CHAPTER XXXIMAKING BOMB-MAKERS
It had been agreed by the trustees of Tarrytown that while we might not tell about the Ludlow massacre at a street-meeting, we might tell about it at a meeting in a theatre or hall. I set out to find a theatre or hall, but there was no theatre or hall that could be rented for that purpose. I then went up on the heights, where the Rockefellers live, and appealed to the sense of fair play of Mr. Rockefeller’s neighbors. This is the Pocantico hills country, a line of magnificent estates and palatial homes, of which you see pictures in the “Sunday supplements.” You might have thought it poor territory for radical propaganda; nevertheless, I was able to persuade one of the residents, Mrs. Charles J. Gould, to allow the use of her open-air theatre for a meeting in defense of free speech. Imagine, if you can, the excitement of the New York newspapers, when they learned that there was to be an I. W. W. meeting—so they called it—in an open-air theatre on a millionaire estate almost next door to the Rockefellers!
We held the meeting, attended by some three hundred people of the town, rich and poor, including a number of laborers from young Mr. Rockefeller’s estate. John W. Brown, organizer of the United Mine-workers, told the story of the strike, and we moved a resolution that it was the sense of the meeting that Mr. Rockefeller’s treatment of his strikers had been such that we called upon the President of the United States to confiscate his mines. We discussed that resolution for a couple of hours, and we carried itunanimously! But alas, it happened that Adolf Wolff, an Anarchist sculptor and poet, got up and delivered a tirade, abusing me for having pleaded for free speech with the trustees of Tarrytown. “We shouldn’t plead, we should take!” declared Comrade Wolff. A lady from the South got up and sang negro-songs to pacify the tumultuous meeting, and so the newspapers could make a joke of the whole affair—which they did.
In their last public session with us, the trustees of thevillage had admitted that there could be no interference with a meeting held upon the strip of property through which ran the city aqueduct—this property being under State control. So now the radicals whose friends were in jail wanted to hold a meeting on this aqueduct property. They asked me to come, but I happened to be ill. Leonard Abbott went with them, also a boy named Arthur Caron, whose story I must briefly tell. Caron had been one of the finest lads who had joined our Broadway demonstrations. He was a French-Canadian, whose wife and baby had starved to death during the Lawrence strike. He had come to New York and taken part in the unemployed demonstration of the previous winter, and the police had arrested him and beaten him in his cell, breaking his nose and one ear-drum. He was a non-resistant, he told us, and had been one of the most useful in helping us to keep our demonstration peaceable. Now he went, at my suggestion, to avail himself of the public assurance given by the Tarrytown trustees, that a meeting on the aqueduct would not be interfered with.
But, as it happened, the “Tarrytown News” was carrying on a furious war against the village trustees, because of their halfway-decent treatment of the “agitators”; the “News” wanted us all exterminated, and it called on the “law-abiding” citizens of the village to assemble at the aqueduct and stop that meeting. So the speakers were met by a mob of rich men and chauffeurs, who tooted horns and howled at them, threw rotten vegetables and sand and stones into their faces, filling their eyes and mouth with filth and streaming blood. Running through the village toward the railroad-station, the little group was ridden down by mounted members of the aqueduct police-force, who pursued them even on board the train, and clubbed them over the heads when they sought refuge in the seats. These incidents were described to me by several indignant newspaper reporters, including my friend Isaac Russell, of the “Times.” But the “Times” cut out from Russell’s story the incident of the clubbing on the train.
Here was another call for protest; but by this time the Sinclair family had reached the point of exhaustion. My wife had been a semi-invalid at the beginning of the affair, and was now near to nervous breakdown. We had spent every dollar we owned, and a great many that we did not own; so we were forced to retire, and let the Tarrytown rowdies and theirrowdy newspapers have their way. We remained in New York for a couple of weeks to straighten our affairs; and on the very day we had planned to leave for the country, the telephone rang, and my wife answered, and a voice said: “This is the 100th St. Police Station. Do you know a man named Arthur Caron?”
Yes, my wife knew Arthur Caron. “What about him?” she asked, and the voice answered: “We found your name in a note-book in his pocket. Will you come to the station and identify his body?”
There had been, it appeared, an explosion in a tenement-house on Third Avenue. At first the police thought it was a gas-explosion, but soon the truth became known; Arthur Caron and two or three of his friends had been making bombs with the intention of blowing up the Rockefellers. There had been a premature explosion, which had blown out several stories of the tenement, and killed the three lads.
