adventurers, to every nation and tribe of reactionary that was fighting
Soviet Russia on twenty-six fronts; we dressed up Polish troops in
American uniforms to make war on Russia, and even burned American Red
Cross supplies to keep them from being captured and used for the sick
and starving people of the Soviet republic. We allowed Woodrow Wilson
to send our boys to their death in his private war on a friendly
people--under the command of British officers in Archangel, and helping
the Japanese to take Siberia.
All that was done, Judd, and done with your money, and under the flag
of your country; and it will be done again when the British Tories are
ready--for the bull-dog never sleeps, and he never lets go his hold. He
has set out to strangle the Soviets, as once he strangled Napoleon--and
for the same reason, to keep his grip on the 300,000,000 serfs of
India. If, when the next attack begins, America does not hasten to
pour out its blood and treasure, it will be for one reason and one
only; because in the meantime it has been possible to reach the plain
people like yourself, and make them understand, and hold back the world
bankers from their next World Crime.
LETTER XVIII
MY DEAR JUDD:
Our country today is traveling headlong the road which has led every
great empire in history to its doom. And this is no piece of rhetoric,
but a summary of statistics to be found in our census reports.
What ruined Rome was the spread of capitalist imperialism with its
consequences--the undermining of the independent farmers, the growth
of tenantry and absentee landlordism, and the turning of the country
population into city slum-dwellers, uncertain of their employment and
dependent upon public doles.
And every one of these things is happening right before our eyes. The
price of farm-land is going up, steadily and inexorably; the profits
of agriculture are going to middlemen, speculators, and moneylenders.
Farm mortgages are increasing, farm tenantry is increasing, decade
after decade, with the certainty of a doom. The young men are leaving
the farms and going to the city, to increase unemployment and bring
down wages. The man who wants a city home pays a constantly increasing
tribute to land speculators; while in the business districts land
values double or treble in a decade, and no work can go on until the
landlord’s greed has been appeased.
Millions of little fellows like yourself, Judd, support that system,
because you own a lot or two, and are making a little profit; just as
millions support the big trusts, because they own a share or two of
stock. They do not see that under a just system they, as producers,
would get many times what they get as petty speculators. Our first
task is to show them, and bring them to our side. We wish to take the
government out of the hands of the capitalist and landlord class; and
then to apply the remedy for land speculation, a tax on land values,
falling heavily on rented land, and still more heavily on land not used
at all. This will set free the soil, and wipe out the gamblers; there
will be plenty of farm-land open for use, and lots near the cities
will be cheap. At the same time both cities and states will have money
for public improvements, bringing high wages, and benefit to all. The
farmer will have abundant markets, because the city population will no
longer be on half rations. The land values tax is the only just one,
because it taxes the wealth created by nature, and not by human labor;
also, it is the only tax which can be fully collected--all others are
taxes on honesty, and we need that commodity badly, and should not tax
it out of existence.
There is a form of conflict between farmers and organized workers,
because the farmer has to hire labor, and wants it cheap. This conflict
is carefully made use of by the old party politicians, who wish to
plunder the two groups separately. I point out to both farmer and
workingman that their deeper interests are identical; they are the
producers, and supplement each other. The farmers grow food for the
city workers, while the city workers make building materials and
machinery, clothing, newspapers--everything the farmers need. These two
groups form the basis of the new society, and in their political union
lies our hope for the future.
When I say “workers,” understand that I mean workers of both hand and
brain: housewives and teachers, clerks and stenographers, architects,
chemists and doctors, foremen, superintendents and executives--all who
are actually necessary to the efficient production of wealth. The only
ones not necessary are the owners, in their capacity as exploiters and
parasites.
I know that many owners also work as managers, and if they are
competent, I respect them, and invite their aid. I should be glad to
see young Rockefeller managing our national oil trust--provided only
that somebody would convert him to the ideal of public service. When
the real crisis comes, some employers will realize that the making
of industrial democracy is a task worthy of all the energy they are
now putting into making millions of dollars--to be used later on in
wrecking the lives of their descendants.
The useful workers of industry, and those on the land, must get
together. They must have a political party of producers--the plan has
been fully worked out in Minnesota, and the other states have only to
follow. Also we must build up and strengthen the trade unions of both
workers and farmers; for it is not at all certain that the masters of
money will surrender to white paper ballots in whatever number; they
must know that these ballots are backed by nationwide organizations,
capable, determined, and wielding the threat of the mass-strike.
