herself. “Give it to the co-operative. Give it to the Socialist Party.”
For a while Mrs. Gartz was timid about doing that, so she would ask
Craig to pass it on, which Craig faithfully did.
The “co-op” had been started by a devoted socialist woman named Tipton,
who took in washing while her husband drove a delivery wagon. You can
imagine that the first time Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz showed up at one of
the monthly “co-op” bean suppers at the Tipton house it was an event in
the history of that City of Millionaires.
Mr. Gartz, who handled his wife’s millions, was not long unaware of
these developments. He was beside himself with rage; and when for the
first time his wife invited us to a supper party at the fashionable
Maryland Hotel, he came into the dining room and stood behind my chair
and started muttering abuse in a low tone of voice.
Craig had never had to handle a situation like that, but she was equal
to all situations. She got up and invited Mr. Gartz to come over to the
next table and speak to her. He obeyed, and she pointed out to him that
there was only one possible conclusion the public would draw if he
persisted in making a public scene with Upton Sinclair. With that
terrible threat she scared him; at the same time, with her lovely
Southern voice she calmed him down, and he went his way. Once or twice
he raved at me in his home, but I had promised not to answer him, and I
obeyed.
That situation continued for a matter of twenty years. The daughter,
Gloria, sided with her father, and the son, Craney, sided with his
mother. Alas, Craney drank, and when he was drinking he was very
generous. To pacify him I would accept his gifts and then return them
when he was sober. I once returned a Buick car.
IV
I finished _The Coal War_, a story of the great strike through which I
had lived in spirit if not in physical presence; but I never published
it, for world war had come and no one was interested in labor problems
any more. Mrs. Gartz was a pacifist. A federal agent came to investigate
her, and Craig had the job of pacifying _him_. “What I want to know is,”
he said, “is she pro-German, or is she just a fool?” Craig assured him
that the latter was the case.
Craney became an Air Force officer and traveled around in a blimp
looking for German submarines off the Atlantic coast. I resigned from
the Socialist Party in order to support the war; and Mrs. Gartz, a
pacifist on her son’s account, took a lot of persuading from
Craig--who, being a Southerner, had less objection to fighting. At any
rate, that was true when the fighting was against the German Kaiser.
My socialist comrades called me bad names for a while, and Craig and
Mrs. Gartz argued every time they met. But by that time Craig’s
influence had become strong enough to keep Mrs. Gartz from getting into
jail. We had a lot of fun laughing over the idea of Kitty--as I had come
to call her--misbehaving in a jail. I think even Mr. Gartz appreciated
what I was doing, and he no longer growled when he saw me in his home.
In 1918 I started the publication of a little socialist magazine to
support the American position in the world war. I called it _Upton
Sinclair’s: For a Clean Peace and the Internation_. (Later the slogan
became _For Social Justice, by Peaceful Means if Possible_.) For that,
Craig felt justified in letting Mrs. Gartz hand her several government
bonds. It was amusing the way the great lady argued with us about what
was in the magazine, and at the same time helped to keep it going. Some
of my socialist and other friends argued with me. They would write me
letters of protest against my supporting the war, and I would put the
letters in the magazine and reply to them. The more angry the letters
were, the more my readers were entertained. All my life I have had fun
in controversy.
My position was, of course, to the left of the government. Indeed,
Woodrow Wilson was to the left of his own government, and many of his
officials didn’t understand his ideas--or disapproved of them when they
did understand. When the first issue of the magazine appeared, I applied
to the Post Office Department for second-class entry--which was
essential, for if I had to pay first-class postage I would be bankrupt
at the outset. I had sent copies of the magazine to a number of persons
in Washington whom I knew or knew about; and when I got notice that the
second-class entry had been refused, I telegraphed to Colonel House. He
told me that he was with the President when the telegram was delivered,
and he had told the President what was in the magazine and the President
approved of it.
