back to life! Oh, call the doctor!” The
hospital doctor came, and listened, and felt Paul’s pulse; but he shook
his head. It was merely a question of what areas of the brain were
affected; the speech areas might be uninjured. The sounds were
incoherent, and the doctor said Paul didn’t know what he was saying. He
might stay that way for days, even for a week or two.
But Ruth continued to listen, and try to catch a word. Paul might be
there, somehow, trying to speak to her, to convey some request. She
whispered, in an agony of longing, “Paul, Paul, are you trying to talk
to me?” The sounds grew louder, and Rachel said, “It’s a foreign
language.” Bunny said, “It must be Russian”—the only foreign language
Paul knew. It was strange, like a corpse talking, or a wax doll; the
sounds seemed to come from deep in his throat. “Da zdrávstvooyet
Revolútziya!” over and over; and Bunny said, “That must mean
revolution.” And then, “Vsya vlast Soviétam!”—that must have something
to do with the Soviets!
For an hour that went on; until suddenly Ruth exclaimed, “Bunny, we
ought to find out what he’s saying! Oh, surely we ought to—just think,
if he’s asking for help!”
Rachel tried to argue with her; it was just a delirium. But Ruth became
more excited—she didn’t want Rachel to interfere. Rachel had saved her
man, and what did she know about suffering? “I want to know what Paul’s
saying! Can’t we find somebody that knows Russian?” So Bunny got Gregor
Nikolaieff on the phone, and asked him to jump on the car and come down
here.
When Bunny returned to the room, Paul was talking louder than ever, but
still moving only his lips. The Angel Jazz Choir were shouting,
“Honey-baby, honey-baby, kiss me in the neck!” And Paul was saying again
and again, “Nie troodyáshchiysia da nie yest!”
“Oh, Bunny,” pleaded Ruth, “We ought to write down what he says! He
might stop—and never speak again!” Bunny understood—Ruth had been
brought up to believe in revelations, in words of awful import spoken on
special occasions, in strange languages or other unusual ways. The
doctors might call it delirium, but how could they be sure? Things that
were hidden from the wise were revealed to babes and sucklings. So Bunny
got out his notebook and fountain-pen, and wrote down what Paul’s words
sounded like, as near as he could guess. “Hliéba, mira, svobódy!” And
when Gregor came in, an hour or so later, he was able to say this meant,
“Bread, peace, freedom,” the slogan of the Bolsheviks when they took
possession of Russia: and “Dayesh positziyu!”—that was a war-cry of the
red army, commanding the enemy to give up the position. The other things
Paul had been saying were phrases of the revolution, that he had heard
first in Siberia, and then in Moscow. No, Paul was not trying to talk to
his sister; he was telling the young workers of America what the young
workers of Russia were doing!
XII
“Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Winitsky’s orchestra, in the
main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel, broadcasting by remote
control.” And then presently “Radio QXJ, the Evening Roarer,” giving
election returns—big figures now. “Republican Campaign Headquarters in
New York, in a bulletin issued at 1 A. M., estimates that Calvin
Coolidge has carried Massachusetts by 400,000 plurality—hooray for the
Old Bay State! And New York by 900,000—three cheers for the Empire
State—ray, ray, ray! And Illinois by—wait a minute there, somebody’s
knocked my glasses off—they’re pulling the rough stuff in this studio.
Behave yourselves, girls, don’t you know the world’s listening in on QXJ
tonight? Illinois by 900,000. Whoopee! That noise you hear is the
Chicago Comet yelping for his home state! It’s time we heard the Chicago
Comet again—sing us a hot one, Teddy—that little warble about the
street car comin’ along. You know what I mean?” A broad, jolly Negro
voice answered, “Yessah, Ah knows! Yessah, hyar Ah goes!”
Plunkety-plunk—
“Ah had some one befoah Ah had you
An’ Ah’ll have someone aftah you’s gone,
A street car or a sweetheart doan’ mattah to me,
There’ll be another one comin’ along!”
Six or seven years ago the people of the United States in their
sovereign wisdom had passed a law forbidding the sale of alcoholic
liquor for beverage purposes. But the advocates of law and order reserve
to themselves the privilege of deciding which laws they will obey, and
the prohibition act is not among them. All ruling class America
celebrates its political victories by getting drunk. Bunny knew how it
was, having got drunk himself four years ago when President Harding had
been elected; he could smile appreciatively when the announcer of QXJ
tripped over his syllables—“Thass not polite now, Polly, quit your
shovin’ this micro-hiccrophone!”
