Upton Sinclair

“ There had been more trouble with the guards at the Ross tract, and Dad was going up to the field, and Bunny went along for a week-end. It was springtime now, and the hills were green, and the fruit-trees in blossom—oh, beautiful, beautiful! But human beings were miserable, millions of them, and why could they not learn to be happy in such a world? It was springtime all over the country, and yet everybody was preparing to go to war, and form vast armies, and kill other people, also groping for happiness! ”

“ Paul was haggard; one does not take a trip to Moscow to get fat. But his sober face was shining with a light of fanaticism—the same thing which his brother Eli called the glory of the Lord! Dad would have said there were two of them, equally crazy; but it didn’t seem that way to Bunny, who mocked at Eli’s god, but believed in Paul’s—at least enough to tremble in his presence. Paul had been living under a workers’ government again—and this time not as a wage-slave, a strike-breaker in army uniform, but as a free man, and master of the future. ”

“ And so on, name after name that Bunny knew. Meelie’s eyes were wide with horror, and yet you could see that she was young, and this was more excitement than had ever come into her life before. If the devil, with his hoofs and horns and pitchfork and burning smell, had appeared at a meeting of the Tabernacle of the Third Revelation, Meelie would have enjoyed the sensation; and in the same way she enjoyed this crew of whiskey-drinking, cursing ruffians, suddenly vomited out of the city’s underworld into her peaceful and pious and springtime-decorated village. ”

“ Bunny dragged his father to a Socialist meeting at which Harry Seager was to speak. It was in a big hall, with two or three thousand people packed into it, and Dad thought he had never seen so many dangerous people in all his life before: foreign faces, dark and sinister, intense-looking intellectuals with hair over their collars, women with short hair and big spectacles, workingmen, sullen and dull, or sharp-faced, bitter—oh, terrible, terrible people! ”

“ Reading of the scenes that he knew so well—the meetings, the relief work, the raising of funds, the struggles with the guards, the arrests, the sufferings of the men in jail, the beating up of strike pickets, the insolence of the sheriff and other officials, the dishonesty of the newspapers—it was exactly the same as if Bunny were in Paradise. Paul was one of the executive committee, Paul had become Tom Axton’s right-hand man, and his speeches were quoted, and his experiences in the San Elido county jail—when Bunny had finished that little paper, he was so shaken he was not the same all day. ”

“ And on the other hand, Bunny—here’s the truth, I was in Siberia eighteen months, and never saw an atrocity committed by a Bolshevik, and never met a man in our army that had seen one. I don’t say there weren’t any; all I say is, I met men that had travelled all over Russia, our people as well as natives, and the only Bolshevik atrocity that anyone knew about was the fundamental one of teaching the workers they had a right to rule the world. ”

“ Of course, Bunny wanted to go right to it—wanted Dad to telephone for his head foreman, and get a road contractor at work! But Dad said they’d finish the cabin first, and meantime he’d be thinking. So Bunny went back to work, nailing shingles on the roof, and he was happy as a youngster could be—except for one uncomfortable thought that was gnawing like a worm in his soul. How could he tell Paul and Ruth about their decision to drill, and would Paul and Ruth consider that Dad had got the Watkins ranch upon false pretences? ”

“ Bunny had made up his mind that the next time he embraced a woman, it would be one he truly loved; and now the clear cold voice of his reason told him that he did not love Charlie Norman’s mother, it would only be an intrigue, and neither of them would be happy very long. So he said, gently, that he thought she had better go; and slowly and sadly she gathered up the kimono from the floor, and rose to her feet. “Bunny,” she said, “people have nasty minds. If they hear about this they will make it horrid.” ”

“ In the very nature of their position, the workers could only prevail by combining; and so, whether they would or not, they had to develop solidarity, an ideal of brotherhood and co-operation.
Such was the fundamental faith of all “radicals,” and Bunny accepted the doctrine joyfully, as a way of escape from the tangle of commercialism and war. Labor was to organize, and take over industry, and rebuild it upon a basis of service. The formula was simple, and worthy of all trust; but alas, Bunny was being forced to admit that the reality was complicated. ”