It was interesting to observe the conduct of the New York newspapers during this affair. It made, of course, a tremendous excitement. Bombs are news; they are heard all the way around the world. But the outrages which have caused the bombs are not news, and no one ever refers to them. No one makes clear that these outrages will continue to cause bombs, so long as the human soul remains what it is.
Now the New York newspapers knew perfectly well that our Broadway demonstration, our “Free Silence League,” as they had dubbed it, had been a peaceable demonstration. They knew that at the opening meeting, at which the plan was discussed, I had declared that I desired the co-operation only of those who would pledge their word to me personally that they would offer no resistance, no matter what was done to them; that they would not even speak a word, nor argue with anyone, they would do nothing but walk up and down. At our first meeting Frederick Sumner Boyd, an I. W. W. leader, repudiated my ideas, and called upon the meeting to organize itself to raise money and send arms to the coal-strikers. I replied that if any wished to organize such a group, it was his right, but I had called this meeting for the purpose of organizing one kind of demonstration, and I thought that those who wished to organize some other kind of demonstration should utilize one of the other rooms of the Liberal Club; whereuponBoyd and about half the audience withdrew. All this had been fully reported in the New York papers, and was known to everyone.
Also it was known to the Rockefellers that at the headquarters of our Colorado Committee I personally obtained the pledge of every man and woman, before I allowed them to join us, that they would conform to the rule laid down. I say this was known to the Rockefellers, because they had spies among us; I knew perfectly well who those spies were, and allowed one of them to think he was my friend. From first to last I had nothing to hide, and for that reason I had nothing to fear, and this was as well known to the newspapers as it was to the police who were probing the explosion. Except for the first telephone call, which had come from a desk-sergeant who knew nothing about the matter whatever, the police did not trouble us, nor even question us; yet day by day, while that sensation was before the public, the whole effort of the New York newspapers was concentrated upon making it appear that Upton Sinclair was in some way connected with the bomb-plot. Day after day there would be circumstantial accounts of how the police and the coroner and other officials were preparing to summon my wife and myself, and to subject us to a “rigid examination” concerning Arthur Caron and the other victims of the explosion. We would call up the police and the coroner and other officials, and inform them that we were perfectly willing to be questioned, but that we knew nothing but what we had told the public; to which the police and the coroner and the other officials would reply: “We have no wish to question you; that’s just newspaper talk.” All officials understand what “newspaper talk” means; but the public doesn’t understand, and so what the public carried away from this affair was the general impression that my wife and I were dangerous characters. We were too cunning to get caught, of course; but we incited obscure and half-educated young people to make bombs and set them off, and then we washed our hands of them and left them to their fate.
There is one final story which ought to be told in connection with these “mourning pickets.” You may recall that I had appealed against the decision of Police-magistrate Sims, to the effect that one whose conduct had been “that of a perfect gentleman” might properly be found guilty of “using threatening, abusive and insulting behavior.” I had told the story ofthis court-decision at a public meeting in the State capitol in Denver, and again at a dinner of the Progressive Party workers in Chicago—saying: “I don’t know whom the magistrate supposed I had threatened, abused and insulted—unless perhaps it were John D. Rockefeller, Junior!” The audience had laughed appreciatively; they thought that was a funny joke; I, too, thought it was a funny joke. But now—can you believe it?—Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions handed down his august decision, which had cost me several hundred dollars in lawyer’s fees and court costs to obtain; and this Daniel come to judgment upheld the decision of Police-magistrate Sims, and gave his reasons therefor—and lo, his reasons were my funny joke! Seventeen thousand, five hundred dollars per year the people of New York State pay to Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions, for handing down such august decisions; and forever and ever, so long as capitalist civilization endures, that particular august decision will be printed on expensive paper, and bound in expensive sheepskin, and treasured in the libraries of learned jurists. Such a wonder of a decision deserves to be read, as well as preserved in law-books; so I will quote it here, as follows:
No citizen has a right to rebuke another citizen by subjecting him to ridicule or insult.
The defendant intended by his conduct in the presence of others to rebuke the conduct of Mr. Rockefeller. His action was in the language of the statute, abusive or insulting; abusive because it is derogatory to the one whose conduct is referred to, and the insult lies in part in the subject matter of the rebuke and in part in the publicity of the infliction.
Now let me put to you this problem. The “New York Herald” had published a cartoon, in which I was portrayed as a hideous monster with a filthy muck-rake; and now suppose that I had appealed to Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions, complaining that James Gordon Bennett had “rebuked a citizen” by “subjecting him to ridicule or insult”—do you think that Justice Crain would have sent Bennett to jail? And do you think that the newspapers would have printed the decision with solemn and respectful comment, praising it as a proper rebuke to a disturber of public order?