The householder next door was a workingman, or clerk, or such humble
being, denied the royal privilege of breaking the law at ten dollars a
quart for gin and thirty for champagne. But he could sit here till after
midnight, and turn from one studio to another, and enjoy a series of
vicarious jags. “Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of the Admiralty
Hotel.” A chanteuse from the Grand Guignol in Paris was singing a
ballad, and you could hear the laughter of those who understood the
obscenity, and those who pretended to understand it, and those who were
too drunk to understand anything but how to laugh. Bunny was there in
his mind, because it was in this dining-room that he had been drunk, and
Dad had been drunk, and Vee Tracy and Annabelle Ames and Vernon
Roscoe—and Harvey Manning sound asleep in his chair, and Tommy Paley
trying to climb onto the table, and having to be kept from fighting the
waiters. There were three hundred tables in that hall, all reserved a
month in advance, and all with occupants in the same condition; the
tables stacked with hip-pocket flasks and bottles, strewn with the ashes
of cigarettes, the stains of spilled foods, flowers and confetti, and
little rolls of tissue-paper tape thrown from one table to another,
covering the room with a spider’s web of bright colors; toy balloons
tossing here and there; music, a riot of singing and shouting, and men
sprawling over half-naked women, old and young, flappers, and mothers
and grandmothers of flappers.
There would be election returns read, more of those triumphant, glorious
majorities for the strong silent statesman; and a magnate who knew that
this victory meant several million dollars off his income taxes, or an
oil concession in Mesopotamia or Venezuela won by American bribes and
held by American battleships—such a man would let out a whoop, and get
up in the middle of the floor and show how he used to dance the double
shuffle when he was a farm-hand; and then he would fall into the lap of
his mistress with a million dollars worth of diamonds on her naked
flesh, and the singer from a famous haunt of the sexual perverts of
Berlin would perform the latest jazz success, and the oil magnate and
his mistress would warble the chorus:
What do I do?
I toodle-doodle-doo,
I toodle-doodle-doodle-doodle-doo!
XIII
Paul moved one hand: and again Ruth cried in excitement—he was coming
back to life! But the nurse said that meant nothing, the doctors had
said he might move. They must not let him move his head. She took his
temperature, but told them nothing.
Paul’s hands were straying over the sheet that covered him; aimlessly,
here and there, as if he were picking at insects on the bed. His voice
rose louder—Russian, always Russian, and Gregor would tell what the
words meant. They were in the red square, and saw the armies marching,
and heard the working masses shouting their slogans: they were on the
playing fields with the young workers; they were in Siberia, with Mandel
playing the balalaika, and having his eyes eaten out by ants. “Da
zdrávstvooyet Revolútziya!”—that meant “Long live Revolution!” “Vsya
vlast Soviétam!—All power to the Soviets!”
And from there they would be swept to the ballroom of the Emperor Hotel,
Angel City, Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot broadcasting by direct
control. Or was it to the heart of the Congo, where the naked savages
danced to the music of the tomtom, their black bodies, smeared with palm
oil, shining in the light of blazing fires? For a hundred centuries
these savages had paddled the river, and never to the mind of one of
them had come the thought of an engine; they had stood on the shores of
mighty lakes, and never dreamed a sail. The weight of nature’s blind
fecundity rested upon them, stifling their minds. And now capitalist
civilization, rushing to destruction with the speed of its fastest
battle-planes, cast about to find a form of expression for its
irresistible will to degeneracy, and chose the tomtom of the Congo for
its music, and the belly-dances of the Congo for its exercise, and so
here was America, Land of Jazz.
A voice from the megaphone, raucous, shrill, and mocking:
“There’s where mah money goes,
Lipsticks and powderpuffs and sucha things like that!”
