wrote to inform me that a Page One Award in Letters was to be presented
to me and invited me to attend the ceremony late in April. Then, shortly
afterward, came a letter from Walter Reuther, president of the United
Automobile Workers, telling me that the UAW was also giving me an
award--at its annual convention in Atlantic City early in May--and would
like to present it to me in person. I could scarcely resist two such
invitations.
The trip by air was a miracle to me. I had made only two short flights
before. Now I saw the whole of the United States spread under me like a
map, and I marveled at the nearness of the mountaintops and the vast
spread of the plains. On the bare, brown deserts I observed great black
spots, and I puzzled my head as to what could be growing on a desert
floor; until I realized suddenly that these were the shadows of clouds,
also beneath me. It was fascinating to observe how the shape of every
spot corresponded exactly to the shape of its cloud. In the Middle West
the farms were all laid out in perfect rectangles with the quarter
sections clearly distinguishable; but as we got farther east, the
irregularities increased until everything was chaos, including the
roads.
All kinds of enterprises like to make use of celebrities, and the
airport was no exception. The management, learning of my age, had taken
the precaution to send a wheelchair to the plane. When May saw it she
said to the porter, “You get in and let him wheel you.”
My son, David, was on hand with his wife and his car. An engineer, he
publishes pamphlets about his technical discoveries of which his father
is unable to understand a sentence. One of the problems he has solved is
that of spinning a plastic thread so fine that one spool of it would
reach all the way around the world. Both May and I are fortunate, in
that we can love and admire our “in-laws.”
The American Newspaper Guild presented me with a handsome gold figure,
which now stands on our mantel. The citation runs as follows:
Page One Award in Letters to Upton Sinclair, author of hundreds of
books and papers, including _The Jungle_ and _The Brass Check_,
over a span of 60 years, all of which contributed immeasurably to
the advancement of democracy and public enlightenment. 1962.
Some sixteen hundred people were present, and I made a short speech.
IV
A few days later David and his wife drove us down to Atlantic City,
where the sixty-five hundred delegates of the United Automobile Workers
throughout the world were having a week’s assembly. I had never met
either Walter Reuther or his younger brother, Victor, and this was a
pleasant occasion for both me and my family. Present also was Michael
Angelo Musmanno, who as a young lawyer had plunged into a last-hour
effort to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. A wonderfully
kindhearted and exuberant person, now close to the seventies, he has
become a judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. When I asked him
how this miracle had come about, he answered with a smile: “It is an
elective office.”
On a Sunday evening we found ourselves confronting the sixty-five
hundred cheering delegates, many of whom no doubt had read _Flivver
King_. It was a dinner affair, and I found myself seated between my wife
and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, whom I had not seen since a visit to the
White House in 1935, just after the EPIC campaign. There was plenty of
time for conversation, especially since I had had my rice-and-fruit meal
an hour or so earlier.
Walter Reuther presented to me the Social Justice Award of the United
Automobile Workers--an ebony plaque that carries this citation:
With admiration and affection and in thankful appreciation for the
great moral courage and social conscience that motivated your
writings as you exposed the inhuman exploitation of labor in
American industrial jungles. Your life and your work have
contributed immeasurably to the extension of the frontiers of
_Social Justice_. May 1962.
In my speech of acceptance I told how I had made a socialist, or a
near-socialist, out of Henry Ford’s wife; and how, when he saw that he
could not win the strike, he made all his plans to close up his
plants--and was only deterred from it at the last moment by his wife’s
announcement that if he carried out this evil purpose she would leave
him. The story was new to those delegates, and I will not attempt to
describe the enthusiasm with which they received it.
Mrs. Roosevelt also gave one of her warm-hearted talks, and so it was a
worthy occasion to those labor men and their wives. I imagined that
newspaper readers might also be interested in it, but I examined the New
York morning and afternoon papers and discovered that they had nothing
whatever to say about the affair. I am used to newspaper silence about
my doings, but I had really thought they would have something to say
about the eloquence of Eleanor Roosevelt, and of the welcome she had
received from that vast throng. But not one word in the Monday morning
and afternoon papers! I paid a call on the labor editor of the New York
_Times_, and he was cordial--he took me about and introduced me to
several other editors--but he had nothing to say about the paper’s
failure to say anything about the UAW assemblage.