“ And then with slow and solemn intonation she began:
“Our Movie, which art Heaven, Hollywood be Thy Name. Let Koski come. His Will be done, in studio as in bed.”
There was a gasp, and then a roar of laughter swept the table; no explanations were needed, they all knew their emperor, master of the destiny of hundreds of screen actresses. “Go on!” shouted voices; and the girl continued to intone an invocation, which echoed in outline and rhythm the Lord’s prayer, and brought in the names of other rulers of their shadow world, always with an obscene implication. ”

“ Vee’s friends changed their bootleggers, but it was always the same stuff they drank. Also they changed their lovers; a certain man slept with a certain woman, and then presently it was a different woman—but the more it changed, the more it was the same thing.
Bunny and Vee loved each other, just as passionately as ever. At least, they told themselves it was as ever, but all the while the subtle chemistry of change was at work. Men and women are not bodies only, and cannot be satisfied with delights of the body only. Men and women are minds, and have to have harmony of ideas. ”

“ Groarty, Paul’s aunt, glaring at Mr. Hank and clenching her hands as if she had him by the throat. “And you the feller that was yellin’ for the rights of the little lots! You was for sharin’ and sharin’ alike—you snake in the grass!”
Said Paul: “Those people were so blind with greed, they were willing to throw away their own chances for the satisfaction of beating the others. They did that, I think you told me—threw away the lease with your father. And everybody in the field behaved the same way. ”

“ That is a colossal propaganda machine, and the men who run it have to lose a lot of sleep. But the majestic candidate lost no sleep, he was always fresh and serene and impassive; he had been that way throughout his career, for the able business men who groomed him and paid his way had never failed to tell him what to do.
Bunny now dwelt upon an Olympian height, looking down as a god upon the affairs of pitiful mortals. Dad and Mr. Roscoe let him hear everything—being sure that common sense would win in the end, and he would accept their point of view. ”

“ A car came creeping towards them out of the mist, likewise tooting lustily; it was a Ford, puffing from the climb, with steam coming out of the radiator.
Then suddenly the fog grew thinner; a few wisps more, and it was gone; they were free, and the car leaped forward into a view—oh, wonderful! Hill below hill dropping away, and a landscape spread out, as far as forever; you wanted wings, so as to dive down there, to sail out over the hilltops and the flat plains. What was the use of speed limits, and curves, and restraining gears and brakes?—“Dry my spectacles,” said Dad, prosaically. ”

“ But Grandma wasn’t going to hate anybody, no matter how much Emma and Bertie and the rest might rage; she proceeded to show her defiance by painting a picture of some Germans in old-time costumes drinking beer out of painted steins. She wanted to hang this in the dining-room, and there was a great row, with Aunt Emma and Bertie trying to persuade Dad to forbid it!
All this was part of Bunny’s education; he listened and learned. From his quiet, steady old father he learned to smile amiably over the foibles of human nature, and to go on gathering in the dollars. ”

“ Paul described the sights of Moscow. First of all, the youth movement; a whole new generation being taught to be clear-eyed and free, to face the facts of nature, and to serve the working-class, instead of climbing out upon its face and founding a line of parasites! You saw those young Communists in class-rooms, on athletic fields, in the streets—marching, singing, listening to speeches—Paul himself had talked to tens of thousands, in his little bit of Russian, and nothing had ever meant so much to him. ”

“ In an obscure hall twenty-five or thirty boys and girls of the working-class met once a week, and read papers, and discussed problems of politics and economics, the labor movement and the Socialist party. Rachel had grown up with this organization, and had prestige with it because she had got a college education, and because she brought “Comrade Ross” with her. The most thoroughly “class-conscious” young people could not help being thrilled by a spectacle so unusual as a millionaire who sympathized with the workers and had helped to bail out political prisoners. ”

“ There were dozens who wanted to prevent the next war, and several who wanted to start colonies; there were many with different ways of bringing about Socialism, and several great poets and philosophers with manuscripts, and one to whom God had revealed Himself—the bearer of this message was six-feet-four and broad in proportion, and he towered over Bunny and whispered in an awe-stricken voice that the Words which God had spoken had been set down and locked in a safe, and no human eye ever had beheld them, or ever would. ”