As it happened, John Sharp Williams, United States Senator from
Mississippi, was Craig’s cousin; in her girlhood she had driven him over
the shell roads of the Gulf Coast and learned about politics from his
humorous stories. I had sent the magazine to him, of course; and now he
wrote that he had read it and had taken up the matter of the
second-class entry with Postmaster General Burleson, who was also a
Southerner. Burleson had a copy of the magazine with the passages that
he considered “subversive” marked. Williams said, “I’ll undertake to
read those passages to Woodrow Wilson, and I’ll agree to eat my hat if
he doesn’t approve every word of them.”
So it all worked out very nicely. My little magazine got the
second-class entry, and Senator Williams of Mississippi went on wearing
his hat.
I published, in all, ten issues of that little magazine. The first issue
was April 1918; then I had to skip a month because of the delay with
second-class entry. The last issue was February 1920. In all, I built up
a subscription list of ten thousand, paid for at one dollar per year. I
had five secretaries and office girls wrapping and mailing. Mrs. Gartz
would come down and argue with Craig and me--she being an out-and-out
pacifist. Her attitude was summed up by James Russell Lowell in two
lines of verse--
Ez fer war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an’ flat.
--although I don’t think Mrs. Gartz had ever heard of _The Biglow
Papers_.
V
Like all the other liberals, radicals, and socialists, I was bitterly
disappointed by the settlement to which President Wilson consented in
Paris. It seemed to us that our hopes had been betrayed, and it seemed
to Mrs. Gartz that her seditious opinions had been vindicated. But
nothing made any difference in our friendship, or interrupted the flow
of checks to help keep the magazine going.
The checks brought one amusing development before long: the president of
Pasadena’s biggest bank invited Mrs. Gartz to remove her account from
his institution. Whether that had ever happened in the banking world
before I do not know. Checks payable to Mary Craig Sinclair were
poisonous or incendiary. I might add that in the new bank Craig
deposited a thousand-dollar bond that Mrs. Gartz had brought to her
personally, in return for some writing Craig had done for her. “Don’t
let Mr. Sinclair get hold of it,” said Mrs. Gartz, “or he’ll spend it
all on the magazine. Go down to the bank and rent a safe-deposit box and
hide it away.”
Since Craig could feel that she had earned this bond, she took Mrs.
Gartz’s advice. Some months later, she went down to the bank to get the
bond and discovered that the box was empty. In the normal course of
events she would have reported the matter to the head of the bank; but
she would have had to tell him where she had got the bond, and she did
not care to do that. She took the loss quietly and did not tell her
too-generous friend.
While editing and publishing the magazine, I was also writing a new
novel based on my experiences in the Socialist Party, of which I had
been a member for a couple of decades. I had known all kinds of
picturesque characters and types, and heard stories of their adventures.
A Socialist Party candidate for vice president, Ben Hanford, had
invented the name “Jimmie Higgins” for the humble worker in the party
who makes no speeches and gets no honors but does the tiresome jobs of
addressing envelopes, distributing literature, and making house-to-house
calls to bring his fellow workers to meetings. I took this character for
my hero, and started the publication of _Jimmie Higgins_ in the
magazine.
When in 1919 our Army made its somewhat crazy landing on the shores of
the Archangel Peninsula, as a start to putting down the Bolshevik
movement in Russia, I decided to change the tone of my novel at the end.
So far Jimmie had been a socialist patriot and had loyally gone to war;
but now he turned into a malcontent, to be jailed and tortured. I recall
that some reviewer in the New York _Times_ rebuked me severely for this
seditious invention; but it wasn’t long afterward that the New York
_Times_ itself was reporting just such incidents as having happened in
the Army at Archangel. When I wrote to the _Times_ pointing out these
details, my letter was ignored.
In this magazine I had all kinds of fun. I got letters of praise and
letters of fury, and published them side by side. The more bad names I
was called, the more amusing I found it; and my readers let me know that
they too enjoyed it. I sent the magazine to well-known persons, got
responses pro and con, and published them. H. G. Wells wrote a gay
letter. I published it in facsimile, and somebody wrote asking me please
to supply a translation. Socialists denounced me as a renegade; patriots
denounced me as a traitor--and I printed the letters along with those of
Colonel House, Senator John Sharp Williams, and other patriots of
repute.
