multimillionairess, came to Craig and told her she had decided to put
ten thousand dollars into the fight. Craig told her to take it to Dick
Otto, and needless to say she was welcomed at headquarters. Among other
things we did with that money was to put on a huge mass meeting in the
prize-fight arena in Los Angeles. I had never been in such a place
before and have not since. Speaking from the “ring,” I could face only
one fourth of the audience at any one time, so I distributed my time and
spoke to each fourth in turn. There were four loudspeakers, so everybody
could hear, and the audience enjoyed the novelty. The speech was relayed
and heard by an audience in the huge auditorium in San Francisco; so I
dealt with the problems of southern California for a while and then with
those of the north.
I remember on the afternoon before the election a marvelous noon meeting
that packed the opera house in Los Angeles. Our enemies had made much of
the fact that the unemployed, otherwise known as “bums,” were coming to
the city on freight trains looking for free handouts. This had been
featured in motion pictures all over the state and had front-page
prominence in the Los Angeles _Times_. I told the audience that Harry
Chandler, owner of the _Times_, had himself come into Los Angeles on a
freight train in his youth. I shouted, “Harry, give the other bums a
chance!” I think the roar from the audience must have been audible as
far as the _Times_ building.
No words could describe the fury of that campaign in its last days. I
was told of incidents after it was over. A high-school girl of Beverly
Hills told me of being invited to the home of a classmate for dinner.
The master of that home poured out his hatred of the EPIC candidate, and
the schoolgirl remarked, “Well, I heard him speak, and he sounded to me
quite reasonable.” The host replied, “Get up and get out of this house.
Nobody can talk like that in my home.” He drove her out without her
dinner.
Another woman in Hollywood, a poet rather well known, told me of a
businessman she knew who had made his will and got himself a revolver,
and was going to the studio where I was scheduled to speak on election
night; if I won he was going to shoot me. I did not win, and in my
Beverly Hills home that night a group of our friends, including Lewis
Browne, sat and awaited the returns. Very soon it became evident that I
had been defeated, and Craig, usually a most reserved person in company,
sank down on the floor, weeping and exclaiming, “Thank God, thank God!”
Our dear Lewis, whom she knew and trusted, came to her and said, “Its
all right, Craig. We all understand. None of us wanted him to win.”
Many people rejoiced that night, and many others wept; I was told that
the scenes at the EPIC headquarters were tragic indeed. I won’t describe
them, but will take you back to that old home in Greenwood, Mississippi,
where an elderly judge sat listening to his radio set. It was Craig’s
Papa, the one who had “overspoke himself” a little more than twenty
years earlier. He had owned a great plantation, much land, and two
beautiful homes. He was the president of two banks, vice president of
others--one of which he had founded; and in all of them he was a heavy
stockholder. The panic had come, the banks had failed, and under the law
he was liable to the depositors up to twice the amount of his own
holdings. It had wiped him out.
I had warned him of what was coming. I had warned his son, Orman, who
also was a lawyer and ran the law business that had been his father’s.
Orman had replied, “To show you how much I think of your judgment I will
tell you that I am buying a thirty-thousand-dollar property.” That may
sound ungracious, but it wouldn’t if you knew Orman, who was a great
“kidder.” He bought the property on credit, and he was in trouble too.
Interesting evidence of the respect in which Leflore County held “the
Judge”: the people who took over his homes did not let him know it; they
let him use both houses for his remaining years. I suppose they did it
by a secret arrangement with Orman; anyhow, he was there in his
Greenwood house, with his large gardens. All his Negroes were dependent
upon him; they worked the gardens and lived on the food--corn and beans,
tomatoes, and milk from the cows.
Such was the situation when the Judge sat at his radio set, listening
to the news of the California election. It should not surprise you to
learn that he was hoping for his son-in-law’s victory, and disappointed
at his son-in-law’s defeat.