And Bunny was in that great “Emperor” ballroom, where he had danced so
many a night, first with Eunice Hoyt and then with Vee Tracy. All his
friends would be there tonight—Verne and Annabelle and Fred Orpan and
Thelma Norman and Mrs. Pete O’Reilly and Mark Eisenberg—the cream of
the plutocracy, celebrating their greatest triumph to date. There would
be American flags and streamers on the walls, and some would wave little
flags—a great patriotic occasion—nothing like it since the
Armistice—ray for Coolidge, keep cool with Cal! The room would be
crowded to suffocation, and by this hour nine-tenths of the dancers
would be staggering. Large-waisted financiers with crumpled
shirt-fronts, hugging stout wives or slender mistresses, with naked
backs and half-naked bosoms hung with diamonds and pearls, red paint
plastered on their lips and platinum bangles in their ears, shuffling
round and round to the thump of the tomtom, the wail of the saxophone,
the rattle and clatter of sticks, the banging of bells and snarl of
stopped trumpets. “She does the camel-walk!” shrilled the singer; and
the hip and buttock muscles of the large-waisted financier would be
alternately contracted and relaxed, and his feet dragged about the floor
in the incoordinate reactions of locomotor ataxia and spastic
paraplegia.
XIV
Paul had begun to thresh his arms about: it was necessary to hold him,
and when they tried it, he began to fight back. Did he think the
strike-guards at Paradise had seized him? Or was it the jailors at San
Elido? Or the Federal secret service agents? Or the French gendarmes? Or
the sailors of the fleet? Or the thugs with hatchets and iron pipe? He
fought with maniacal fury, and there was Bunny holding down one arm and
Gregor the other, with Ruth and Rachel each clinging to one foot, while
the nurse came running with a straight jacket. So with much labor they
tied him fast. He would make terrific efforts; his face would turn
purple, and the cords would stand out in his neck; but the system had
got him, he could not escape.
Meantime, through the open window, Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of
the Admiralty Hotel; a blended sound of many hundreds of people,
shouting, singing, cheering, now and then smashing a plate, or pounding
on the table. Some one was making a speech to the assembly, but he was
so drunk he could hardly talk, and they were so drunk they could not
have understood anyhow. One got snatches—“glorish victry—greatesh!
country—soun instooshns—greatesh man ever in White Housh—Cautioush
Cal—ray for Coolidge!” A storm of cheers, yells, laughter—and the
voice of the announcer, drunk also: “Baby Belle, hottes’ lill babe, sing
us hot one, right off griddle. Go to it, Babe, I’ll hold you!”
Yes, the announcer was drunk, the very radio was drunk, the instruments
would not send the wave-lengths true, the ether could not carry them
straight, they wavered and wiggled; the laws of the physical universe
had gone staggering, God was drunk on His Throne, so pleased by the
election of the greatesh man ever in White Housh. Bunny, dazed with
exhaustion, saw the scene through a blur of sound and motion, the
shining mouths of trumpets, the waving of flags, the flashing of
electric signs, the cavorting of satyrs, the prancing of savages, the
jiggling of financiers and their mistresses simulating copulation. Baby
Belle was unsteady before the microphone, you lost parts of her song at
each stagger; but snatches came, portraying the nymphomania of “Flamin’
Mamie, sure-fire vamp—hottes’ baby in the town—some scorcher—love’s
torture—gal that burns ’em down!”
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” cried Ruth. “He’s trying to speak to me!” And so for
an instant it seemed. Paul’s one eye had come open, wild and frightful;
he lifted his head, he made a choking noise—
“Comes to lovin’—she’s an oven!” shrilled the radio voice.
“Paul! What is it?” shrieked Ruth.
“Ain’t it funny—paper money burns right in her hand!”
Paul sank back, he gave up, and Ruth, her two hands clasped as if
praying to him, seemed to follow with her soul into that far-away place
where he was going.
“Flamin’ Mamie, workin’ in a mine, ate a box o’ matches at the age o’
nine!”
“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Ruth put her hand over Paul’s heart, and then
started up with a scream.
“Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp,” reiterated the chorus, “hottes’ baby in
the town!”
And Ruth rushed to the window, and threw herself—no, not out, because
Bunny had been too quick for her; the others helped to hold her, and the
nurse came running with a hypodermic needle, and in a few minutes she
was lying on a cot at the side of the room, looking as dead as her
brother.
And the householder turned to Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot
broadcasting from its own studio. “Latest bulletin from New York, the
Republican Central Committee claims that Calvin Coolidge will have the
greatest plurality ever cast in American history, close to eighteen
million votes. Good-night, friends of Radioland.”
XV
The Communists wanted to have a “Red funeral,” to make a piece of
propaganda out of Paul’s death. But Eli interposed his majestic
authority; since Paul had repented his evil ways and come back to Jesus,
he should be buried according to the rites of the Third Revelation.