I close the story of this long Colorado struggle with a benediction sent to me all the way across the continent: the “Los Angeles Times,” July 9th, 1914:
It develops that Upton Sinclair only served two of his three days’ sentence, after all. He was on a hunger strike, and after he had gone unfed for two days, his wife came and paid the rest of his fine and forced him out of jail. Wait till they have been married a little longer, and perhaps she will let him serve three years if he wants to do it.
I enquire among friends and learn that the general impression is that I declared a “hunger-strike,” and couldn’t stick it out, and let my wife come to my rescue. Again the newspapers! The truth is that I was as comfortable as any man ought to ask to be in jail; I had a cell to myself, and it was clean, and near a window, and I was allowed to have my mail, and all the books I wanted, and visitors at reasonable hours. But I wanted to appeal from that stupid decision; and in order to appeal, the lawyers explained, I must have something to appealfor. I couldn’t appeal for the time I spent in jail, for no court could restore that to me. I had to pay some money—one dollar at the least; and having paid this, I had to come out, whether I would or no. So the newspapers had a chance to report that Upton Sinclair, who had written a book telling how he had fasted for ten or twelve days, had been unable to stick out a three-day “hunger-strike”!
CHAPTER XXXIITHE ROOF-GARDEN OF THE WORLD
After these strenuous adventures I retired to private life to recuperate. I edited “The Cry for Justice,” and then, finding that I was still haunted by the Colorado situation, I wrote “King Coal.” Meantime I had moved to Southern California, seeking an open-air life. I have been here four years, and alas, I have had a new set of experiences with newspapers. As preliminary to them, there must be given a brief account of this “Roof-garden of the World.”
It exists because of climate. There are, of course, ranchmen who raise fruits and vegetables, and there are servants and chauffeurs and house-builders and plumbers, but the main industry of Southern California is climate. Everybody is consuming climate, and in addition to this, nearly everybody is trying to sell climate to “come-ons” from the East. The country has been settled by retired elderly people, whose health has broken down, and who have come here to live on their incomes. They have no organic connection with one another; each is an individual, desiring to live his own little life, and to be protected in his own little privileges. The community is thus a parasite upon the great industrial centres of other parts of America. It is smug and self-satisfied, making the sacredness of property the first and last article of its creed. It has a vast number of churches of innumerable sects, and takes their aged dogmas with deadly seriousness; its social life is display, its intellectual life is “boosting,” and its politics are run by Chambers of Commerce and Real Estate Exchanges.
There are, of course, a great number of ladies in Southern California with nothing to do. They have culture clubs, which pay celebrities to come and entertain them, and next to marrying a millionairess, this is the easiest way to get your living in Southern California. They will pay you as much as a hundred dollars for a lecture, and such an opportunity is naturally not to be sneezed at by a strike-agitator in debt. I had been living quietly for a year or so, working on “King Coal,” when I was invited to meet at luncheon one of the officials of the ultra-exclusiveFriday Morning Club of Los Angeles. I was duly inspected and adjudged presentable, and received an invitation to set forth my intellectual wares before the club assemblage.
Now, this was an important opportunity, as my friends pointed out. There are many such clubs in Los Angeles, and scores of others in the leisure-class towns round about. This first lecture was a test, and if I “made good,” I would receive more invitations, and might be able to live quietly and do my writing. The ladies who came to hear Upton Sinclair would, of course, come expecting to be shocked. If I didn’t shock them at all, my lecture would be a failure; I must be judicious, and shock them just exactly enough, so that they would come for more shocks. I am fortunate in having a wife who understands the psychology of ladies, and who undertook to groom me for this new role of leisure-class lecturer.
In the first place, there was the question of clothes. “You haven’t had a new suit in four or five years,” said my wife.
“How about the one I bought in England?”
“That heavy woolen suit? If you wore that on a summer day, the perspiration would stream down your face!”
“Well,” I ventured, “mightn’t they think it proper for a Socialist to wear old clothes? Mightn’t I be pathetic——”
Said M. C. S. “They don’t want anybody around who is not well dressed. It’s depressing. You must have a new suit.”
“But—we just haven’t the money to spare.”
“You can get a Palm Beach suit for ten dollars.”
“Isn’t that rather festive? I never wore anything like it.”
“Idiot! Papa wears them all the time.”