All this labor was wearing on my brain and my stomach, as well as my
purse. Then suddenly I thought of a solution. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius
had taken over the _Appeal of Reason_ and changed its name to the
_Haldeman-Julius Weekly_. He had a circulation of something like half a
million, whereas _Upton Sinclair’s_ had succeeded in getting only ten
thousand. I was always lured by a larger audience, and I made him a
proposition to merge my magazine with his. He would let me have one full
page called “Upton Sinclair’s,” in which I would say what I pleased. The
serial I was writing would fill part of the page, which was newspaper
size, and I could supply material similar to the contents of my magazine
to fill the rest of the page. So it was agreed, and instead of having a
monthly deficit I would have an income of fifty dollars a week. At least
it was enough to pay the secretary who was taking my dictation. Also, it
was a load off the mind of my overburdened wife; and if any of my
subscribers complained, I could remind them that they had never offered
to pay my printer’s bill.
_11_
_The Muckrake Man_
I
For all my thinking lifetime I had been making tests of the big-business
press of America. Almost everywhere it was on the side of privilege and
exploitation, almost nowhere was it alert to the interest of democratic
freedom. I had made notes and had envelopes full of clippings, and a
head full of memories and a heart full of rage. I decided that I would
put all that into a book and use the huge circulation I had got from
that four-page Kansas weekly paper.
Seeking a title, I went back to the days of my youth when I had joined
in the election campaign against Tammany Hall. William Travers Jerome
had told about the wholesale prostitution that was protected because of
graft paid to the police department. The “price of a woman’s shame” was
a brass check purchased at the entrance. Jerome had based his whole
campaign upon it, and it struck me that _The Brass Check_ was a fine
title for a book about the prostitution of the press. I made the term
known not merely to all America but to Europe as well, for the book was
translated into many languages. It was a book of facts that no one could
dispute, because I had saved the clippings, and I verified every story
that I told.
It happened that an old friend was spending the winter in a cottage at
our fashionable hotel. Samuel Untermyer, whom I had met through Lincoln
Steffens, had been the highest-paid corporation lawyer in New York. Now
he was an old man, tired--except for his tongue. He could tell more
terrible stories of corruption than anyone I ever knew, and he had told
some to me when I visited his home up the Hudson and inspected the
orchids that decorated every room.
I took him the manuscript of _The Brass Check_. When he had read it, he
said, “Upton, you can’t possibly publish that book. It contains a score
of criminal libels and a thousand civil suits.” I said, “I am going to
publish it and take the consequences.”
In Hammond, Indiana, I had found a large printing concern that had
printed my book, _The Profits of Religion_, and made no objection. Now
with some qualms I sent them the bulky “criminal” manuscript. To my
surprise they made no comment, but quoted a price and proceeded to send
me proofs.
I remember an amusing episode. The elderly treasurer of the company paid
a visit to California and asked to see me. He came, and I learned to
what I owed the honor. He said, very mildly, that he had recently
discovered that I had run up a debt of twenty thousand dollars, and he
wondered if I realized how much money that was. I told him that I had
never had such a debt in my life hitherto, but that the book was selling
well and the money would come in installments; and it did.
The book was published serially in the _Appeal_, and I was really
surprised by the result. I had never had so many letters or so many
orders. I knew that this time I had a real best seller. When I got the
finished books, I gave a copy to my old friend, Gaylord Wilshire, who
had made his home in Pasadena. He threw me into a panic when he phoned
to tell me that it was inconceivable that the publication of this book
would be permitted in America. He urged me to get all my copies
distributed at once to socialist and labor groups and bookstores, and
tell them to hide the books. I took this seriously and did as he
suggested. It was an easy way to get rid of books, but a hard way to
make money.
I had to have more paper; when I applied to the wholesalers I was told
there was no paper on the market. World War I had caused a shortage of
everything. The big concerns had their contracts, of course, and were
getting their paper; but there was none left over for a little fellow
like the author of _The Brass Check_.
I wrote to every wholesale paper dealer in the United States, but got no
response. I took my lamentations into the city of Los Angeles, and there
made a surprising discovery. There was a kind of paper called
Kraft--otherwise known as plain brown wrapping paper. I could get it in
a light weight, and it was possible to read print on it.