The award from the UAW included a check for a thousand dollars. I had
written Walter that I would use the money to put a copy of _Flivver
King_ in the libraries of all the branches of the union throughout the
world. In Atlantic City Victor Reuther told me that they planned to
reissue _Flivver King_ themselves and make it available to all their
members. So I shall use the money to put in the union libraries copies
of this present book and of the memorial edition of _Southern Belle_.
V
Meanwhile, in New York, I met many old friends. Also, I was asked to
appear on several TV programs, and my interviews with Eric Goldman, Mike
Wallace, and Barry Gray were great fun. One of the most unusual
occasions was a luncheon given by my faithful agent, Bertha Klausner,
who invited only those people who are working, in one way or another,
with my various books--publishing or reissuing or dramatizing them for
stage or screen. And there was a roomful of them!
Happily, there seems to be a revival of interest in my books. _The
Jungle_ is now in paperback, and students are reading it and teachers
are talking about it in their classes. _World’s End_ and _Dragon’s
Teeth_, two of the Lanny Budd volumes, are also in paperback. So is
_Manassas_, under the title of _Theirs Be the Guilt_. _Mental Radio_, my
precise and careful study of Craig’s demonstrations of her telepathic
power, has just been reissued by a publisher of scientific books, with
the original preface by William McDougall and, in addition, the preface
that Albert Einstein wrote for the German edition. _The Cry for Justice:
An Anthology of Social Protest_ is to be republished with modern
additions. And _A Personal Jesus_, an attempt at a modern insight, is
also being reissued.
_Our Lady_ is being dramatized. _Another Pamela_ is being converted into
a musical comedy. Walt Disney is now setting out to make a movie of _The
Gnomobile_, my story for children, which is also going to be reissued
with gay illustrations from the French edition. And there is to be a TV
series drawn from the Lanny Budd books. I cannot attempt to control this
last and can only hope for the best.
_20_
_Summing Up_
I
A reader of this manuscript asked the question: “Just what do you think
you have accomplished in your long lifetime?” I give a few specific
answers.
I begin with a certainty. At the age of twenty-eight I helped to clean
and protect the meat that comes to your table. I followed that matter
through to the end. I put the shocking facts into a book that went
around the world in both directions. I set forth the details at
President Theodore Roosevelt’s lunch table in the White House, and later
put them before his trusted investigators. I put their true report on
the front page of the New York _Times_, and I followed it up with
letters to Congressmen. I saw the laws passed; from friends in the
Chicago stockyards, I learned that they were enforced. The stockyard
workers now have strong unions; I know some of their officials, and if
the old conditions had come back, I would have been told of it and would
be telling it here.
Second, I know that we still have many bad and prejudiced newspapers,
but many are better than they were. I think that _The Brass Check_
helped to bring about the improvement. It also encouraged newspapermen
to form a union. And the guild, among other things, has improved the
quality of newspapers.
Third, I know that our “mourning parade” before the offices of Standard
Oil in New York not merely ended slavery in the mining camps in the
Rocky Mountains but also changed the life course of the Rockefeller
family; and this has set an example to others of our millionaire
dynasties--including the Armours and the Fords.
Fourth, I think that Mary Craig Sinclair, with my help, did much to
promote an interest in the investigation of psychic phenomena. Professor
William McDougall, an Englishman who became known as “the dean of
American Psychology,” told us that it was Craig’s demonstrations that
decided him to set up the department of parapsychology at Duke
University. It was McDougall who appointed J. B. Rhine, and the work
that has been done by these two men has made the subject respectable.
_Mental Radio_ is now issued by a scientific publishing house.
Fifth, I know that the American Civil Liberties Union, which I helped to
organize in New York and of which I started the southern California
branch in 1923, has put an end to the oppression of labor in California
and made it no longer possible to crowd six hundred strikers into a jail
built to hold one hundred.
Sixth, I know that the EPIC campaign of 1934 in California changed the
whole reactionary tone of the state. We now have a Democratic governor
and a Democratic state legislature, and the Republicans are unhappy. In
the depression through which we passed in 1961, no one died of
starvation.