He was a proud old gentleman. With Craig’s approval, I had sent him a
check for two hundred dollars--and that check was in his pocket,
uncashed, when he died. But one other gift he did accept. One of his
daughters wrote that his greatest trouble was that he had nothing to
read. I was taking some fifty magazines, and still do. Every week, after
I had read them, my secretary would bundle them up and mail them to the
Judge, and it touched our hearts to hear of his pleasure.
_15_
_Grist for My Mill_
I
It was a relief to me to have coughed up that EPIC alligator, and to
Craig it was the coughing up of a whole aquarium. It was days before she
could be sure that we were really out--and by then she discovered that
we couldn’t be, because there were still the headquarters and the _EPIC
News_, and all those poor people who had put everything they had into
the campaign. It was unthinkable to quit, but--we had no money. I sat
myself down and wrote the story of the campaign as I have told it here,
and offered it for serial purposes to California newspapers. Some thirty
accepted. I had based the price upon the circulation of the newspaper,
and some of them actually paid. Those that failed to pay I suppose had
been calling EPIC dishonest. I put the whole story into book form: “I,
Candidate for Governor--and How I Got Licked.” What I have written here
is a summary for a new generation.
I had made plans for a lecture trip, to travel over the country and tell
about the campaign and answer questions about production for use. A
friend had presented us with a lovely German shepherd, and we had the
protection of that affectionate creature all over the United States. No
one could ever come close to our car.
We crossed the continent twice, and I could make quite a story out of
our adventures. In Seattle the governor of the state called out the
troops, and I didn’t know whether his idea was to protect me or to
arrest me. Anyhow, I made the speech. In Portland I spoke in a baseball
park, and there I had the company of a young newspaperman, Dick
Neuberger, who later became United States Senator. In Butte we found
ourselves in a hotel amid a convention of rifleshooters, and discovered
that some shooter had either bored or shot a hole through the door of
our hotel room so that he could peek in at us. It was the wild and
woolly West.
Once we got lost in lonely mountains, and because we were desperately
tired we asked shelter in one of two shacks by the roadside, where some
rough-looking men were living. One shack was given to us in all
kindness. Craig was a little scared of our hosts; but in the morning we
were politely asked how we had slept, and when Craig asked the price,
she was told, “It’s hard times, lady, would twenty-five cents be too
much?” She gave him a couple of dollars.
Also, I never get tired of telling my experience in St. Louis, where
there was a large auditorium and a distinguished gentleman to introduce
me--the head of the astronomical observatory, I was told. The gentleman
made a most gracious speech and concluded, “And now ladies and
gentleman, I have great pleasure in introducing Mr. Sinclair Lewis.” The
audience began to laugh, the astronomer looked worried, and his son
jumped up and ran to him. I comforted him by saying that I had had much
experience with that mistake.
In Chautauqua I debated before a huge audience with Congressman Hamilton
Fish, Republican aristocrat from Franklin Roosevelt’s district up the
Hudson. Fish had come to know me well, as we had had the same debate in
Hollywood and in Chicago. Craig never went in to my talks but sat in the
car under the protection of “Duchess.” When the debate was over the
audience strolled by, and Craig listened. Presently came “Ham,” and
Craig heard him say, “I really think he got the better of me.” But you
may be sure he didn’t say that from the platform!
At Princeton I lectured in the university auditorium. Albert Einstein
was teaching there, and I spent the afternoon with him. He had consented
to introduce me at the debate, which was to be with a chosen
representative of the senior class. To our pained surprise there were
not more than twenty or thirty persons in that auditorium. I was
interested to hear Albert Einstein tell the students and faculty of
Princeton University what he thought of their interest in public
affairs.
My opponent in the debate was a well-bred young gentleman, and I didn’t
want to be hard on him. I told the audience how I had lived in a tent
north of Princeton just thirty years previously. I had come to know some
of the students then and had walked in the hills with a senior who had
specialized in economics. I was interested now to discover that
instruction at Princeton had not changed a particle in thirty years;
what my opponent had said in 1935 was exactly the same as my student
friend had said in 1904. America had changed, but Princeton stood like a
rock in the middle of a powerful stream.
