strike have been the servile tools of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association, Upton Sinclair is strictly and legally
a defender of the law against those who would violate it. And it is
doubly to his praise that in this case he, a civilian, happens to
be defending the law against the men who are sworn and paid to
uphold it and have all the power of constituted authority on their
side. The facts are undisputed: the police arrested Mr. Sinclair
and his associates on _private property_, where they had assembled
with the written consent of the owner. The law gives a police
officer the right to enter private property only in two cases: if
he has a warrant of arrest, or if a felony is actually being
committed. Neither of these excuses existed in Los Angeles. The
persons interfered with would have been legally justified in
dealing with the police as violently as with a thief or kidnapper.
We print below Mr. Sinclair’s letter to the chief of police of Los
Angeles because it is a recital of facts which our readers should
know and a nobly patriotic protest which should have their support.
_Pasadena, California, May 17, 1923_
LOUIS D. OAKS,
Chief of Police, Los Angeles
Having escaped from your clutches yesterday afternoon, owing to the
fact that one of your men betrayed your plot to my wife, I am now
in position to answer your formal statement to the public, that I
am “more dangerous than 4,000 I.W.W.” I thank you for this
compliment, for to be dangerous to lawbreakers in office such as
yourself is the highest duty that a citizen of this community can
perform.
In the presence of seven witnesses I obtained from Mayor Cryer on
Tuesday afternoon the promise that the police would respect my
constitutional rights at San Pedro, and that I would not be
molested unless I incited to violence. But when I came to you, I
learned that you had taken over the mayor’s office at the Harbor.
Now, from your signed statement to the press, I learn that you have
taken over the district attorney’s office also; for you tell the
public: “I will prosecute Sinclair with all the vigor at my
command, and upon his conviction I will demand a jail sentence with
hard labor.” And you then sent your men to swear to a complaint
charging me with “discussing, arguing, orating, and debating
certain thoughts and theories, which thoughts and theories were
contemptuous of the constitution of the State of California,
calculated to cause hatred and contempt of the government of the
United States of America, and which thoughts and theories were
detrimental and in opposition to the orderly conduct of affairs of
business, affecting the rights of private property and personal
liberty, and which thoughts and theories were calculated to cause
any citizen then and there present and hearing the same to quarrel
and fight and use force and violence.” And this although I told you
at least a dozen times in your office that my only purpose was to
stand on private property with the written permission of the owner,
and there to read the Constitution of the United States; and you
perfectly well know that I did this, and only this, and that three
sentences from the Bill of Rights of the Constitution was every
word that I was permitted to utter--the words being those which
guarantee “freedom of speech and of the press, and the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for
the redress of grievances.”
But you told me that “this Constitution stuff” does not go at the
Harbor. You have established martial law, and you told me that if I
tried to read the Constitution, even on private property, I would
be thrown into jail, and there would be no bail for me--and this
even though I read you the provision of the State constitution
guaranteeing me the right to bail. When you arrested me and my
friends, you spirited us away and held us “incommunicado,” denying
us what is our clear legal right, to communicate with our lawyers.
All night Tuesday, and all day Wednesday up to four o’clock, you
and your agents at the various jails and station-houses repeated
lies to my wife and my attorneys and kept me hidden from them. When
the clamor of the newspaper men forced you to let them interview
me, you forced them to pledge not to reveal where I was. You had
Sergeant Currie drive us up to Los Angeles, with strict injunctions
not to get there before four o’clock--he did not tell me, but I
heard another man give the order to him, and I watched his
maneuvers to carry it out. It was your scheme to rush us into court
at the last moment before closing, have lawyers appointed for us,
and have us committed without bail, and then spirit us away and
hide us again. To that end you had me buried in a cell in the city
jail, and to my demands for counsel the jailers made no reply. Only
the fact that someone you trusted tipped my wife off prevented the
carrying out of this criminal conspiracy. My lawyers rushed to the
jail, and forced the granting of bail, just on the stroke of five
o’clock, the last moment.