Nobody in the world had ever thought to print a book on it; but I got
the price for a carload, six thousand dollars, and went back home and
laid siege to my old friend, Sam Untermyer. I pointed out to him that I
hadn’t been arrested, and I hadn’t even had a civil suit threatened; so
I begged him to lend me six thousand dollars. I made him so ashamed of
his misjudgment as a lawyer that he actually wrote me a check. He was
quite pathetic when he told me how necessary it was that he should get
it back (He did.)
The book created a tremendous sensation and, of course, no end of
controversy. I won’t go into the details because the stories are
old--and many of the newspapers have learned something about ethics. I
venture to think that reporters all over the country read the book and
took courage from it. Many of them are now editors, and while they still
have to “take policy,” they don’t take it quite so completely.
I had called upon them to form a union to protect their rights, and this
they promptly did--but they preferred to call it a guild, which is more
aristocratic. Now the guild has branches all over the country and has
had some effect in establishing standards of professional decency. While
I was completing this book their New York chapter invited me to come and
receive an award.
II
Next book: _The Goose-Step_. In the early spring of 1922 I left my
long-suffering wife in charge of my office with an elderly secretary and
three or four assistants, while I took a tour all over the United
States, going first to the Northwest, then across to Chicago, New York,
and Boston, then back through the Middle West and Southwest. I had been
through five years of City College and four years of postgraduate work
at Columbia, and had come out unaware that the modern socialist movement
existed. So now I meant to muckrake the colleges, showing where they
had got their money and how they were spending it. I had jotted down the
names of discontented schoolteachers and college professors who had
written to me, or whose cases had become known; I visited some thirty
cities, and in each of them some educator had assembled the malcontents
in his or her home, and I sat and made notes while they told me their
angry or hilarious stories.
There were many comical episodes on my tour. The University of Wisconsin
had been liberal in the days of Robert LaFollette; but now it had a
reactionary president, and I had a lively time with him. I had applied
for the use of a hall, and he had already announced that he wouldn’t
grant it. He referred me to the board of regents, and I had a session
with them. I finally got the use of the gymnasium, and the newspaper
excitement brought a couple of thousand students to ask me questions for
an hour after my talk. The concluding paragraph of my Wisconsin story
was as follows:
Next afternoon I met the champion tennis team of the university,
and played each of the pair in turn and beat them in straight sets;
I was told that the student body regarded this as a far more
sensational incident than my Socialist speech. An elderly professor
came up to me on the campus next day--I had never seen him before,
and didn’t know his name; he assured me with mock gravity that I
had made a grave blunder--I should have played the tennis matches
first, and made the speech second, and no building on the campus
would have been big enough to hold the crowd.
From Wisconsin I went on to Chicago, to what I called the University of
Standard Oil. The students had a hymn that they sang there:
Praise God from whom oil blessings flow,
Praise Him, oil creatures here below,
Praise Him above, Ye Heavenly Host,
Praise Father, Son--but John the most.
I interviewed the president there, and he granted me the use of a small
hall. When I assured him I would need a larger one, he refused to
believe me; so I found myself quite literally packed in, with students
climbing into the windows and sitting on the sills and standing in the
corridors. Just outside the hall I had noticed a beautiful quadrangle
with lovely soft grass and plenty of room. I suggested that we all move
out onto the grass and that somebody find me a soapbox to stand on--the
classical pulpit of radical orators. There were loud cheers, and we
moved outside. Still more people came running, and I talked to the crowd
for an hour or two and answered questions for an hour or two more.
Everybody had a good time except the Standard Oil president.
The next day I played the tennis champion of that university, and I have
to record that he beat me--but with an effort so mighty that he split
his pants.
III
One of the cities was my birthplace, Baltimore, and one of my sources
there was Elizabeth Gilman, daughter of the founder of Johns Hopkins
University. She filled her home with professors one day and with
schoolteachers the next, and they told me their troubles.