Seventh, I know that I had something to do with the development and
survival of American democratic ideas, both political and social, in
Japan. From 1915 on, practically every book I wrote was translated and
published in Japan, and I was informed that a decade or two in that
country were known as the _Sinkuru Jidai_, which means “the Sinclair
Era.” Every one of the Lanny Budd books was a best seller there; and in
September 1960, when the Japanese students appeared on the verge of a
procommunist revolution, my faithful translator, Ryo Namikawa, cabled,
begging me to send a message in favor of the democratic process of
social change. I paid over four hundred dollars to send a cablegram to
_Shimbun_, the biggest newspaper in Japan, and it appeared on the front
page the next day. Of course, I cannot say how much that had to do with
it. I only know that the students turned away from their communist
leadership and chose the democratic process and friendship with America.
Eighth, my two books on the dreadful ravages of alcoholism may have had
some effect. The second, called _The Cup of Fury_, was taken up by the
church people, and it has sold over a hundred thousand copies. I get
many letters about it.
Ninth. Way back in the year 1905, I started the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society, now the League of Industrial Democracy. I had had
nine years of college and university, and I hadn’t learned that the
modern socialist movement existed. I held that since the educators
wouldn’t educate the students, it was up to the students to educate the
educators--and this was what happened, partly because so many of our
students of those days are educators now.
Tenth and last, there are the Lanny Budd books. They won the cordial
praise of George Bernard Shaw (who made them the basis for recommending
me for the Nobel Prize), H. G. Wells, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann.
I worked at those books like a slave for a dozen years, and if they
contain errors of historical fact, these have not been pointed out. The
books have been translated into a score of languages. They contain the
story of the years from 1911 to 1950, and I hope they have spread a
little enlightenment through the world.
The English Queen Mary, who failed to hold the French port of Calais,
said that when she died, the word “Calais” would be found written on her
heart. I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if
they do they will find two words there--“Social Justice.” For that is
what I have believed in and fought for during sixty-three of my
eighty-four years.
II
In politics and economics, I believe what I have believed ever since I
discovered the socialist movement at the beginning of this century. I
have incorporated those beliefs in a hundred books and pamphlets and
numberless articles. My books have been translated into forty languages,
and millions of people have read them. What those millions have found is
not only a defense of social justice but an unwavering conviction that
true social justice can be achieved and maintained only through the
democratic process. The majority of my books have been translated and
published in communist lands; of course, it may be that the texts have
been altered. If they were published as I wrote them, their readers
learned the ideals of democratic freedom.
Despite my fight and the struggles of many others, communist
dictatorships have taken over half the world. Meanwhile, for the first
time, proud man, dressed with a little brief authority, has so perfected
the instruments of destruction that he is in a position to put an end to
the possibility of life on our earth and condemn this planet to go its
way through infinite space, lonely and forgotten. Whether this will
happen depends entirely upon the decision of two men--or possibly on the
decision of one of them. Both are known to the world by one initial,
“K.” What can a poor fellow whose name happens to begin with “S” do
about it? He can only say what he thinks and hope to be heard. He can
only go on fighting for social justice and the democratic ideal, hope
that man does not destroy himself, by design or by accident, and trust
that eventually the peoples of the world will force their rulers to
follow the ways of peace, of freedom, and of social justice.