So three days later a little pageant wound its way to the top of one of
the hills of Paradise. There was a crowd on hand, and a truck with the
necessary radio apparatus—never were any of the precious words of Eli
lost nowadays; the two hundred thousand radio housewives of California
had been notified by the newspapers, and a hundred and ninety thousand
of them had put off their marketing to hear this romantic funeral
service. Bunny and Rachel and a handful of the reds stood to one side,
knowing they were not welcome. Ruth stood near the grave with the
weeping family, having on each side, of her a sturdy oil worker—her two
brothers-in-law, Andy Bugner and Jerry Black—because she had been
violent on occasions, and no one knew what she might do. She was white
and fearful in looks, but seemed not to realize the meaning of the big
hole dug in the ground, or of the long black box covered with flowers.
While Eli was preaching his fervid sermon about the prodigal son who
returned, and about the strayed lamb which was found, Ruth stood gazing
at the white clouds moving slowly behind the distant hilltops.
She would make them no more trouble. All she wanted was to wander over
these hills, and call now and then for the sheep which were no longer
there. Sometimes she called Paul, and sometimes she called Bunny, and so
they let her wander; until one day she went calling Joe Gundha. The oil
workers who were putting up the new derricks and cleaning out the burned
wells to put them back on production were new men to the Ross Junior
tract—it is the Roscoe Junior tract now, by the way, one of Vernon
Roscoe’s four sons being in charge of the job. These new men had never
heard about the “roughneck” who had fallen into the discovery well, so
they paid no attention to the unhappy girl who wandered here and there
calling his name.
It was not till late that night, when Ruth was missing, and the family
making a search, that some one told of hearing her call Joe Gundha.
Meelie remembered right away, and they put down a hook in the discovery
well, which was having to be drilled again, and they brought up a piece
of Ruth’s dress; so they put down a three-pronged grab, and brought up
the rest of her, and Eli came again, and they buried her alongside Paul,
and with Joe Gundha not far away.
You can see those graves, with a picket fence about them, and no derrick
for a hundred feet or more. Some day all those unlovely derricks will be
gone, and so will the picket fence and the graves. There will be other
girls with bare brown legs running over those hills, and they may grow
up to be happier women, if men can find some way to chain the black and
cruel demon which killed Ruth Watkins and her brother—yes, and Dad
also: an evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men
and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned
wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor.
THE END
Who Owns The Press, and Why?
When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And
whose propaganda?
Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it
honest material?
No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the
first time the questions are answered in a book.
T H E B R A S S C H E C K
A Study of American Journalism
By UPTON SINCLAIR
Read the record of this book to August, 1920: Published in February,
1920; first edition, 23,000 paper-bound copies, sold in two weeks.
Second edition, 21,000 paper-bound, sold before it could be put to
press. Third edition, 15,000, and fourth edition, 12,000, sold. Fifth
edition, 15,000, in press. Paper for sixth edition, 110,000, just
shipped from the mill. The third and fourth editions are printed on
“number one news;” the sixth will be printed on a carload of lightweight
brown wrapping paper—all we could get in a hurry.
The first cloth edition, 16,500 copies, all sold; a carload of paper for
the second edition, 40,000 copies, has just reached our printer—and so
we dare to advertise!
Ninety thousand copies of a book sold in six months—and published by
the author, with no advertising, and only a few scattered reviews! What
this means is that the American people want to know the truth about
their newspapers. They have found the truth in “The Brass Check” and
they are calling for it by telegraph. Put these books on your counter,
and you will see, as one doctor wrote us—“they melt away like the
snow.”
From the pastor of the Community Church, New York:
“I am writing to thank you for sending me a copy of your new book, “The
Brass Check.” Although it arrived only a few days ago, I have already
read it through, every word, and have loaned it to one of my colleagues
for reading. The book is tremendous. I have never read a more strongly
consistent argument or one so formidably buttressed by facts. You have
proved your case to the handle. I again take satisfaction in saluting
you not only as a great novelist, but as the ablest pamphleteer in
America today. I am already passing around the word in my church and
taking orders for the book.”—John Haynes Holmes.