Now “papa,” you must understand, is—well, what “papa” does is the standard. So it was arranged that I should go into Los Angeles an hour or two earlier in the morning, and provide myself with a Palm Beach suit and pair of white shoes for two dollars. “They will be made of paper,” said my wife, “but you won’t have far to walk, and they’ll do for other lectures.”
M. C. S. does not go with me on these adventures, having not been well since the Colorado excitement. She stays at home and mends socks and writes sonnets, while I administer shocks to the leisure-class ladies. Her last injunction was a hair-cut. “The day of long-haired geniuses is past. Promise me you’ll have your hair cut.”
I promise, and I get the Palm Beach suit and the shoes,and then look for a barber. It is ten or eleven months before America’s entry into the war, but the “preparedness” enthusiasts are having some kind of celebration in Los Angeles, and the streets are a mass of red and white bunting; I walk a long distance, and find half a dozen places with red and white ribbons wound about poles, but they are not barber-shops. At last, however, I find one, just in the nick of time, and at ten o’clock sharp I present myself, all freshly groomed, to the charming ladies of the club, and am escorted onto the platform.
My theme is “The Voice of the Ages,” and I bring with me a copy of “The Cry for Justice,” and read passages from eminent ancient authors, startling my hearers by the revelation that Plato and Euripides and Isaiah and Jesus and Confucius and Dante and Martin Luther and George Washington were all members of the I. W. W. of their time. I read them Isaiah on “Ladies of Fashion”—all save one obscene sentence, which could not be uttered before modern ladies. I give them just exactly the proper number of thrills, mixed with the proper number of smiles, and they bombard me with questions for an hour, and we have a most enjoyable time.
But one tragedy befalls. I am quoting Frederick the Great on the subject of Militarism, and am moved to mention the fact that Los Angeles is now in a military mood. “I promised my wife I would get a hair-cut before I came here, but I almost missed it, because there were so many red and white decorations on the streets that I couldn’t find a barber-shop.” The instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had, as the boys say, “spilled the beans.” Driving home with a friend who is a member of the club, she told me what a success the lecture had been, and I replied: “Ah, no, you are mistaken! I ruined everything!”
“How?” asked my friend.
“Didn’t you hear me confuse the American flag with a barber-pole?”
“Nonsense!” said my friend. “They all laughed.”
“May be so,” said I. “But wait until you see the papers tomorrow morning!”
And sure enough, it was as I said! Next morning the “Los Angeles Times” published an account of the lecture, in which I was portrayed as a dandified creature who had appeared before the ladies decked in tennis flannels. Having since met Alma Whitaker, the woman who wrote this account,I dare stake my life that she knows perfectly well the difference between a Palm Beach suit and tennis flannels; but she wanted to make me hateful, and that was such a little lie! She went on to tell about my lecture, in which I had sneered at Jesus, and compared the American flag to a barber-pole! My audience had been highly indignant, according to her account, and one eminent lady had left the room in disgust.
And so next morning there was an editorial in the “Times,” of which I will quote about half. You will be struck by its peculiar style, and may be interested to know that it was written by General Otis himself, being a fair sample of the vitriol which every day for thirty years he poured out upon everything enlightened in California:
UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS
UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS
UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS
Many people believe that the prattlings of an anarchistic Upton Sinclair before a woman’s club are unworthy of serious attention; but the fact that the hall of the Friday Morning Club was filled to overflowing at his programme, and that the great majority of them sat throughout the entire lecture, would seem to prove that such illogical ravings have at least some power to impress. Some few women have been found courageous enough to voice their indignation that the club rostrum should be used for such ungodly purposes.
It is depressing to find a great number of intelligent women, well able to think for themselves, lending time and ear to a piffling collection of more-or-less brilliant quotations upholding anarchy, destruction, lawlessness, revolution, from the lips of an effeminate young man with a fatuous smile, a weak chin and a sloping forehead, talking in a false treble, and accusing them of leading selfish, self-indulgent lives. It would be laughable if it were not a little disconcerting. These women, who are doing such earnest work for their city, who, indeed, rank among the best intellect of the city, who have deeds rather than words to their credit—it seems incredible that they should be prepared to lend encouragement to such unintelligent, witless, anarchistic outpourings.
While slyly veiling his false doctrines as quotations from “intelligent ancient peasants,” and the prophet Isaiah, and the Greek classics, Upton Sinclair nevertheless makes no secret of his sympathy with dynamiters and murderers, and considers it an example of exquisite wit to speak of Jesus Christ with patronizing irreverence. His sense of humor also demanded that he belittle the flag of the United States, and, after pretending to confuse it with a barber’s pole scoff at the great national wave of emotion for the country’s righteous defense and honor.