“ She had been through two strikes, and the things she had seen with her own eyes had been all the lessons in economics she would ever need. She knew that the workers in big industry are wage-slaves, fighting for their very lives. And this war was not like capitalist wars—this one had to be, because the masters made it. But even thus believing in Paul’s work, Ruth could not help being in a tension of anxiety. ”

“ Olivier, it was perfectly obvious what her scheme was—she wanted to marry Dad! Here Bertie and Bunny had worked all their lives to help him accumulate a fortune and save it—and a designing adventuress would jump in and grab the money, and Bunny hadn’t even sense enough to know what was happening! Never had he seen his sister so mad in her whole life—she called him a fool seven times running—when he said that the Spiritualist widow might have her share, if only she could help the poor old man to find happiness. ”

“ So Bunny got a glimpse of his city’s jail. The old building was cracked, and had been condemned as a menace to life by half a dozen successive commissions; nevertheless, here it was, a monument to the greed of real estate speculators, who cared nothing about a city’s good name, provided only its tax-rate were low. The mouldy old place stank, and if you looked carefully, you might see vermin crawling on the walls. ”

“ Bunny went back to school, and his new duties as treasurer for the baseball team; and Dad set to work putting four more wells on the Armitage tract, and three on the Wagstaff tract. And meantime the nations of Europe had established for themselves two lines of death, extending all the way across the continent; and millions of men, as if under the spell of some monstrous enchantment, rushed to these lines to have their bodies blown to pieces and their life-blood poured out upon the ground. ”

“ Sitting down and reading a book was a thing quite unknown to this world’s darling. A newspaper, yes, of course, or a magazine—one had them lying about, and a man would pick them up and glance over something, but always ready to stop to look at a new dress or listen to a bit of gossip. But to become absorbed in reading and not want to be interrupted—well, it didn’t seem quite polite, did it? As for spending a whole afternoon or evening reading a book—Vee had simply never heard of such a thing. She did not put it into words, but Bunny could understand that a book was cheap ”

“ Fighting those brutes with their clubs and hatchets and iron pipe? Or back in the old days, when he had hovered over Paul and Ruth, watching events that wrung his soul? Watching Dad deprive the family of their land; watching the oil operators crush the first strike; watching the government tear Paul away and make him into a strike-breaker for Wall Street bankers; watching Vernon Roscoe throw Paul into prison; watching capitalism with its world-wide system of terror drive Paul here and there, harry him, malign him, threaten him—until at last it hired the brute with the iron pipe! ”

“ But then little by little the debate—the old, old dispute that had torn Bunny’s mind in half. Was it possible for men to go on doing what Dad had been doing in the conduct of his business? Could any civilization endure on the basis of such purchase of government? No, Bunny told himself; but then—he should have tried harder, more lovingly, and persuaded his father to stop it! But at what stage? Dad had been purchasing government ever since Bunny could remember, as a little boy. All the oil men purchased government, all big business men did it, either before or after election. ”

“ Bunny went to see Ruth, and tell her; and strange to say, this embarrassed him. Bertie and Vee had planted in his mind the idea that Ruth had been in love with him for the past ten years; and now Rachel was certain of it; and these women had all proved to be right about each other every time! Also, there was a fact which he had not mentioned to Rachel: there had been a while on the way back from Paris, when he was debating in his mind whether it was Rachel or Ruth he was going to invite to become his wife! ”

“ Paul didn’t blame Comrade Menzies for feeling as she did, that was natural for one who had been brought up under peace conditions; but Paul had been to war, he had seen the class struggle in action.
“Yes, Comrade Watkins,” said Rachel, “but if you try and fail, things will be so much worse!”
“If we never try,” said Paul, “we can never succeed; and even if we fail, the class-consciousness of the workers will be sharpened, and the end will be nearer than if we do nothing. We have to keep the revolutionary goal before the masses, and not let them be lured into compromise. ”