We made two trips from coast to coast, lecturing about EPIC--including
the detours, a distance of sixteen thousand miles, and I drove every
mile of it. It took more than that long for the EPIC political movement
to fade away; the self-help co-operatives hung on for years. I had
visited many of them, and talked with hundreds of their members.
They included the inhabitants of what was known as Pipe City near
Oakland, California. A most unusual name, but it was literally exact.
The city of Oakland had been in the process of putting down a main sewer
line with pipe six feet in diameter. The money had run out, and sections
of pipe were lined up along the highway. They provided shelter from the
rain if not from the cold, and hundreds of unemployed men wandering the
roads ducked in and made Oakland their begging center.
Three of them happened to be men with education and business experience,
and they had conceived the idea of a self-help co-operative. Instead of
begging for food, let them beg for the means of production--the tools
and goods that people possessed and could no longer either use or sell.
Let the co-operators offer to do useful work in exchange for such goods.
In the city where so many thousands were idle there was no kind of work,
and no kind of material that could not be found and bartered for
services. An idle building was found, and the people piled into it and
before long were actually working. In the course of the depression the
co-op became a successful business, and the lesson was learned. Before
the New Deal had brought American industry back to life there were two
or three hundred of these self-help co-operatives scattered all over the
state.
I had conceived a form in which these events could be woven into a
story. Each chapter would tell of some individual or family of a
different character and a different occupation, either hearing about the
co-op in a different way or stumbling upon it by accident, and so coming
into the story. I saw it as a river, flowing continuously, and growing
bigger with new streams added. So came the novel _Co-op_.
II
Craig didn’t like communists. I am sad to have to report that there were
also some socialists with whom she failed to get along. Indeed, they
almost disillusioned her with the socialist movement--for she was a
personal person and thought that idealists ought to live up to their
programs.
During the EPIC campaign, old Stitt Wilson, California socialist leader
and several times candidate for governor, had seen that the EPIC
movement was a tide and had decided to swim with it. He spoke at our
huge Fourth of July celebration in the Arroyo Seco. He was one of those
orators who take off their coats and wave their arms and shout, even in
a Fourth of July midday sun. After it was over, he was driven to our
home and ordered Craig to draw him a bath. She wouldn’t have minded
helping an old man, but she did mind taking an order; so, while he got
his bath he lost her regard.
Then came Lena Morrow Lewis, tireless lecturer and strictly orthodox
Marxian. She was a guest in my absence and followed Craig around the
house, insisting on reading passages from Marx to her. Then she asked to
be allowed to stay in the house for a week or two while Craig was away,
and she left everything in a state of disarray--including the soiled
dishes. If Craig had been a guest in anybody’s house, there would not
have been a pin out of place, and every dish would have been polished.
So, the socialist movement went still lower in my lady’s esteem.
Oddly enough, those who won her favor were the IWW. They had a most
terrible reputation in the capitalist newspapers. They were said to
drive copper nails into fruit trees. I made inquiries among
arboriculturists, but could not find a single one who could see what
harm copper nails could do in a fruit tree. Anyway, the “wobblies” were
freely sent to jail in California, and when they got out of jail, they
would frequently come to me because I had written a play about
them--_Singing Jailbirds_. They wanted to tell me their stories and have
me write more. Without exception they were decent and honest men, and
they won Craig’s heart. They would not even let her give them
money--only, in one case, fifty cents to get back to Los Angeles.
As the years passed, the communists succeeded more and more in their
effort to take possession of the word “socialism.” Craig saw no
possibility of countering this--especially when the effort had to be
made by her husband. More and more she wanted me to give up the word,
which I had worn as a badge all my life. Craig’s effort was supported by
her brother Hunter, who was with the government in Washington prior to
World War II and knew many labor men. It was amusing when now and then a
newspaper reporter would come for an interview, and Craig and Hunter
would conspire together to make me into an ex-socialist.