=440 pages. Cloth $2.00; paper $1.00=
=UPTON SINCLAIR, Station A, Pasadena, California=
JIMMIE HIGGINS
“JIMMIE HIGGINS” is the fellow who does the hard work in the job of
waking up the workers. Jimmie hates war—all war—and fights against it
with heart and soul. But war comes, and Jimmie is drawn into it, whether
he will or no. He has many adventures—strikes, jails, munitions
explosions, draft-boards, army-camps, submarines and battles. “Jimmie
Higgins Goes to War” at last, and when he does he holds back the German
army and wins the battle of “Chatty Terry.” But then they send him into
Russia to fight the Bolsheviki, and there “Jimmie Higgins Votes for
Democracy.”
A picture of the American working-class movement during four years of
world-war; all wings of the movement, all the various tendencies and
clashing impulses are portrayed. Cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00.
_From “The Candidate”_: I have just finished reading the first
installment of “Jimmie Higgins” and I am delighted with it. It is the
beginning of a great story, a story that will be translated into many
languages and be read by eager and interested millions all over the
world. I feel that your art will lend itself readily to “Jimmie
Higgins,” and that you will be at your best in placing this dear little
comrade where he belongs in the Socialist movement. The opening story of
your chapter proves that you know him intimately. So do I and I love him
with all my heart, even as you do. He has done more for me than I shall
ever be able to do for him. Almost anyone can be “The Candidate,” and
almost anyone will do for a speaker, but it takes the rarest of
qualities to produce a “Jimmie Higgins.” You are painting a superb
portrait of our “Jimmie” and I congratulate you.—EUGENE V. DEBS.
_From Mrs. Jack London_: Jimmie Higgins is immense. He is real, and so
are the other characters. I’m sure you rather fancy Comrade Dr. Service!
The beginning of the narrative is delicious with an irresistible loving
humor; and as a change comes over it and the Big Medicine begins to
work, one realizes by the light of 1918, what you have undertaken to
accomplish. The sure touch of your genius is here, Upton Sinclair, and I
wish Jack London might read and enjoy.—CHARMIAN LONDON.
_From a Socialist Artist_: Jimmie Higgins’ start is a master portrayal
of that character. I have been out so long on these lecture tours that I
can appreciate the picture. I am waiting to see how the story develops.
It starts better than “King Coal.”—RYAN WALKER.
=Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00; postpaid.=
=UPTON SINCLAIR=
=Station A, Pasadena, California=
They Call Me Carpenter
By UPTON SINCLAIR
WOULD you like to meet Jesus? Would you care to walk down Broadway with
him in the year 1922? What would he order for dinner in a lobster
palace? What would he do in a beauty parlor? What would he make of a
permanent wave? What would he say to Mary Magna, million dollar queen of
the movies? And how would he greet the pillars of St. Bartholomew’s
Church? How would he behave at strike headquarters? What would he say at
a mass-meeting of the “reds”? And what would the American Legion do to
him?
From the “Survey”:
“Upton Sinclair has a reputation for rushing in where angels fear to
tread. He has done it again and, artist that he is, has mastered the
most difficult theme with ease and sureness. That the figure of Jesus is
woven into a novel which is glorious fun, in itself will shock many
people. But the graphic arts have long been given the liberty of
treating His life in a contemporary setting—why not the novelist?
“Heywood Broun and other critics notwithstanding, it must be stated that
Sinclair has treated the figure of Christ with a reverence far more
sincere than that of writings in which His presence is shrouded in
pseudo-mystic inanity. By an artistry borrowed from the technique of
modern expressionist fiction, he has combined downright realism with an
extravagant imaginativeness in which the appearance of Christ is no more
improper than it is in the actual dreams of hundreds of thousands of
devout Christians.
“Like all of Sinclair’s writings, this book is, of course, a Socialist
tract; but here—in a spirit which entirely destroys Mr. Broun’s charge
that he has made Christ the spokesman of one class—he is unmerciful in
his exposure of the sins of the poor as well as of the rich, and directs
at the comrades in radical movements a sermon which every churchman will
gladly endorse.
“It is not necessary to recommend a book that will find its way into
thousands of homes. Incidentally one wonders how a story so colloquially
American—Mr. Broun considers this bad taste—can possibly be translated
into the Hungarian, the Chinese and the dozen or so other languages in
which Sinclair’s books are devoured by the common people of the world.”
=Single copy, cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00, postpaid.=
=UPTON SINCLAIR, Station A, Pasadena, California=
A New Novel by Upton Sinclair
100%
THE STORY OF A PATRIOT
WOULD you like to go behind the scenes and see the “invisible
government” of your country saving you from the Bolsheviks and the Reds?