I charge, and I intend to prove in court, that you are carrying out
the conspiracy of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association to
smash the harbor strike by brutal defiance of law. I was in the
office of I. H. Rice, president of this Association, and heard him
getting his orders from Hammond of the Hammond Lumber Company, and
heard his promise to Hammond that the job would be done without
delay. It is you who are doing the job for Rice, and the cruelties
you are perpetrating would shock this community if they were known,
and they will be punished if there is a God in Heaven to protect
the poor and friendless. You did all you could to keep me from
contact with the strikers in jail; nevertheless I learned of one
horror that was perpetrated only yesterday--fifty men crowded into
one small space, and because they committed some slight breach of
regulations, singing their songs, they were shut in this hole for
two hours without a breath of air, and almost suffocated. Also I
saw the food that these men are getting twice a day, and you would
not feed it to your dog. And now the city council has voted for
money to build a “bull-pen” for strikers, and day by day the public
is told that the strike is broken, and the men, denied every civil
right, have no place to meet to discuss their policies, and no one
to protect them or to protest for them. That is what you
want--those are the orders you have got from the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association; the men are to go back as slaves, and
the Constitution of the United States is to cease to exist so far
as concerns workingmen.
All I can say, sir, is that I intend to do what little one man can
do to awaken the public conscience, and that meantime I am not
frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink
from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of
refinement; also, I freely admit that when I see a line of a
hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to
keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble
voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a
conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties
were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our
cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country. I have received a
telegram from the American Civil Liberties Union in New York,
asking me if I will speak at a mass meeting of protest in Los
Angeles, and I have answered that I will do so. That meeting will
be called at once, and you may come there and hear what the
citizens of this community think of your efforts to introduce the
legal proceedings of Czarist Russia into our free Republic.
UPTON SINCLAIR
The ending of this episode: We hired a good-sized hall in Los Angeles by
the week and held crowded meetings every afternoon and evening. The
Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union was
formed, and a Congregational minister, Reverend Clinton J. Taft,
resigned from his pulpit and served as director for the next twenty
years or so. At the end of a couple of weeks the editor of the Los
Angeles _Examiner_ called me on the telephone and said, “Sinclair, how
long is this thing going on?” I answered, “Until we have civil liberties
in Los Angeles.” “What, specifically, do you mean by that?” he asked,
and I said, “For one thing, Chief Oaks must be kicked off the force; and
we must have the assurance that there will never again be mass arrests
of strikers.” The editor said, “You may count upon both these conditions
being met.” I asked, “What guarantee have we?” He said, “I have talked
it over with the half-dozen men who run this town, and I have their
word. You may take mine.”
So we called off the meetings. A few days later we read in the
newspapers that Chief Oaks had been expelled from the force, having been
found parked in his car at night with a woman and a jug of whisky. So
far as I can recall, there have been no mass arrests of strikers in the
past twenty-nine years.
V
Moved by the cruelties I had seen, I indulged myself in the pleasure of
writing two radical plays--“radical” was a terrible word in those days.
_Singing Jailbirds_ portrayed the Industrial Workers of the World, of
whom we had met many; they sang in jail and were put “in the hole” for
it. They were called “wobblies” because in the early days they had done
their first organizing in a restaurant kept by an old Chinaman who could
not say IWW but made it “I-wobble-wobble.”
I started with that scene, and then had the wobblies in jail recalling
the battles they had fought and the evils they had suffered. There was a
lot of singing all through, and the play made a hit when it was produced
in Greenwich Village by a group of four young playwrights--one of them
was Eugene O’Neill and another was John Dos Passos, who now after forty
years has evolved from a rampant radical into a rampant conservative. I
was writing for Bernarr Macfadden’s _Physical Culture_ in those days (at
$150 per article). I took my boss to the show, and he put up a thousand
dollars to keep it going. I, of course, got nothing.