As part of the process of organizing and drawing together farmers
and workers, we must encourage business co-operation between these
groups. The farmers can feed the workers, and the workers can set
up co-operative factories for their farmer customers. The railway
brotherhoods have made a beginning at this, and so have the clothing
workers. Equally important is labor-banking, to finance such
undertakings. At present a great deal of labor-banking turns out to
be shadow--there is no real control by labor, and all that happens
is, some former labor officials become successful bankers. But that
also will be remedied--the unions will have banks which they actually
control, and whose funds they use for their own enterprises. What
could be more pitiful than the present situation--the workers putting
their billions of savings into capitalist banks, to be shipped on to
Wall Street and there used for robbing labor, and financing anti-labor
newspapers--and even breaking labor strikes!
At the present time the policies of American labor both political and
industrial, are a generation out of date; our workingmen are like the
Moros in the Philippines, fighting machine-guns with bows and arrows.
The unions are still organized according to crafts; and they face
gigantic combinations of capital, which have merged a hundred different
crafts into one. So of course the unions are beaten or outwitted at
every turn; and membership falls off, and the old officials whistle to
keep their courage up.
I remember, Judd, that in some of our arguing you asserted that many
labor leaders are corrupt; that is one reason why you are not a union
man. But go and investigate trade union corruption, and you find just
what we found about political corruption. Who puts up the money to
buy labor leaders? The employers, and the employers’ associations!
Wherever you touch this evil in our society, it is one and the same
thing--private wealth seeking to increase itself at the expense of the
poor and weak. In Chicago I once investigated a strike of teamsters,
which had kept the city in an uproar for weeks, and cost several
lives--to say nothing of discrediting the workers. And what was behind
it? A great mail-order house trying to put another mail-order house out
of business, hiring a strike and gangs of sluggers!
The remedy for that is not to desert the unions, but to put new blood
into them, a new policy and a new ideal. The task of labor is no longer
to get five cents more per hour for its members, or an extra hour
off on Saturdays; it is to reconstruct society, and make a world of
producers, managed by producers, for the benefit of producers. And for
that every worker is needed, and the place where he is needed is in
the union with his fellows. If there are officials without vision, go
in and teach them; point out how the employers have formed trusts, and
how the workers must match them with great industrial unions. If labor
officials are dishonest and betrayers of their cause, kick them out,
and find others who are class conscious and loyal. I know that is easy
to say and hard to do; yet surely, Judd, labor cannot lie down and give
up! Get it straight--this is a changing world, and you can’t stay as
you are; there are forces at work that will beat the workers back into
their age-old status of serfs, unless they have the courage and brain
power to master these forces, and lift themselves to the new status of
citizens of industry. Join, and do your part; and some day the law will
provide that every man who works at a trade becomes automatically a
member of his union, an equal citizen of the industry, with no power to
exploit others, nor fear of being exploited by others.
LETTER XIX
MY DEAR JUDD:
We have come to the end of our task. I have tried to show you what is
going on in our country, and the job you have to do.
We are moving towards a new American revolution. That does not mean
riot and tumult, as our enemies try to represent; but neither does it
mean slavish submission to every repression of government. There is
the best American precedent for resistance to tyranny, and those good
ladies who call themselves “Daughters of the American Revolution” would
be shocked speechless if I were to quote to them the authentic words of
Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
on the right of the people to overthrow unjust governments. Said
Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address: “This country, with
its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they
shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their
constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to
dismember or overthrow it.” There can be no question that those words
come precisely under the specifications of the California “criminal
syndicalism” law, and a man who said them today would be sent up for
fourteen years, to cough out his lungs in the jute-mill of San Quentin
prison.
We have to get rid of the capitalist system. It is close to breaking
down, and will soon be unable to run the factories it has built, or
to bring food to the people in its giant cities. We have got to stop
producing goods for profit, and learn to produce them for the use of
those who work. I have pointed out the way to make that change under
our Constitution. I say: if there is violence, let the capitalists
start it--and then you, Judd, and the rest of the workers, can finish
it!
Abraham Lincoln hated the slave power, just as I hate the capitalist
power; but he moved carefully, keeping the mass of the people with
him, and pushed the slave power against the wall, until presently
it revolted and began the fighting; then Lincoln called for seventy
thousand men to put down the rebellion, and presently he called for a
million, and before he got through he had freed the slaves, and put
an end to that evil forever. And maybe that is going to happen again;
maybe when we get seriously to work, the capitalists are going to
organize their armed bands of rowdies, as they did in Italy, and as
they are now doing in France and Germany and England, and set out to
thwart the people’s will as expressed at the polls. If that happens,
Judd, let us have the traditions of America, and the moral forces of
America, on our side.
I am one who believes in those traditions; coming, as I do, of a
line of naval ancestors. My great-grandfather once commanded the
frigate “Constitution,” and I am standing by the old ship--while our
money-masters and their hired political servants are trying to torpedo
it. When I try to read the Constitution of my country in a public
place, and a drunken chief of police throws me into jail, and drunken
newspaper publishers shout with approval--well, Judd, I bide my time.