_Books by Upton Sinclair_
Springtime and Harvest 1901 (_Reissued as_ King Midas 1901)
The Journal of Arthur Stirling 1903
Prince Hagen 1903
Manassas: A Novel of the War 1904 (_Reissued as_ Theirs Be the Guilt 1959)
A Captain of Industry 1906
The Jungle 1906
The Industrial Republic 1907
The Overman 1907
The Metropolis 1908
The Moneychangers 1908
Samuel the Seeker 1910
The Fasting Cure 1911
Love’s Pilgrimage 1911
Plays of Protest 1912
The Millennium: A Comedy of the Year 2000 1912
Sylvia 1913
Damaged Goods 1913
Sylvia’s Marriage 1914
The Cry for Justice 1915
King Coal 1917
The Profits of Religion 1918
Jimmie Higgins 1919
The Brass Check 1919
100%: The Story of a Patriot 1920
The Book of Life 1921
They Call Me Carpenter 1922
The Goose-Step 1923
Hell: A Verse Drama and Photoplay 1923
The Goslings 1924
Singing Jailbirds: A Drama in Four Acts 1924
The Pot Boiler 1924
Mammonart 1925
Bill Porter: A Drama of O. Henry in Prison 1925
The Spokesman’s Secretary 1926
Letters to Judd 1926
Oil! 1927
Money Writes! 1927
Boston 1928
Mountain City 1930
Mental Radio 1930, 1962
Roman Holiday 1931
The Wet Parade 1931
American Outpost 1932
Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox 1933
The Way Out 1933
I, Governor of California--and How I Ended Poverty 1933
The Epic Plan for California 1934
I, Candidate for Governor--and How I Got Licked 1935
We, People of America 1935
Depression Island 1935
What God Means to Me 1936
Co-op 1936
The Gnomobile 1936, 1962
Wally for Queen 1936
The Flivver King 1937
No Pasaran 1937
Little Steel 1938
Our Lady 1938
Terror in Russia 1938
Expect No Peace 1939
Letters to a Millionaire 1939
Marie Antoinette 1939
Telling the World 1939
Your Million Dollars 1939
World’s End 1940
World’s End Impending 1940
Between Two Worlds 1941
Peace or War in America 1941
Dragon’s Teeth 1942
Wide Is the Gate 1943
Presidential Agent 1944
Dragon Harvest 1945
A World to Win 1946
Presidential Mission 1947
A Giant’s Strength 1948
Limbo on the Loose 1948
One Clear Call 1948
To the Editor 1948
O Shepherd, Speak! 1949
Another Pamela 1950
The Enemy Had It Too 1950
A Personal Jesus 1952
The Return of Lanny Budd 1953
What Didymus Did 1955
The Cup of Fury 1956
It Happened to Didymus 1958
Theirs Be the Guilt 1959
My Lifetime in Letters 1960
Affectionately Eve 1961
_Index_
Abbott, Leonard D., 101
Addams, Jane, 109-10, 213
_Adventures in Interviewing_, by Isaac F. Marcosson, 118
AFL-CIO, 282, 287
American Civil Liberties Union, 227, 228, 231, 328
Anderson, Sherwood, 252
_Appeal to Reason_ (later _Haldeman-Julius Weekly_), 89,
101-02, 104, 105, 108, 112, 115, 150, 213, 221, 223
Armour, J. Ogden, 116-17, 139
Armour, Kathleen, 319, 321
Armour, Richard, 319, 321
Atherton, Gertrude, 107
_Babbitt_, by Sinclair Lewis, 251-52
_Baby Mine_, by Margaret Mayo, 125
Baldwin, Roger, 227
Bamford, Frederick Irons, 152
Barnett, Gen. George, 13, 14
Barnett, Mrs. George, 13-14, 53
Barnsdall, Aline, 275
Barrows, Ellen, 197
Beall, Rev. Upton, 29
Belasco, David, 144, 155
Bellamy, Edward, 269
Belloc, Hilaire, 181
Belmont, Mrs. Oliver, 136
Bennett, James Gordon, 121
Berger, Victor, 170, 171
Beveridge, Sen. Albert J., 13
Bickel, Carl, 255
Bierce, Ambrose, 44
Birnbaum, Martin, 56, 294-95
Björkman, Edwin, 132, 250
Björkman, Mrs. Edwin (Frances Maule), 132, 250
Bland, Howard, 93, 227
Bland, John Randolph, 9, 11-12, 14, 45, 53-54, 63-64, 226-27