Would you like to meet the secret agents and provocateurs of “Big
Business,” to know what they look like, how they talk and what they are
doing to make the world safe for democracy? Several of these gentlemen
have been haunting the home of Upton Sinclair during the past three
years and he has had the idea of turning the tables and investigating
the investigators. He has put one of them, Peter Gudge by name, into a
book, together with Peter’s lady-loves, and his wife, and his boss and a
whole group of his fellow-agents and their employers.
The hero of this book is a red-blooded, 100% American, a “he-man” and no
mollycoddle. He begins with the Mooney case, and goes through half a
dozen big cases of which you have heard. His story is a fact-story of
America from 1916 to 1920, and will make a bigger sensation than “The
Jungle.” Albert Rhys Williams, author of “Lenin” and “In the Claws of
the German Eagle,” read the MS. and wrote:
“This is the first novel of yours that I have read through with real
interest. It is your most timely work, and is bound to make a sensation.
I venture that you will have even more trouble than you had with ‘The
Brass Check’—in getting the books printed fast enough.”
=_Single copy, cloth, $1.50 postpaid_=
=UPTON SINCLAIR=
=Station A, Pasadena, California=
A book which has been absolutely boycotted by the literary reviews of
America.
THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
A STUDY of Supernaturalism as a Source of Income and a Shield to
Privilege; the first examination in any language of institutionalized
religion from the economic point of view. “Has the labour as well as the
merit of breaking virgin soil,” writes Joseph McCabe. The book has had
practically no advertising and only two or three reviews in radical
publications; yet forty thousand copies have been sold in the first
year.
_From the Rev. John Haynes Holmes_: “I must confess that it has fairly
made me writhe to read these pages, not because they are untrue or
unfair, but on the contrary, because I know them to be the real facts. I
love the church as I love my home, and therefore it is no pleasant
experience to be made to face such a story as this which you have told.
It had to be done, however, and I am glad you have done it, for my
interest in the church, after all, is more or less incidental, whereas
my interest in religion is a fundamental thing. . . . Let me repeat
again that I feel that you have done us all a service in the writing of
this book. Our churches today, like those of ancient Palestine, are the
abode of Pharisees and scribes. It is as spiritual and helpful a thing
now as it was in Jesus’ day for that fact to be revealed.”
_From Luther Burbank_: “No one has ever told ‘the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth’ more faithfully than Upton Sinclair in
‘The Profits of Religion.’”
_From Louis Untermeyer_: “Let me add my quavering alto to the chorus of
applause of ‘The Profits of Religion.’ It is something more than a
book—it is a Work!”
Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00
Concerning
The Jungle
Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been
such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has
come to Upton Sinclair.—_New York Evening World._
It is a book that does for modern industrial slavery what “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” did for black slavery. But the work is done far better and more
accurately in “The Jungle” than in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”—_Arthur
Brisbane in the New York Evening Journal._
I never expected to read a serial. I am reading “_The Jungle_,” and I
should be afraid to trust myself to tell how it affects me. It is a
great work. I have a feeling that you yourself will be dazed some day by
the excitement about it. It is impossible that such a power should not
be felt. It is so simple, so true, so tragic and so human. It is so
eloquent, and yet so exact. I must restrain myself or you may
misunderstand.—_David Graham Phillips._
In this fearful story the horrors of industrial slavery are as vividly
drawn as if by lightning. It marks an epoch in revolutionary
literature.—_Eugene V. Debs._
Mr. Heinemann isn’t a man to bungle;
He’s published a book which is called “The Jungle.”
It’s written by Upton Sinclair, who
Appears to have heard a thing or two
About Chicago and what men do
Who live in that city—a loathsome crew.
It’s there that the stockyards reek with blood,
And the poor man dies, as he lives, in mud;
The Trusts are wealthy beyond compare,
And the bosses are all triumphant there,
And everything rushes without a skid
To be plunged in a hell which has lost its lid.
For a country where things like that are done
There’s just one remedy, only one,
A latter-day Upton Sinclairism
Which the rest of us know as Socialism.
Here’s luck to the book! It will make you cower,
For it’s written with wonderful, thrilling power.
It grips your throat with a grip Titanic,
And scatters shams with a force volcanic.
Go buy the book, for I judge you need it,
And when you have bought it, read it, read it.
—_Punch (London)._
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.