I have mentioned the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which I founded
in 1905 and which later changed its name to the League for Industrial
Democracy. “Now surely,” Craig pleaded, “that is a good-enough name. Why
not be an Industrial Democrat?” It is a rather long name to say, but I
do my best to remember, and Hunter Kimbrough helps by reminding me it
was he, after all, who persuaded Harry Flannery, head of the educational
department of the AFL-CIO, to make use of books such as _The Jungle_,
_King Coal_, and _Flivver King_; they did, and a great deal about them
has gone out in print and over the radio. That, of course, is what I
have lived for.
III
All through the EPIC campaign I had been asked questions regarding my
ideas about God; so I decided that I would arm myself for the future,
and I wrote and published a book, _What God Means to Me_. The largest of
all subjects, of course; but I made the book small and tried to make it
practical--that is, I told the ideas by which I had guided my life. I
content myself here by quoting the concluding sentences, and you can
have more for the asking.
Somehow love has come to be in the world; somehow the dream of
justice haunts mankind. These things claim my heart; they speak to
me with a voice of authority. I know full well how badly the
idealists fare in our society. I know that Jesus was crucified, and
Joan burned, and Socrates poisoned; I know that Don Quixote was
made ridiculous, and Hamlet driven mad. But still the dream
persists, and in every part of the world are men determined “to
make right reason and the will of God prevail.”
This God whom I preach is in the hearts of human beings, fighting
for justice; inside the churches and out--even in the rebel groups,
many of which reject His name. A world in which men exploit the
labor of their fellows, and pile up fortunes which serve no use but
the display of material power--such a world presents itself to
truly religious people as a world which must be changed. Those who
serve God truly in this age serve the ideal of brotherhood; of
helping our fellow-beings, instead of exploiting their labor, and
beating them down and degrading them in order to exploit them more
easily.
The religion I am talking about is not yet “established.” It rarely
dwells in temples built with hands, nor is it financed with bond
issues underwritten by holders of front pews. It does not have an
ordained priesthood, nor enjoy the benefit of apostolic succession.
It is not dressed in gold and purple robes, nor are its altar
cloths embroidered with jewels. It does not honor the rich and
powerful, nor sanctify interest and dividends, nor lend support to
political machines, nor sprinkle holy water upon flags and cannon,
nor send young men out to slaughter and be slaughtered in the name
of the Prince of Peace.
My God is a still, small voice in my heart. My God is something
that is with me when I sit alone, and wonder, and question the
mystery. My God says: “I am here, and I am now.”
My God says: “Speak to Me, and I will answer; not in sounds, but in
stirrings of your soul; in courage, hope, energy, the stuff of your
life.” My God says: “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you
shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
My God is the process of my being; nothing strange, but that which
goes on all the time. I ask, “Can I pray?” and He answers: “You are
praying.” He says: “The prayer and the answer are one.”
To pray is to resolve. To pray is to take heart. The motto of the
Benedictine order tells us that “To work is to pray.” Mrs. Eddy
tells us that “Desire is prayer.”
The old-time prophets knew this God of mine. Jesus said: “Believe
me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” That was not
egotism, nor was it theology; it was elementary psychology.
The philosophers have known this God; Emerson wrote: “The simplest
person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.”
The poets have known this God; Tennyson wrote:
Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet;
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
My God is a personal God; for how else can I be a person? If He
does not know me, how can I know myself?
My God is a God of freedom. He says: “Anyone may come to Me.”
My God is a God of mercy. He says: “Come unto Me all ye that
travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”
My God is a God of justice. Of Him it was said: “He hath put down
the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.”
My God is a God of love, in a world of raging madness. He has put
into the hearts of His people the idea of subduing the hate-makers.
My God is an experimental God. He says: “I have made a world, and
am still making it.” He says to men: “I am still making you, and
you are still making Me.”
IV
Much of this book, as you will have noted, is the story of other books,
their origins and their fates. This is something I could not help if I
tried, because my whole life has been a series of books.
On our first motor trip up the Pacific Coast we had gone through one of
the redwood forests, and I was fascinated by those marvelous trees. One
of them was so big that the one-lane road had been cut through its
trunk. I got out and wandered about in the fern-covered forest, and when
I drove on, there popped into my mind a delightful story for children.