Blatch, Harriet Stanton, 140
Bliss, Leslie E., 304
Bloor, Mrs. Ella Reeve, 120-21, 124, 137, 165
Boston Society for Psychical Research, 33
Brady, Judge Tom, 259, 260, 316
Brandeis, Justice Louis, 274
Brandes, George, 201
Brett, George P., 114, 212, 214
_Bride of Dreams_, by Frederik van Eeden, 184
Brown, J. G., 37
Browne, Lewis, 276, 289
Brownell, W. C., 78
Buchanan, Thompson, 187
Buerger, Leo, 158
Burns, John, 122, 178
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 60, 61, 83
Bynner, Witter, 156
Byrd, Cecil, 304, 305
California Institute of Technology, 254-55, 257, 258-59
Camus, Albert, 308
Cannon, Mrs. Laura, 198
Carmichael, Bert, 47-48
Caron, Arthur, 201
Carpenter, Edward, 203
Carpenter, Prof. George Rice, 58, 61
Chandler, Harry, 275
Chaplin, Charles, 273
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 30
Church of the Holy Communion, 30, 99, 288
Church of the Messiah, 32, 77
Churchill, Winston, 121-22
Clay, Bertha M., pseudonym of John Coryell, 133
College of the City of New York, 21, 23-25, 37-40, 47, 48, 57, 224, 294
Collier, Peter, 108
Collier, Robert F., 108, 136
Columbia University, 25, 46, 48, 51, 56-63, 65,
66, 86, 131, 132, 224, 244, 250
Community Church, 32
Cook, George Cram, 252
Cooke, Grace MacGowan, 132
Corydon (pseudonym of 1st wife), 13, 81, 93, 94, 104, 106, 108, 112, 156
acquaintance of, with Sinclair, 17, 41-42
advises Mary Craig Kimbrough on her book, 166, 167-68, 172
and Harry Kemp, 160, 174-75
courtship of, 75-77
despondency and loneliness of, 95, 96-98, 111
divorce of, from Sinclair, 172
considered by her, 154-55, 165, 170
granted in Holland, 186
proceedings in, 175-76, 177-78
scandal re, 168, 174-75, 178
fights for custody of son, 210
financial difficulties during pregnancy of, 79-80
helps Sinclair write _Love’s Pilgrimage_, 75-76
ill-health of, 95, 96, 137-38, 145
in sanitariums, 138, 160
leaves Sinclair to live with parents, 83, 86, 91;
to take own apartment, 146
marriage of, to Sinclair, 77;
opposed by family, 77, 79
remarries, 169, 210
returns to Sinclair, 154-55, 165, 173, 210
son of, _see_ Sinclair, David; birth of, 84
Coryell, John, 133
Coughlin, Father Charles E., 273-74
Crane, Charles R., 215
Crane, Stephen, 252
_Damaged Goods_, by Eugène Brieux, 193
_The Daughter of the Confederacy_, by Mary Craig Kimbrough, 166
Davidson, Jo, 133, 250
Davis, Jefferson, 166, 205, 265
Davis, Richard Harding, 204
Davis, Robert, 117
Davis, Winnie, 166, 168, 173, 205, 265
Debs, Eugene, 44, 252-53
_The Defeat in the Victory_, by George D. Herron, 102
Dell, Floyd, 34, 88-90, 99, 204, 261
Democratic Party, 19, 64, 268, 272, 328
_The Demon of the Absolute_, by Paul Elmer More, 85
Dewey, John, 132, 250
De Witt, Samuel, 29
Dill, James B., 144-45
Dinwiddie, William, 122
Disney, Walt, 285, 326
_The Divine Fire_, by May Sinclair, 182
Doremus, R. Ogden, 23-24
Dos Passos, John, 232
Doubleday, Frank, 124
Dreiser, Theodore, 45, 85, 246, 247, 249, 253
DuBridge, Dr. Lee, 258-59
Duke University, 244, 328
Duncan, Isadora, 203, 252
Dunne, Finley Peter, 252
_The Easiest Way_, by Eugene Walter, 144
Einstein, Albert, 254-59, 279-80, 292, 305, 326, 329
Eisenstein, Sergei, 64, 237, 262-67
Eldh, Carl, 305
EPIC (End Poverty in California), 266,
268-76, 278, 280, 282, 309, 319, 321, 328
Ettor, Joe, 187
Fairbanks, Douglas, 252
Faulkner, William, 45
_The Fighting Sinclairs_, 4-6