“ Trying to trap a rich man into marriage! Doesn’t Dad give you enough money?”
“That’s very easy for you to say, Bunny, you’re satisfied to get off in a corner and read some old book. But I’m not like that, I have to have a little life. Dad gives me pocket money, but that’s not what I want. I want a career—something of my own. And don’t start preaching at me, because I’m weak as a kitten and can’t stand anything just now. I wanted what every woman wants, a home of my own, and I didn’t want a bungalow, I wanted a place I could invite people to, and make some use of my talents as a hostess. ”

“ Bunny would have to live in the world some day, and the quicker he learned about it the better. So there the boy sat, on his perch in the window-sill, watching, and recalling his grandmother’s words.
Yes, they were a mean bunch, sure enough; Dad was right when he said you had to watch out every minute, because somebody would be trying to take something away from you. These people had simply gone crazy, with the sudden hope of getting a lot of money in a hurry. Bunny, who had always had all the money he could use, looked down with magnificent scorn upon their petty bickering. ”

“ Bunny drove to town and wandered about to see the sights, but none of them brought happiness to him. He could not see Paul, for Paul was hard at work in the strike headquarters, and Bunny could not go there, because it would not look right, somebody might think he was spying. No longer was Bunny the young oil prince, flattered and admired by all; he was an enemy, and read hostility in men’s glances, even where there might be none. He was in the position of a soldier in an army, who feels that his cause is unjust, and has no stomach for the fight—yet it is hard to wish one’s self defeat! ”

“ Such clean-cut efficient young men, with all their faculties concentrated upon getting oil out of the ground! No visions tormenting them, no strains of music haunting them, no hesitations, no uncertainties, never a doubt that to get oil out of the ground was the purpose of man’s life! So they kept their wits about them, and mastered their departments, and increased their prestige and their salaries; and when any one of them had taken his departure, there was an unuttered sadness between Dad and his son. Why couldn’t Bunny have been like young Simmons, or young Heimann, or young Bolling? ”

“ Annabelle, are you trying to drive me out of the profession?” Then, to Bunny, “They say that nobody can eat a quail a day for thirty days; but Mr. Ross, what would you say if I told you I have eaten two lamb chops and three slices of pineapple every day for seven years?”
“I would ask, is that an Egyptian rite, or maybe Scythian?”
“It is the prescription of a Hollywood doctor who specializes in reducing actresses. We public idols are supposed to be rioting in luxury, but really we have only one dream—to buy enough Hollywood real estate so that we can retire and eat a square meal!” ”

“ People kicked at the price of gasoline, but they never thought about the price of drill-stem and casings!
All these things Bunny had heard a hundred times, but Dad never tired of telling them. He was never entirely content unless the boy was by his side, learning the business. You mustn’t fool yourself with the idea that you could hire experts to attend to things; for how could you know that a man was an expert, unless you knew as much as he did? Some day your foreman might drop dead, or some other fellow would buy him away from you, and then where would you be? Be your own expert, said Dad! ”

“ But what difference did it make, when all you would do with the extra hundred and fifty thousand was to drill another well?
Dad’s answer was kept in stock on the shelves of his mind: “The world has got to have oil.” But then, you looked at the world, and saw enormous crowds of people driving to places where they were no better off than at home! But it would annoy Dad to have you say that—it was a step outside the range of his thinking. To Bunny he now seemed like an old horse in a treadmill; he climbed and climbed, all day long, and at night he climbed in dreams. ”

“ Dan had made it his business to know, and could confirm Bunny’s judgment, American big business men all purchased government, they all justified the purchase of government. It was something that had shocked Dan in the beginning, but he had come to realize now that it was a system; without the purchase of government, American big business could not exist. You saw it written plain in the instinctive reaction of the whole business world to the oil scandals, the determinaton to damp them down, to make nothing of them, to indict and prosecute, not the criminals, but the exposers of the crime. ”

“ Most people, when they indulged in day-dreaming, would picture themselves as the son and heir of a great oil magnate, with millions of dollars pouring in upon them, and a sporty car to drive, and steel widows and other sirens to make love to them. But Bunny’s idea of a fairy-story was to go off with a bunch of youngsters in a rattle-trap old Ford that broke down every now and then, and camp out in a tent that the wind blew away, and get a job picking fruit along side of Mexicans and Japanese and Hindoos, and send home a post-office order for ten or twelve dollars every week! ”