An assembly of men of the same standing as the women of the Friday Morning Club could never be induced to listen to such insults to their creed and their country without violent protest. Never before an audience of red-blooded men could Upton Sinclair have voiced his weak, pernicious, vicious doctrines. His naïve, fatuous smile alonewould have aroused their ire before he opened his vainglorious mouth.
Let the fact remain that this slim, beflanneled example of perverted masculinity could and did get several hundred women to listen to him.
Now, as a matter of fact, it happened that I had given a far more radical lecture at the monthly dinner of the University Club, where three hundred men of Los Angeles had heard me with every evidence of cordial interest. The secretary of the club had told me that it was the only occasion he could remember when none of the diners had withdrawn to play chess until after the speaking was finished. But I had, of course, no way to make known this fact to the readers of the “Times,” nor even the true sentiments of the ladies of the Friday Morning Club. It happened that my friend George Sterling spoke at the club the following week, and I went with him and was asked to speak at the luncheon. I referred playfully to what the “Times” had said about me, and was astonished at the ovation I received. The women rose from their seats to let me know that they appreciated the insult to them involved in the “Times” editorial. It is the same thing that I have noted everywhere, whenever I refer to the subject of our newspapers. The American people thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!
CHAPTER XXXIIIA FOUNTAIN OF POISON
I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is literally a fact that I have yet to meet a single person who does not despise and hate his “Times.” This paper, founded by Harrison Gray Otis, one of the most corrupt and most violent old men that ever appeared in American public life, has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with abusiveness which seems almost insane. To one who understands our present economic condition, the volcano of social hate which is smouldering under the surface of our society, it would seem better to turn loose a hundred thousand mad dogs in the streets of Los Angeles, than to send out a hundred thousand copies of the “Times” every day.
You cannot live in Southern California and stand for any sort of liberal ideas without encountering the wrath of this paper. And when you have once done this, it pursues you with personal vindictiveness; no occasion is too small for it to lay hold of, nor does it ever forget you, no matter how many years may pass. My friend Rob Wagner writes me an amusing story about the feud between Otis and the city of Santa Barbara, a millionaire colony about a hundred miles from Los Angeles:
When the big fleet came around here some years ago I was director-generaling a very snappy flower festival at Santa Barbara, and as the “Times” played up all the bar-room brawls the sailors got into and belittled my pretty show, I got hold of the local correspondent and says: “Mac, why are you crabbing the show and featuring the rough stuff?” “Well the truth is, Bob, my pay depends upon the kind of stuff I send. A rotten story is good for columns, against a few paragraphs of the birds and the flowers. You know the General has towns as well as individuals on his index, and Santa Barbara is one of them. The General once owned the Santa Barbara ‘Press,’ and with his usual cave-man methods got in bad with the villagers, and they bumped him socially so hard that he finally left in great heat and swore vengeance, which he practices to this day. This has been going on for years.”
Now the old “General” is gone, but his “index” still stands.The song should read: “Old Otis’ body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, but his soul goes cursing on!” It goes on cursing, not merely movements of social reform and those who advocate them; it goes on cursing Santa Barbara! Soon after we came to Pasadena there was an earthquake shock, sufficiently severe to cause us to run out of our house. You understand, of course, that earthquakes are damaging to real-estate values; therefore there was no report of an earthquake in any Los Angeles paper next day—save that the “Times” reported an earthquake in Santa Barbara! A year or two later this happened again—and again it was an earthquake in Santa Barbara.
Also, Rob Wagner tells me of his own amusing experience with the “Times.” I quote:
During the Harriman campaign I deserted my class, kicked in and had Socialist meetings at my studio, and even enjoyed the degradation of offering hospice to Ben Reitman and Emma Goldman the night after they were run out of San Diego. So the General paid me the amazing compliment of putting me on his index, and gave orders that my name should not appear thereafter in his art columns. Anthony Anderson proved it to me by slipping in a harmless little notice of a portrait exhibit I was holding, which got the blue pencil. So you see that even an artist who might help the town in its very ingrowing aestheticism got the General’s axe if the General didn’t like his politics!
It happens, curiously enough, that I have met socially half a dozen members of the “Times” staff. They are cynical worldlings, doing a work which they despise, and doing it because they believe that life is a matter of “dog eat dog.” I met the lady, Alma Whitaker, who had written the account of my Friday Morning Club lecture. She had enjoyed the lecture, she said, but afterwards had gone to the managing editor and inquired how I was to be handled; she took it for granted that I would understand this, and would regard it tolerantly. I explained to her the embarrassments of an author in relation to an unpaid grocer’s bill. As a result of what she had written about me, I had not been invited by any other woman’s club in Southern California!