I have mentioned my friendship with Mencken. It began by mail; he was a
tireless letter writer. There are some two hundred letters from him in
the collection of my papers in the Lilly Library of the University of
Indiana. He liked to write little short notes--he had secretaries and
kept them busy. He didn’t care in the least what he said--provided only
that it was funny. The more extravagant, the more fun; and the more
seriously you took it, the still greater fun. When I was in New York, I
called at the _American Mercury_ office, and his conversation was just
like his letters.
Now he had retired, and I visited his home in Baltimore--like Uncle
Bland’s, it was one of those brick houses, four stories high, apparently
built a whole block at a time in solid, uniform rows, each house with
three or four white marble steps up to the front door. Mencken poured
out his Jovian thunderbolts for a whole afternoon. This was the longest
time I had with him, and the most diverting.
Uncle Bland, as I have already related, was the founder and president of
the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company and had become one of
the most important men in Baltimore--but he had never met his “Sunpaper”
editor. He insisted that I invite Mencken out to Catonsville, his summer
home, for dinner. For this occasion my cousin Howard Bland sent his wife
and children over to the “big house,” and we four men had Howard’s
dining room for the evening.
It wasn’t a pleasant occasion for me because the other three spent most
of the time discussing the various brands of wines, brandies, and
whiskies. Partly, of course, it was done to “kid” me. It was the time of
prohibition, and Uncle Bland had a tragic experience to report. He had
foreseen the trouble coming and had a large stock safely locked up in
his cellar; but while he was in his town house for the winter, the
cellar door was pried open, and everything was carted away in the night.
Everybody but me was grieved.
I had shipped home various boxes containing documents. I came back and
for several months labored and wrote _The Goose-Step_. As usual, I was
warned about libel; but, as usual, it did not happen.
_The Goose-Step_, a big book, 488 pages, price two dollars, was
published in 1923, and I assure you the college professors read it--and
talked about it, even out loud. I could get paper this time, and filled
all the orders, some twenty thousand copies. Then I wrote _The
Goslings_, 454 pages, price two dollars, telling about schools of all
sorts; the teachers read it, and many had the courage to write to me. I
had given them weapons to fight with, or perhaps lanterns to light with;
anyhow, I have seen changes in America, and I tell myself I have helped
a little to bring them about.
IV
It was in that period that the American Civil Liberties Union was
started; I joined at once, and attended weekly luncheons of its
directors when I was in New York. Whether we had supported the war or
opposed it, we all supported our right to say what we thought and our
willingness to let the other fellow do the same. Among those I knew best
were Roger Baldwin, who became a civil-liberties hero and devoted his
life to the cause; Oswald Garrison Villard, publisher of _The Nation_,
who remained a pacifist even in the face of Kaiser Wilhelm; and B. W.
Huebsch, then a publisher on his own, and later editorial head of Viking
Press; he was my guide and mentor through the eleven Lanny Budd volumes,
about which I shall tell.
Also, there was W. J. Ghent, author of _Our Benevolent Feudalism_. He
and I got into an argument over the war in the columns of _The Nation_.
The argument got too hot for Villard, and he wouldn’t publish my reply;
so I paid for a page advertisement in _The Nation_ and had my say. I
remember Ghent’s published comment: “Sinclair has taken the argument
into the advertising columns, where I am unable to follow.” After that,
I was summoned to a luncheon with Villard and Huebsch and very gently
asked to call off the war--that is, the Ghent War.
Not long afterward came the founding of the Southern California branch
of the ACLU, a drama in which I had the leading role. It began when I
tried to read the Constitution of the United States at a meeting on
private property that had been organized on behalf of workers who were
on strike at San Pedro Harbor. I was arrested after the third sentence.
When I got out of jail, I wrote a letter to Louis D. Oaks, chief of
police in Los Angeles. It was printed as a leaflet and widely circulated
in Los Angeles. It was also printed in _The Nation_ of June 6, 1923,
along with an editorial note. I’m going to reprint that page from _The
Nation_, partly because it tells the story, but mainly because it
conveys so vividly the atmosphere of that period and the repression and
brutality that went on then--which a new generation might find hard to
credit.