“ The scenes at the New York premiere were the same as in Angel City; the crowds as great, and the cheering as enthusiastic. And Vee and Bunny, sitting up in bed in their silken garments, while black-clad robots silently and mechanically served breakfast on silver trays—Vee and Bunny read the accounts of their triumph, and who had attended and what they had worn. And then, turning over the paper, Bunny read a dispatch from Angel City—ten thousand oil workers had walked out on strike, and the industry was tied up tight. ”

“ When Bunny said that he did, Paul went on, “I wasn’t in my aunt’s living-room, and I didn’t see those people that had come to lease their lots; but I listened outside and heard the wrangling; and now, as I go about Europe I say to myself, that is world diplomacy. A wrangle over an oil lease! Every nation hating every other one, making combinations and promising to stick together—but they’ve sold each other out before night, and there’s no lie that any one hasn’t told, and no crime they haven’t committed. ”

“ The derrick was hidden altogether—you had to make a detour, behind a little ridge, and come over the top to windward, and there the crowds were gathered, staring at the great black jet that came rushing up out of the ground, a couple of hundred feet into the air, with a sound like an endless express train going by. You could see men working, or trying to work, under the derrick; you could see a bunch of them with picks and shovels, throwing up a sort of dam to hold the oil; they wouldn’t save much, Dad said, it evaporated too fast. ”

“ In front of the oil properties, especially those of the big companies, you saw men pacing up and down, wearing rubber coats and hats, from under which they eyed you suspiciously; some of them carried rifles on their shoulders, like military sentries. Bunny drove up to his father’s tract, and there he saw the same sight, and it cut him to the heart—the very personification of that hatred which so pained him in the industrial world, and which he had fondly dreamed he might exclude from the “Ross Junior” field. ”

“ THE PENALTY I The billboards of Paris broke into universal ecstasy: “Schmolsky-Superba Présente l’Etoile Américaine, Viola Tracy, dans La Couche d’Or, Cinéma-Mélodrame de la Société en Huit Reels.” There were pages in the newspapers, “Premiere Production sur le Continent d’Europe”—Schmolsky was doing the job in style. “L’Etoile” herself was coming, all the way from California; and Bunny motored to Havre to meet her, and oh, how happy they were, a second honeymoon, with the old disharmonies forgotten. ”

“ When you happen to be the son of a successful oil operator, you can make your dreams come true. Dad and Bunny motored out, arriving just at sundown, and went directly to the Rascum place, and there, standing on the front-porch, with the bougainvillea vine now in full blossom, making a glorious purple arch above her head, was Ruth; and alongside her was a man—at a distance Bunny thought it was old Mr. Watkins, but then he saw it was a young man, and Bunny’s heart went up into his mouth. ”

“ Poor Dad, he couldn’t stand talk like that from his darling son; he began to give way, and revealed that he and Verne had discussed the possibility of a compromise with the rebels. Would they agree to get out of the state, or at least to keep their hands off the oil industry? And Bunny said, by God, if Vernon Roscoe wanted to make any such proposition, he could be his own messenger boy! Bunny knew what Paul’s answer would be—Paul had a right to try to organize oil workers, and he would never quit while he lived. ”

“ Did any one person have a right to replace all the rest of humanity? If it was the duty of the young to sacrifice themselves for the old, how could there ever be any progress in the world? As time passed, and the struggle in the oil fields grew more tense, the agony of the workers more evident, Bunny came to the clear decision that his flight had been cowardly. ”

“ Everything he’s done has been no good, it’s all crooked and dirty, and the only people with any ideals or any rights on their side are a bunch of ne’er-do-wells that hate him because he’s made good and they never will. And if you think the old man don’t feel that, if you don’t know it’s eating his heart out—well, you take it from me, and get your eyes open before it’s too late. If you got to despise your father’s money, for Christ’s sake wait till he’s dead, and the money’s your own.”
So when Bunny went out from the office, he was not thinking about the troubles of the oil workers. ”