The other play was in blank verse and was called _Hell_. It portrayed
the devils as being bored, and amusing themselves by sending a messenger
up to earth to create a great deposit of gold and set all the nations to
warring over it. (This was just after World War I, of course.) My
fastidious friend, George Sterling, was outraged by my verse, but I had
a lot of fun. I found myself a solitary spot on the edge of the Arroyo
Seco, and there paced up and down composing it and laughing over it.
Dear old Art Young made a delightful cover drawing, and I published the
play in pamphlet form; I still have copies, and--who can tell?--somebody
might produce it before World War III comes and ends all producing.
Joking aside, I hope to live to see it.
VI
The only house we went to in Pasadena was that of Mrs. Gartz. This was a
couple of miles up the slope from our home, and occupied a whole block
of beautiful grounds, like a park. The house was built around a central
court containing palm trees, ornamental plants, and a swimming pool. On
the front of the house was a wide veranda and a flight of stone steps.
The veranda looked out over the whole of Pasadena, and it was a pleasant
place to sit and listen to arguments over the future of mankind.
Every Sunday afternoon Mrs. Gartz would invite some lecturer, and after
she met Craig, all these lectures dealt with the so-called radical
movement. It appeared that when the very rich become radical they go the
whole way. She became far more radical than we were, and it was Craig’s
function to tone her down; but, alas, this service was not appreciated
by Mrs. Gartz’s husband, who blamed us for all his troubles. I could
tell many funny stories of those meetings in a millionaire’s palace with
a raging millionaire husband roaming through the rooms, growling and
grumbling to himself.
The whole of the class struggle was represented in that tormented home.
Wobblies, when they got out of jail, would come and tell Mrs. Gartz
their stories; the tears would come into her eyes, and she would write
indignant letters to the newspapers--which the newspapers did not print.
Also, there were the pacifists of all varieties, and later the
communists, who finally “captured” the gullible great lady.
Mrs. Gartz took up the practice of writing to public officials about
these outrages against civil liberty, and as her letters were not always
coherent she would bring them to Craig to revise. Craig would take
occasion to tone them down a bit; so presently she was in charge of all
the great lady’s public relations. Craig hit upon the idea of publishing
a little volume entitled _Letters of Protest_. This made a hit, and
thereafter every year there would be a little volume that Mrs. Gartz
distributed to everyone on her mailing list. In all there were seven
pretty little books, and no doubt they helped somewhat to diminish the
stodginess of our millionaire city.
VII
I have given a few glimpses of Mary Craig’s skill as a social
practitioner. I must also tell a little about her as a homemaker.
To the north of the “brown house” we had bought, there extended seven
lots rising slightly to a corner, from which the view over the Arroyo
was still more attractive. Craig said nothing to me about her plans, but
she bought those lots on installment payments. When I started the
magazine it was on our dining-room table; so she went out traveling on
foot about the town and found an old house that she bought for a hundred
and fifty dollars and had moved onto the lot next to ours. She had a
carpenter build a long table, and that was where the magazines were
wrapped and prepared for the mail. One little cubbyhole in that house
became my office, and several books were written there.
Of course, as the subscriptions came in we had to have still more help.
We had no car in those days, but somehow Craig found another house and
had it moved and connected up with the first one. Before she got
through, she had bought four houses and fitted them in a row on two
lots, and bought a fifth house to be wrecked for lumber to join the
other houses together. I wrote an article about it in my magazine,
_Upton Sinclair’s_, and printed a photograph of the houses.
It made a really funny story, because every house was a different color.
I described the consternation of the neighbors; but they recovered when
the job was finished, for Craig really made a beautiful home of it, with
a long porch along the front and, of course, a uniform coat of paint. It
was an especially good home for us because Craig could have her room at
the south end and I could practice my violin at the north end.