Also I met one of the high editors of the “Times,” an important personage whom they feature. Talking about the question of journalistic integrity, he said: “Sinclair, it has been so long since I have written anything that I believed that I don’t think I would know the sensation.”
My answer was: “I have been writing on public questionsfor twenty years, and I can say that I have never written a single word that I did not believe.”
I have had much to say about the Associated Press in the course of this book. I need say only one thing about it in Southern California—that its headquarters are in the editorial rooms of the “Los Angeles Times.” A good part of what goes on the Associated Press wire is first strained through the “Times” sieve; and so I can inform Mr. Fabian Franklin, formerly of the “New York Evening Post” and now of the “Review,” that his sacred divinity, the Associated Press, has established here in Southern California a system which makes it impossible that any news favorable to the radical cause should get onto the Associated Press wires, and that everything dealing with the radical movement in Southern California which goes over the Associated Press wires should be not merely false, but violently and maliciously false. For example a prominent criminal lawyer in Los Angeles is blown up by a bomb, and the report goes out to the country that the police authorities believe that this was the work of “radicals.” But next day the police authorities state officially that they have no such belief; and a couple of days later the crime is proven to have had a purely personal motive.
I have myself tested out, not once but several score of times, the system of the concrete wall and the news channel as it works here in Los Angeles. For example, when I read that Russia had a Socialist premier by the name of Kerensky, and that he did not know what to do with the Tsar and his family, I wrote to him a letter suggesting “An Island of Kings”—one of the Catalina Islands, off Los Angeles, as a place where the dethroned sovereigns of Europe might be interned, under the guardianship of the United States government. This, you perceive, was a “boost” to Southern California; it conveyed to the outside world the information that Southern California has a wonderful out-door climate, and beautiful islands with wild goats running over them, and deep sea fishing off the shores. I offered this story to the “Los Angeles Times,” and they grabbed it, and it went out at once over the Associated Press wires.
Then, again, America went into the war, and I found myself compelled to revise the conclusions of a life-time, and to give my support to a war. I debated the issue at a gathering of Socialists; and here again was news which world-capitalismdesired to have circulated, here was a well-known Socialist turning to the capitalist side! The “Times” printed the story and the “A. P.” sent it out. In order to make the record clear, I quote from the “Times”:
UPTON SINCLAIR FAVORS WAR
UPTON SINCLAIR FAVORS WAR
UPTON SINCLAIR FAVORS WAR
Has a Complete Reversal of Former Ideas.
Publicly Announces Views in Crown City.
Holds World’s Democracy Is in Danger.
Pasadena, Feb. 19.—After preaching vehemently against war for twenty years, Upton Sinclair, the Socialist writer, has joined hands with Mars. The propagandist’s exit from the ranks of the peace-at-any-price Socialists was made unexpectedly and dramatically yesterday afternoon at a mass meeting at the Pasadena High School. Sinclair’s announcement of his change of heart came after an address by Prof. I. W. Howeth of the University of California on the history and causes of war. In the open forum, which followed the addresses, Sinclair was the storm center in a discussion in which his stand was criticized by the Socialists and other peace advocates and applauded by others in favor of supporting the stand taken by President Wilson.
And then followed long extracts from my speech. As sent out by the Associated Press it was so garbled that I will ask the reader to read four paragraphs of the “Times” account. My reasons for asking this will appear later:
“My one interest in the world is democratic self-government. I have fought for this at every sacrifice of personal advantage for twenty years. I consider that all modern governments are evil, based upon injustice, but I am bound to recognize that there are degrees in this evil. The test is whether the government leaves the people free to agitate against it. This the British government to a great extent has done; so has the French; the German has not.
“For us to permit the Prussian ruling class to beat England to her knees by the methods of general piracy that have been adopted is to put democracy in peril of its life, and to make certain an age of military preparation in the United States, Canada and Australia.
“If we go into the war the thing to do is to decide in advance the terms, and let these be such as to unite all the democratic forces of the world behind us. We do not want Germany beaten to her knees and territories given to her enemies. We do not want to underwrite the program of Russia in Constantinople. We want to remove these points of contention from the arena.
“We want to heal up the ancient wounds. We want to teach all rulers and all peoples that civilization will permit no one to gain territory by war. We want to inter-nationalize the Dardanelles, Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, Poland, and to say that we, all the world, will fight to put down any state which at any time attempts to invade them.”
