come to me with a proposition it seems they are planning a great new
brass trust that is to include all the brass mines and mills of the
entire country and they are scared the public may not like it and may
make a fuss and force the Spokesman to do something about it and so
they have asked will I come and be their head press agent and fix the
stories that they will tell to all the newspapers and they have offered
me just about three times what I am getting now not only from the
government but from the private funds of them that is put me here to
manage the Spokesman for them. And so I am going to take this new job.”
Well I am so weak that I have to set on a bench and I says, “Oh Mr.
Edgerton I will be so lonely!”
And he says, “That is just what I want to say that you are to come with
me.”
“With you Mr. Edgerton but where?”
“To Chicago for that is where the brass trust is to have its offices.”
“But oh,” I says, “what would I do in Chicago?”
“You will be free,” he says, “and so will I because why,” he says,
“when you are in private business you can have some fun and you do not
have to worry about a lot of meddlesome Matties and old women in pants
that is watching everything you do. And you and me can have a little
apartment and be as jolly as two turtle-doves.” And while he says that
he is put his arm about me and he says, “Oh Mame I am sure fond of you
for you are the gamest kid I ever got to know and wouldn’t you like to
have a nice little love-nest and with nobody to look out for but just
me?”
Well Mom I am trembling all over because it is all so sudden and after
all I do think that Mr. Edgerton is a mighty fine man and I have never
had nothing so lovely as an apartment and he is holding me close and
I can hardly think straight but I says, “Oh Mr. Edgerton do not tempt
me,” I says, “for I have always been a good girl and always gone
straight.”
“Yes,” he says, “but there is nothing wrong with this for we are real
friends.”
“But you have got a wife!” I says.
“But she does not care for me she is interested in that syker now.”
“But that is only for a moment,” I says, “and she does love you I know
for I have saw it in her face and what is more I know that you love her
because else why should you of been jealous of the syker? And then too
I have got a fyansay and you know he is a good boy--”
“But my God Mamie will you go and throw yourself away on a
shipping-clerk what kind of a life is that for an intellectual girl
like you that is learned to understand all about international
affairs?” he says. “Why you will go and live in some hole with him and
you will have eleven babies and spend your life over a washtub and it
is a crime.”
“I know it is hard,” I says, “but you talk about the plain people and
what they think--”
“Oh to hell with the plain people!” he says. “That is all bunk and you
know it”--just like that he says it and of course I am shocked and I do
not want him to keep his arm around me then.
I says, “Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you are going now to be a
shirt-stuffer or whatever you call it for the brass kings and so I
suppose you have got to feel like that about the plain people and
trample them beneath your heel,” I says, “but I am going to stay one of
them like I have always been because there is my Mom and my Pop and my
kid brothers and sisters and a good honest boy that I have promised to
wait for. And I am very much obliged to you and I like you very much
as I have always done but it makes me sad to see that you are going to
be cynical and lose all your ideals,” I says.
And so then he sees it is no use and he says, “Then you are going to
stay a Field Grammarian Mame?”
I says, “About that I cannot tell,” I says. “Would it be right for me
to keep the job if I am not doing no work for you and the Spokesman?”
“Oh Mame,” he says, “you are too fine a patriot to be living in these
degenerate times. Of course you can keep the job for you have earned
a hundred times the salary and if that poor little Shrimp in the big
white house had the sense to of took your advice you would of saved Him
for another term. But now I don’t know what will happen to Him.”
I says, “Is He going to have somebody to write His speeches for Him?”
“My God of course,” he says, “that poor Fish He could not write a
speech for an Epsom Salts convention.”
“And then who is to do it?” I says and he tells me that Mr. Grandaddy
Prows is got back from Europe and him and Senator Buttles is had a row
as to which is to name the new Secretary and so they have left it to
Mr. Edgerton as usual and he has picked out a newspaper friend of his
and he says, “Mame you will have to stand by him and help him because
when I look back on my past then I am sorry for this one’s future.”
And I says, “Let me meet him at once Mr. Edgerton,” and he says, “So
that is all you care about me!” and I says, “I am thinking about my
duty to the plain people of this great country,” and he says, “Mamie
Riggs when they have the first Woman Spokesman of this great country
you have got to be Her.”
So then we make a date to meet the new Secretary for lunch tomorrow and
I come home and there Mom I get your letter telling me that you have
saw Walter and he has agreed to believe that I am good and pure and
that he still loves me and oh Mom I am so glad I did not yield to that
fearful temptation out there on the park bench in the moonlight!
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom I have just got back from having lunch with the new
Secretary and gee it is so wonderful I am more happy than I know how to
write. For he is a good man and very serious and I do not think he will
ever be cynical like I fear Mr. Edgerton is got to be. And he is very
polite and respectful and says how he has heard what fine ideas I have
give to Mr. Edgerton and he wants me to help him because he knows what
a hard time he is going to have especially at the beginning.