I once spent two years reading the history of the period prior to the
Civil War, and I know what the moral forces of America are. I know how
long they wait, and how slow they seem to be in getting into motion;
nevertheless, they are there, and I make my appeal to them, and I
expect to hear it answered. I am taking care of my health, with the
idea of living to sing once more the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
I have written these letters as an act of service to my country. I
personally am not suffering, as you know; I have won my fight, to
the extent that I am an independent man, and no one can muzzle me.
But how can I be happy in this so-called civilization, where I see
on every hand about me war and the preparation for war, poverty and
the despair which poverty brings, crime and prostitution, suicide and
insanity--such a mass of misery that I cannot face the thought of
it, and all those beauties of nature and art which in my youth set
me a-thrill from top to toe, now mean hardly anything to me, because
of the wrongs I see about me--and all so needless, Judd, so utterly,
utterly needless!
And something just as bad as the misery of the poor, the decay in the
souls of the rich! To see a whole society chasing false ideals, vanity
and luxury and waste; admiring and imitating wretched parasites, who
have millions of dollars and not one useful thing to do! I know a
few of these people, Judd, their lives touch mine here and there,
and the truth is they are just as unhappy as the poor, and just as
much to be wept over, with their jazz and their bootleggers and their
petting parties and their pitiful empty heads. A brief little hour of
excitement and display--and then so much suffering, and bewilderment,
despair about life, and cynicism about everything sound and true. I
think of the millionaire youth I know, drinking himself to death; and
the gay young society matron with a venereal disease in her blood and
terror in her heart--I feel like calling upon the useful workers of
America to organize and save the rich from the misery of being out of
work!
What we want, Judd, is a world with neither rich nor poor, but with
people who live by producing, and not by taking what others have
produced. We want to make that sort of world, and we call to our aid
all men and women who are willing to work for it. We want to study this
problem, and fill our minds with real information, and stop reading the
poison press of our enemies. Indeed, Judd, it is not too much to say
that we want to make over our moral and mental life, so that we cease
to admire the ideals of our exploiters--waste and the display of waste,
plundering and the power to plunder. We want to teach ourselves and our
children to admire useful labor, and social vision, and loyalty to the
cause of those who produce. We who serve that cause call one another
“comrade,” or “brother,” or “fellow-worker”; and we invite you to join
our ranks.
UPTON SINCLAIR
PASADENA CALIFORNIA
March 15, 1926.
DEAR FRIEND:
I do not think that since the world began there has ever been a people
so lied to as the American people to-day. There are 110,000,000 of
us, and at least 105,000,000 are completely befuddled by a campaign
of deception, backed by the whole power of American big business, the
newspapers, the magazines, the movies, the radio, the vast machinery of
government, and the two major political parties. I am supposed to be
working on a novel, “Oil,” to the writing of which I had hoped to give
the next year; but I couldn’t stand it, so I took a couple of months
off, to pay a debt which an honest American owes to his ancestors--to
help break the power of the organized knaves who are looting our
country in broad daylight.
I have written a little book, “Letters to Judd.” It is running serially
in the “American Appeal,” where some of you may be reading it. Judd
is an old carpenter who has worked for us off and on, a typical,
old-fashioned American; I have taken him as the type of person I
want to reach, and have written him a series of nineteen letters,
telling those elementary facts which our ruling classes are trying so
desperately to keep hidden from us all. This is the first time I have
covered our political and social problems fully, since “The Industrial
Republic,” which was published 19 years ago, and has been out of
print more than half that time. My mail is full of letters asking for
something of the sort, so here you have it.
The book tells why there is poverty in the richest country in the
world. It proves that in America for the past thirty-five years the
rich have been growing richer and the poor poorer, and it shows
exactly what the rich have done to bring this condition about, and
exactly what the poor will have to do to change it. It explains
unemployment and hard times, the money system, inflation, stock
watering and manipulation, the tariff and the trusts. It studies the
world situation, explaining the wars we have had, and showing how the
present system is preparing new ones. It discusses Russia and the
revolution--in short, everything the average man or woman needs to know
about affairs at home and abroad, and all in plain, everyday language.
It is a 100% American book, intended for 100% American readers, and it
is written and published as an act of love for our country.
A few times past we have had great crises, and it has been found
possible to reach the people by a pamphlet. Paine’s “The Crisis,” and
Helper’s “The Impending Crisis,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Progress and
Poverty,” “Looking Backward”--these books have helped to make our
history. I am making a try at this kind of thing; I mean, I have put
aside everything else, and done my best to make a good job, to get the
facts, and make them fool-proof, as well as knave-proof, and to present
them in such a way that anyone can understand them. Thirty years’ study
of our problems has gone into the book, also thirty years of learning
how to write. Having faith in our people, I have borrowed money, and
gone ahead to make the plates and print twelve thousand copies; now I
am appealing to you to do the rest of the job--to see that the “Letters
to Judd” reach the millions of “Judds” who need them.