Again, on the first anniversary of the Russian revolution,before a mass meeting of the Russian Revolutionary Society of Los Angeles, I defended the idea that Russia must stand by the Allies until the Kaiser was overthrown. The “Times” gave two columns to this story, with big headlines. I quote the opening paragraphs, with apologies for the “Times’” atrocious English:
TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINEInvited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINEInvited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINE
Invited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
Upton Sinclair threw a monkey-wrench of facts of American manufacture into a mass meeting of Socialists and near-Socialists at the Labor Temple yesterday, that after cheers and tears for the Bolsheviki, their red riot of revolution, pledges of support of Lenine and his associates, and a notable evasion of facts for the sake of indulgence in rhetorical idealism, wound up by adopting a resolution for home rule in Ireland.
“So long as the United States government is behind the small nations and for justice in the world, every Socialist and every revolutionist should be behind the American government,” Sinclair told more than five hundred men and women, ranging in their sympathies from pale pacifism and yellow disloyalty up, amid hisses and cheers.
Mr. Sinclair’s speech, while not unexpected by the committee in charge of the arrangements, was not in keeping with the spirit of the meeting and threw a damp blanket on the more radical element that had gathered to pass resolutions and cheer the social revolution and the economic disintegration of the Russian Empire.
The Sinclair speech, which bristled with loyal and patriotic utterances, was sandwiched between an address by Michael Bey, secretary to Prof. Lomonosoff of the Russian Mission, and the address of Paul Jordan Smith.
Such was my stand during the war, as set forth in the news columns of the “Times.” But when the Kaiser was overthrown, and I saw America’s war for democracy being turned into a war to put down the first proletarian government in history, I went back into the radical camp—and what happened then? What happened was that instantly the news channels became a concrete wall! If you know anything about my going back into the radical camp, and the reasons therefor, you know it from the radical press, and not from the capitalist press. Since the day when I announced the change, the Associated Press has sent outnot one wordabout my point of view or my utterances; while the “Los Angeles Times” goes farther yet—the “Times” deliberately blinks the fact that I once “tossed a wrench into the red Russian machine,” and embarks on a campaign to make the public believe that I was disloyal during the war! You may find this beyond believing; but Ishall prove it to you. And so far successful has it been that recently a high school principal in Los Angeles, addressing the pupils of her school, referred to me as a “notorious disloyalist and traitor”!
There are, of course, libel laws in California, so the “Times” dares not come out fairly and squarely with the statement that I was disloyal during the war. What it does is to scan my every word and action, and report them with subtly chosen phrases which expose me to suspicion, without making definite charges. Surely you must admit that such calculated and systematic treachery on the part of an enormously rich and powerful newspaper is of public importance. You will expect me to prove my charge. Very well, here are two cases. Case one:
While I stood by the war, I didn’t stand by the Espionage act, and when some of my friends were arrested as pacifists, and stood in danger of ten or twenty years in jail, I went to the authorities and interceded, and succeeded in having the cases settled on the basis of a plea of guilty and the payment of fines. The “Times” knew what I was doing, and was foaming at the mouth about it, so I was told by several of its staff; but it dared not say anything, because I had won both the Federal judge and the prosecuting authorities to my way of thinking.
The deputy United States attorney, Mr. Palmer, happened to be a Southerner, a type of man I understand, and I got to know him during these negotiations. Later on I went to see him and said: “Mr. Palmer, I am writing a story, ‘Jimmie Higgins,’ which I want to publish serially in my magazine. It is a story of a Socialist in war-time, and its purpose is to win the Socialists to the idea of supporting the war. But I am in this dilemma. If I am going to show a man converted from opposition to the war, I first have to show how he felt when he was opposing it; I have to make him a real character, I have to make his arguments real arguments—which is a difficult thing to do in war-time. I would not want anybody to misunderstand my purpose and point of view; so I wonder if you would read the manuscript, and tell me if there is anything in it that might be open to misunderstanding.”
Mr. Palmer’s answer was that he was forbidden to give official opinions on anything before publication, but he would be very glad to give me a personal, unofficial opinion. Ianswered that I would regard this as a favor, and Mr. Palmer read the manuscript. No doubt he spoke about it to others, and the “Times” must have heard of the matter. Some months later appeared the following paragraph on the editorial page of the “Times”:
Upton Sinclair has stuck his fingers in the Tom Mooney mess. Sinclair has dropped his pen that for some time has been engaged in preparing the manuscript of a book whose loyalty had to be passed on by the United States District-Attorney, and is therefore in a position to sympathize with those who might run afoul of the law.