There was an old carpenter named Judd Fuller who worked for Craig,
making old houses into new. Many a time I sat on a roof with him,
nailing down shingles; and all the time we talked politics, and the
state of the world. I tried to make a socialist out of an old-style
American individualist, and I learned how to deal with that kind of
mind. Some years later I wrote a pamphlet called _Letters to Judd_, and
of course made him very proud. I printed something over a hundred
thousand of the pamphlet, and with the help of Haldeman-Julius
distributed them over the country.
VIII
I decided to muckrake world literature. I had read a mass of it in the
one language my mother had taught me, in the three that my professors
had failed to teach me--Latin, Greek and German--and in the two I had
taught myself--French and Italian. To me literature was a weapon in the
class struggle--of the master class to hold its servants down, and of
the working class to break its bonds. In other words, I studied world
literature from the socialist point of view.
That had been done here and there in spots; but so far as I knew it had
not been done systematically, and so far as I know it has not been done
since. Of course, _Mammonart_ was ridiculed by the literary authorities;
and of course I expected that. It was all a part of the class struggle,
and I had set it forth in the book. Great literature is a product of the
leisure classes and defends their position, whether consciously or by
implication. Literature that opposes them is called propaganda. And so
it is that you have probably never heard of my _Mammonart_.
I had now studied our culture in five muckraking books: _The Profits of
Religion_, _The Brass Check_, _The Goose-Step_, _The Goslings_,
_Mammonart_. After that, I took up American literature, mostly of my own
time. I had known many of the writers, and some liked me and some
didn’t, according to which side they were on. I had published the five
earlier books myself--in both cloth and paper; but there were not so
many libel suits in the field of literature, so now I found a publisher.
From that time on for many years my arrangement was that the publisher
had his edition and I had mine, always at the same price. I had a card
file of some thirty thousand customers.
I called the new book _Money Writes!_ Its thesis was that authors have
to eat; in order to get food they have to have money, and for that to
happen the publisher has to get more money. So, in a commercial world
it is money that decides what is to be written. My discussion of this
somewhat obvious truth gave offense to many persons.
IX
When I was working on a book, my secretary had orders never to disturb
me. But one day she did disturb me by bringing in a visiting card
attached to a hundred-dollar bill. (She judged I would consider that a
fair price for an interruption.) I looked at the card and saw the name,
King C. Gillette, familiar to all men who use a safety razor. Some years
earlier I had noted on the shelves of the Pasadena Public Library two
large tomes entitled _World Corporation_ and _Social Redemption_. I had
taken them down and examined them with curiosity; they were written by a
man who apparently had never read a socialist book but had thought it
all out for himself. (I could guess that I might be the only person who
had ever taken those tomes from the library shelf.)
Gillette, of course, was pleased to hear that I knew his books. He was a
large gentleman with white hair and mustache and rosy cheeks; extremely
kind, and touchingly absorbed in the hobby of abolishing poverty and
war. But I discovered that he had a horror of the very word _socialism_.
To him that meant class struggle and hatred, whereas he insisted that
his solution could all be brought about by gentle persuasion and calm
economic reasoning. He would take the time to explain this to anyone on
the slightest occasion. I discovered that the joy of his life was to get
someone to listen while in his gentle pleading voice he told about his
two-tome utopia.
He had come to me for a definite purpose. He knew that I had an
audience, and he wanted me to convert that audience to his program. He
had a manuscript, and he wanted me to take it and revise it--of course,
not changing any of his ideas. For this service he was prepared to pay
me five hundred dollars a month; and a little later when he met my wife
he raised his offer. He said, “Mrs. Sinclair, if you will get him to do
this for me you will never have to think about money again as long as
you live.” That had a good sound to Craig, and she said I would do it.
She told me so, and of course I had to do what she said. Little by
little I discovered what it meant: Mr. Gillette was coming for two
mornings every week to tell me his ideas--the same ideas over and over
again. He was a bit childish about it. He didn’t remember what he had
said a week or two previously and said it again, most seriously,
impressively, and kindly. It became an endurance test. How often could I
listen to the same ideas and pretend that they were new and wonderful?