Two little gnomes, a young one and his grandfather, were the last of
their race to survive. A human child, wandering about in the ferns, was
greeted timidly by the grandfather and begged to help in finding a wife
for the younger gnome.
The little girl promised to help, and the two gnomes were taken into the
automobile, which of course immediately became a “gnomobile”--the title
of the book. There followed a string of adventures extending all the way
from California to the forests of the East. The two gnomes were kept in
a large basket, and the playful young man of fashion who did the driving
told everybody that the basket contained Abyssinian geese. Thereafter he
was hounded by newspapermen who wanted to see those rare and precious
creatures. When the gnomes were stolen and put on exhibition in a
circus, the story indeed became exciting.
This book for children was published with a lot of gay pictures; it was
also published in France, and is about to be republished here. Walt
Disney read it and told me that he had never done anything with live
characters, but if ever he did he would do _The Gnomobile_. Now, almost
thirty years later, he is setting out to keep the promise. I have a
contract.
V
Next story: I thought it most amusing when my cousin, Wallis Warfield of
Baltimore, came near to wrecking the British Empire by running away with
its king; so I wrote a one-act play showing exactly how a Baltimore
belle went about fascinating any male animal, whether he had a crown or
a dunce’s cap on his head--or both at the same time. I called it _Wally
for Queen_. I thought it was hilariously funny; but when I sent it to my
friend, Arch Selwyn, movie producer, he wrote back, “Upton, are you
crazy, or do you think that I am?” So the crazy little play remains
unproduced. But I can wait, and maybe I’ll outlast my cousin and her
ex-king, and my story will be history and can be made into a musical
comedy, as happened to Bernard Shaw’s _Pygmalion_.
VI
Sometime in the twenties Henry Ford had come for a winter’s vacation and
lived on an estate in Altadena not far from our home. Henry fancied
himself a sociologist, an economist, and an authority on what should be
done for his country. I wrote a note offering to call, and received an
invitation. I duly presented my card to the guard at the gates and was
admitted. I found the unpretentious great man in the garage with his
son, Edsel, busy looking over some junk they had found in this rented
place. They had in their hands a discarded carburetor and were twisting
it this way and that, trying to figure out what purpose the various
openings could have served. I don’t think I quite knew what a carburetor
was, so I was not able to help.
Presently we went into the house; Henry’s wife was there, a quiet little
woman--I can’t recall anything that she said. Henry had a great deal to
say, and his wife listened. Henry thought he knew what was wrong with
America and told me. I saw that he liked to talk, and I let him, only
putting in a mild suggestion now and then. That suited him, and when I
left he suggested that I should come again and we would take a walk in
the hills.
So we took a walk. Henry was a spare man and a fast walker even on
hills. I expressed the opinion that the American people needed educating
on economic questions, and Henry agreed with me. I asked him why he
didn’t do some of the educating himself, and the idea pleased him. I
suggested that he start a magazine, and he said he thought that when he
got back to Dearborn he would buy one. I suggested some of the topics
for the magazine--“Production for Use” and “Self-Help
Co-operatives”--and Henry said those things sounded good to him. He did
start a magazine. It was the _Dearborn Independent_; and from the outset
it was the most reactionary magazine in America.
I had told Henry about King C. Gillette and his books. Gillette was
another multimillionaire, not quite so multi as Henry, but plenty. Henry
was interested. He consented to come and exchange ideas with Gillette,
and the appointment was made. A houseboy and two schoolboys whom my wife
employed for work on the place just couldn’t be persuaded to do any work
that morning. They lined up beside the drive to see the Flivver King and
the Razor King come in. (Razor King is a pun, but it was made by fate,
not by me.)
The Flivver King was lean and spry, and the Razor King was large and
ponderous. They sat in easy chairs in front of our fireplace and
exchanged ideas. As I wrote shortly afterward, it was like watching two
billiard balls--they hit and then flew apart, and neither made the
slightest impression upon the other. America remained and still remains
what it always was--a land of vast riches and cruel poverty. Gillette’s
book fell flat, and Henry’s magazine died unmourned.