The book will be in two editions: first two thousand cloth bound,
price $1, to enable my friends to pay the cost of the undertaking;
and second, ten thousand copies, paper bound, a neatly printed
wire-stitched pamphlet, to be sold at meetings, and passed about among
workingmen and women; this is the form for which I hope to get a
million or two circulation, and I have put the price so low that nobody
will suspect me of making money--15 cents a copy, or ten copies for
a dollar. This 15 cent price for a single paper copy is a price for
meetings and book-stores--I cannot mail the book for that, because,
including postage, wrapping, and overhead, it costs about 15 cents to
handle an order in my office. What I ask you to do is to order at least
10 paper copies to give to your friends, and in addition a cloth copy
for your library. I will take a gamble and say: place a $2 order, for
one cloth and 10 paper copies, and when you have read the book, if you
don’t find it worth distributing, you may send back the whole lot, and
I’ll send back your money. I ask for a prompt response, as I want to
advertise the book, and haven’t the money. Both editions will be ready
for shipment by the time your order gets back to me.
Our reprint of “The Moneychangers” has been ready for a couple of
months, and if you haven’t seen it, here is a reminder. This novel,
first published in 1908, tells the story of the panic of 1907, how and
why it was brought about by the elder J. P. Morgan. I do not recommend
it as a great work of literature; reading it over, I found many
crudities, some of which I remedied. But I will guarantee it a lively
story, full of facts about Wall Street which the American people do not
yet understand.
Also, my wife has published a new volume by Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz,
author of “The Parlor Provocateur.” The new volume is called “Letters
of Protest,” the price is $1 cloth and fifty cents paper. The book is
full of that burning indignation at social injustice, combined with
motherly tenderness, which has made Mrs. Gartz the bewilderment of
the prosecuting officials of Los Angeles county. They want so much to
send her to jail, but they don’t quite dare! I was talking the other
day with a prominent physician of Los Angeles, and he mentioned his
intimate friend, the president of the Better America Federation, the
propaganda society of big business here in California. “He doesn’t love
you, Upton,” said the physician, “but Kate Gartz is the real one who
gets his nanny.”
The money which has come in from our “Loan Plan” has gone into the
printing and binding of “Bill Porter” and “The Moneychangers,” a part
payment on a new edition of “The Cry for Justice,” a new binding of
“The Jungle,” and finally, this circular. More money is needed for
a new printing and binding of “The Profits of Religion,” and for
advertising the “Letters to Judd.” Also my novel, “Sylvia,” is out of
print, and I’d reprint it if I could afford the luxury. So I tell you
again about this “Sinclair Loan Plan.” Those who believe in my work
and want to promote it lend me what they can afford, and the money
serves as working capital, to pay for the new plates and stock of
books which a publishing business has to keep on hand. The lenders
receive a certificate of indebtedness, and have the right to buy each
year a quantity of my books at half the retail price. Thus, if you
lend ten dollars, you can get $5 worth of books for $2.50. These books
must be ordered in one shipment, so as to save handling costs; under
the Loan Plan you may place one such half-price order every year. The
saving takes the place of interest on your money; it amounts to 25%
interest--a pretty good rate, but not so high as millions of poor
farmers are having to pay to national banks all over the country--see
my “Letters to Judd”!
I want to cover all the details of this Loan Plan, so as to avoid
having to write long explanations. If you have already come in under
the plan, and have your certificate of indebtedness, you may order
books once in the year 1926, to the amount of one-half of your loan.
Thus, if you have loaned $10, you may order $5 worth of books for
$2.50; you can get, for example, one cloth and ten paper copies of
“Letters to Judd,” one cloth “Mammonart,” one paper “Bill Porter,” and
one paper copy of Mrs. Gartz’s book, all for $2.50. I will throw in a
copy of my wife’s “Sonnets,”--and if you know any place in the world
where you can get as much value in books for the money, I do not!
If you are not at present at subscriber to the Loan Plan, you are
invited to join. Send $12.50, and you will receive a certificate for a
$10 loan, with the privilege of getting your money back at any time on
thirty days’ notice. Also you will receive $5 worth of books, and will
have the privilege each year of ordering another $5 worth of books for
$2.50. Most of my readers say they don’t want the certificates, but I
send them just the same; paste them in your autograph album, and some
day they may be worth the price in that form, and without hurting the
publishing business!
Sincerely,
UPTON SINCLAIR.