The time came when I could stand no more, not if he had turned over to
me all the royalties from Gillette razors and blades. I had to tell him
that I had done everything I could do for him.
I had helped him to get his manuscript into shape, but, alas, he had
scribbled all over it and interlined it. I had it recopied, and with his
permission submitted it to Horace Liveright, my publisher at that time.
Horace couldn’t very well refuse it because Gillette offered to put up
twenty-five thousand dollars for advertising. The book was published,
and in spite of all the effort it fell flat.
But the dear old gentleman never gave up. He would come to see us now
and then and invite us to his home. He had one down at Balboa Beach, and
another far up in the San Fernando Valley. When Sergei Eisenstein came,
we took him and a party up to meet Gillette, but the family were away.
We had a picnic under one of the shade trees on the estate and carefully
gathered up all the debris.
X
Writing books involves hard labor of both brain and typewriter. I have
mentioned more than once the subject of tennis--the device by which I
was able to get the blood out of my brain and into my digestive
apparatus. All through those years I used to say that I was never more
than twenty-four hours ahead of a headache. I had read somewhere in
history that it was the law in the armies of King Cyrus that every
soldier had to sweat every day. I found that I could get along with
sweating three times a week. (Out of curiosity I once weighed before and
after a hard tennis match in Pasadena’s summer weather, and discovered
that I had parted with four and a half pounds of water.)
Tennis is a leisure-class recreation, and on the courts I met some of
the prominent young men of my City of Millionaires. I was amused to note
that their attitude toward me on the court was cordial and sometimes
even gay, but we did not meet elsewhere. Sometimes their wives would
drive them to the court and call for them when the game was over; but
never once was I invited to meet one of those wives. I quietly mounted
my bicycle and pedaled a couple of miles, slightly uphill, to my home.
On Sunday morning I had a regular date with three men: one of the town’s
leading bankers, one of the town’s leading real-estate men, and another
whose high occupation I have forgotten. We played at the
ultrafashionable Valley Hunt Club, but never once was I invited to enter
the doors of that club. When the game was over, I mounted my bicycle and
pedaled away.
One of these cases is especially amusing, and I tell it even though it
leads me ahead of my story. I had a weekly tennis date with a young man
of a family that owned a great business in Los Angeles. The young man,
who lived in Pasadena, called me “the human rabbit,” because I scurried
across the court and got shots that he thought he had put away. Every
time we played, his wife would be waiting in her car, and I dutifully
kept my distance.
After several years I learned from the newspapers that he had divorced
his wife. Then Craig read an advertisement that all the furniture of an
elegant home was being offered for sale. She wanted a large rug for the
living room, so I drove her to the place and waited outside while she
went in. It proved to be a long wait, but I always carry something to
read so I didn’t mind. Craig bought a rug, and told me that the lady who
was doing the selling was the ex-wife of my tennis friend! She was a
chatty lady and had told her varied social adventures, including this:
“I almost caught Neil Vanderbilt. He drove up to a boulevard stop right
alongside me, and I caught his eye. If that red light had lasted fifteen
seconds longer, I’d have nailed him!”
(I myself with Craig’s help had already “nailed” Neil, and I shall have
a bit to tell about him later on. He is the possessor of an enchanted
name, which has brought him much trouble. I know only one man equally
unfortunate--Prince Hopkins. When he traveled in Europe, the bellboys
hit their foreheads on the ground; he changed his name to Pryns to avoid
the sight.)
XI
In some trading deal Craig had come into possession of two lots on
Signal Hill, near Long Beach; and now in the papers she read the
electrifying news that oil had been discovered under that wide hill. I
drove her down there to find out about it, and she learned that lot
owners in the different blocks were organizing, since obviously there
could be no drilling on a tiny bit of land. I must have taken Craig a
dozen times--a distance of twenty miles or so--and I sat for that many
evenings listening to the arguments. I hadn’t a word to say of course;
the lots belonged to Craig, and she was the business end of the family.