And I says, “Yes Mr. Porkin,” for that is his name, “you will find it
hard because there is many questions that people is trying to trap
the Spokesman into talking about and He is not being able to keep so
quiet as He used to, and it will mean His ruin because there is just
nothing He can say and why does He not say it? For example,” I says,
“there is this business about the Bolshiviki count when he comes here
there will be no end of a row to know why he can’t talk what he wants
to and then maybe when his wife gets well she will want to know if
she can talk and you know how much harder it is to shut up a woman,”
I says. “And then there is this business about the big banker that is
in the cabinet Mr. Lemon or Melon or whatever fruit he is and why he
does not stop the bootlegging business while he is making the whiskey
and why he is got all the income taxes refunded for his companies and
why he is allowed to charge as high as he wants for all the aluminum
that us women is got to have in our kitchens. You can just see there is
nothing the Spokesman can say about all that and you have got to see
that He says it. And there is this business about our lending money to
all these here Dago countries where the young secretaries of the state
department is got noble wives,” I says, “and about the Spokesman having
hid the reports of the commission or what ever it is called that wanted
to have the price of sugar cut down and ruin all them sugar kings that
is keeping up our prosperity. I tell you Mr. Porkin,” I says, “I have
been studying hard and if there was time I could tell you a hundred
different things that if anybody can ever get the Spokesman talking
about then He is done for the rest of His life,” I says, “and your job
is just one and that is to hammer into His Head day and night that when
you have got nothing you can say then you must say it and nothing else.”
And he is listening to every word and it is plain he is impressed and
right in the middle of it he reaches over the table and he says, “Miss
Riggs, shake hands with me,” he says, “for in you I have a political
counsellor and you must promise to stand by me and together we will
save Him.”
Then I says, “Mr. Porkin, we will shake hands but what I am trying to
do is not so much to save Him as to save the American people from the
great pain of finding out about Him.”
And so Mom we are friends even better than I have been with Mr.
Edgerton and you need have no more worry about the future of
Your high-up daughter
MAME.
THE END
Books by Upton Sinclair
=The Brass Check=: an exposure of the corruption of the capitalist
press. $1.50 cloth, $1 paper.
=The Goose-step=: a study of the class control of American
Universities. $2 cloth, $1 paper.
=The Goslings=: a study of the American schools and what the money
power is doing with them. $2 cloth, $1 paper.
=Mammonart=: a history of the world’s culture, showing how it serves
the ruling classes. $2 cloth, $1 paper.
=The Profits of Religion=: how the churches have been used by the
enemies of Jesus. $1.50 cloth, $1 paper.
=The Book of Life=: a work of practical counsel, Mind, Body, Love and
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=The Cry for Justice=: an anthology of the world’s literature of social
protest, from twenty-two languages and five thousand years of history.
890 pages, 16 illustrations. $2 cloth, $1.25 paper.
Novels, at $1.50 cloth and $1 paper
=The Jungle=: a novel of the Chicago stockyards.
=King Coal=: a story of the Colorado coal empire.
=100%=: The Story of a Patriot: the spy system which rules America.
=They Call Me Carpenter=: how Jesus came to Los Angeles.
=The Moneychangers=: how Morgan caused the panic of 1907.
=Jimmie Higgins=: a novel of the Socialist movement in the world war.
=Manassas=: a novel of the Civil war.
=Samuel the Seeker=: the misadventures of a young idealist.
Order from UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, California
Mammonart
An Essay in Economic Interpretation
“MAMMONART” studies the artists from a point of view entirely new;
asking how they get their living, and what they do for it; turning
their pockets inside out, seeing what is in them and where it comes
from.
“MAMMONART” puts to painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, dramatists
and composers the question already put to priests and preachers,
editors and journalists, college presidents and professors, school
superintendents and teachers: WHO OWNS YOU, AND WHY?
“MAMMONART” examines art and literature as instruments of propaganda
and repression, employed by ruling classes of the community; or as
weapons of attack, employed by new classes rising into power.
“MAMMONART” challenges the great ones now honored by critical authority
and asks to what extent they are servants of ruling-class prestige and
instruments of ruling-class safety.
“MAMMONART” asserts that mankind is today under the spell of utterly
false conceptions of what art is and should be; of utterly vicious and
perverted standards of beauty and dignity in all the arts.
“MAMMONART” is a history of culture, and also a battle-cry.
* * * * *
E. HALDEMAN-JULIUS telegraphs: “This is real constructive criticism.
My heartiest congratulations.”
GEORGE STERLING writes: “You may not know everything, son, but you can
sure turn out interesting stuff!”
_400 pages, cloth $2.00; paper $1.00_
UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, Cal.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling
has been retained as published. The following Printer errors have been
changed.
=CHANGED= =FROM= =TO=
Page 18: “I must a say there” “I must say there”
Page 25: “idea what is costs” “idea what it costs”
Page 28: “have go to go through” “have got to go through”
Page 32: “then I was a cat” “them I was a cat”