Finch, Jessica, 194-95
Fischer, 185
Fish, Hamilton, 279
Fitch, Ensign Clarke, USN (pen name of Upton Sinclair), 50
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 45, 252
Flannery, Harry, 282
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 187
Ford, Arthur, 245-47
Ford, Edsel, 285-86
Ford, Henry, 258, 285, 324-25
Ford, Mrs. Henry, 286, 287-88, 324-25
Fox, William, 260-61
Freeman, Elizabeth, 201
Fuller, Judge Alvan T., 241
Fuller, Judd, 234
Garfield, James R., 118
Garrison, Lt. Frederick, USA (pen name of Upton Sinclair), 49
Gartz, Craney, 217, 300
Gartz, Gloria, 217, 273
Gartz, Mrs. Kate Crane, 214-18, 219-20,
233, 240, 246, 257, 262, 272-73, 298, 299-302
Gartz, Adolph, 217, 218, 233
Genthe, Arnold, 151
Ghent, W. J., 228
Gillette, King C., 236-37, 286-87
Gilman, Elizabeth, 226
Ginn, Edwin, 93
Giovannitti, Arthur, 187
Goebel, George H., 253
Gold, Michael, 70
Goldman, Eric, 325
Gray, Barry, 325
Gurney, Edmund, 33
Gutkind, Erich, 184
Haldeman, Marcet, 213
Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel, 87, 213, 221
Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books, 83, 154
_Haldeman-Julius Weekly_ (formerly _Appeal to Reason_), 221
Hanford, Ben, 220
Hapgood, Norman, 107
Hard, Dr. Frederick, 319, 321
Hard, May (Mrs. Upton Sinclair, his 3d wife), 319-22
Harden, Harry, 7, 91
Harden, John S. (grandfather of Upton Sinclair), 7, 9, 10, 29
Harden, Mrs. John S. (Mary Ayers), 10-11
Hardy, Prof. George, 38
Harris, Frank, 169-70, 181-82
Hartmann, Sadakichi, 133, 250
Harvard University, 196-97, 241, 242, 244
Haywood, William D., 187
Hearst, William Randolph, 50, 133
Helicon Hall (Home Colony), 128-36, 141, 142, 250
Hemingway, Ernest, 45, 249-50
Henderson, C. Hanford, 204
Henry, O., 44, 252
Herbermann, Prof. Charles George, 38
Herron, George D., 93, 101-03, 176, 183, 294
Herron, Mrs. George (Carrie Rand), 176, 183
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 85, 93
_The High Romance_, by Michael Williams, 142, 143
Hitchcock, Ripley, 88
Hoover, Herbert, 304
Hopkins, Harry, 274
Hopkins, Pryns (Prince), 238
House, Col. Edward M., 218, 221
Howatt, David, 156-57, 162
Howe, Frederick C., 203
Howe, Julia Ward, 93
Huebsch, B. W., 228, 297
Huntington Library, 304
Hyslop, Prof. James, 60-61, 65, 244
Ickes, Harold, 274
Industrial Workers of the World, 229, 232, 233, 281-82
Intercollegiate Socialist Society (later
League for Industrial Democracy), 113-14,
140, 170, 172, 194, 196, 197, 248, 282, 329
Irvine, Alexander, 201
_It All Started with Columbus_, by Richard Armour, 319
_It All Started with Eve_, by Richard Armour, 319
_It All Started with Marx_, by Richard Armour, 319
James, Henry, 181
James, William, 132-33, 250
Jerome, William Travers, 66, 67, 222
_John Barleycorn_, by Jack London, 248
Jones, Capt. and Mrs., 209, 210
“Jonesy,” fruit inspector, 67-68, 123-24
Kahn, Otto H., 266
Kautsky, Karl, 184-85
Keeley, James, 116
Kellogg, W. K., 140
Kelly, Mrs. Edith Summers, 132, 250
Kemp, Harry, 147-48, 160, 168, 172, 174-75, 178
Kempner, Dr. Walter, 311
Kennerley, Mitchell, 167, 176, 186
Kimbrough, Allan, 259
Kimbrough, Dolly, 192, 193-94, 208, 246, 254
Kimbrough, Hunter Southworth, 204-05, 206, 208, 259, 260, 262, 263, 265,
266, 282, 310, 314, 318, 319, 320
Kimbrough, Judge Allan McCaskell, 180, 186, 188, 190
, 193, 195, 200, 204, 205, 206-07, 208, 212, 276-77
Kimbrough, Leftwich, 315