Now, note the subtle treachery of this phrasing. The loyalty of my manuscript “had to” be passed on. Practically everybody who read that paragraph would understand from it that the government had taken some action in the matter, had placed me under compulsion to submit the manuscript. Nobody would get the impression that the compulsion in the matter was the compulsion of my own conscience and judgment, my wish to make sure that my piece of fiction was not open to misunderstanding. Needless to say, the “Times” didn’t mention the fact that Mr. Palmer, having read the manuscript, wrote cordially to assure me that there was no possibility of its being misunderstood, and no need of any changes being made.
Case two—and still more significant:
It happened a year or more ago that I had to undergo an operation for appendicitis. I requested the authorities at the hospital not to give out news about this operation, because I do not care to have purely personal matters exploited in the papers. Thus it was a couple of weeks later, after I was out of the hospital, before anything was known about my operation. A friend of mine called me on the phone to ask if I would meet the Pasadena correspondent of the “Times,” Robert Harwood, a decent young fellow who was trying to learn to write. I said that I could not meet him at that time, because I had just come out of the hospital. My friend explained these circumstances to Harwood, and Harwood sent in a news item, which appeared next morning under the headline: “Anarchist Writer in Hospital.”
Now, of course, the editors of the “Times” know perfectly well that I am not an Anarchist. When they call me an Anarchist, they do it merely to hurt me. When in war-time they add the words: “Sinclair is still under surveillance,” they mean, of course, that their readers shall derive the impressionthat the “Anarchist writer” is under surveillance by the Department of Justice; but if I should sue them for libel, they would plead that they meant I was under surveillance by a surgeon!
A couple of weeks later I met young Harwood, and he made an embarrassed apology for the item, explaining that he had turned in to the “Times” a perfectly decent and straight mention of my operation; the article had been rewritten in the “Times” office, and the false headline put on by the managing editor of the paper. The manuscript of the copy that Harwood had turned in had been read in advance by another man who was present at the dinner, Ralph Bayes, formerly city editor of the “Los Angeles Record,” so there were two witnesses to the facts.
To call a man an Anarchist at this time was to place him in obloquy and in physical danger. Both Harwood and Bayes were willing to testify to the facts, and I considered the possibility of suing the “Times.” I consulted a lawyer who knows Los Angeles conditions intimately, and he said: “If you expect to win this suit, you will have to be prepared to spend many thousands of dollars investigating with detectives the records and opinions of every prospective talesman. The ‘Times’ will do that—does it regularly in damage-suits. If you don’t do it, you will find yourself confronting a jury of Roman Catholics and political crooks. In any case you will have a jury which has no remotest idea of any difference between a Socialist and an Anarchist, so the utmost you could possibly get would be six cents.”
A few days later young Harwood came to see me again. He was anxious for me to bring suit, because he was sick of his job. There was a strike of the Pacific Electric Railway employes in Los Angeles. The city, you understand, is celebrated as an “open shop” town, and the “Times” is the propaganda organ of the forces of repression.
“Mr. Sinclair,” said Harwood, “I was at the car-barns here in Pasadena all evening yesterday, and not a single car came in. I wrote the facts in my story, and the ‘Times’ altered it, reporting that the cars had run on schedule every ten minutes.”
This is the regular practice of the “Times.” All its accounts of strikes are hate-stories, entirely disregarding the facts; all its accounts of political events and conditions, local, state, or national, are class-propaganda. It will write its ownviews of political conditions in Washington, and label it “Exclusive Dispatch.” It will take the dispatches which come through the Associated Press, and put hate headlines over them—and sometimes it is so overpowered by hate that the headlines do not fit the context! Thus I read a large headline, “STOKES WOMAN SENT TO PRISON”; and when I read the dispatch under the headline I discover, quite plainly stated, that the “Stokes woman” isnotsent to prison! Again, the Western Union Telegraph Company defies the United States Government, refusing to accept the decision of the War Labor Board. This is placed under the headline: “TELEGRAPH COMPANY DEFIES UNION LABOR.” A few days later comes the news that the telegraphers’ union is threatening to strike because of the company’s attitude. This bears the title: “TELEGRAPHERS’ UNION DEFIES GOVERNMENT.”
Needless to say, a newspaper which thus lies in the interest of privilege is deeply and reverently religious. Every Monday the “Times” prints a couple of pages of extracts from sermons, and now and then its editorial page breaks into a spiritual ecstasy of its own. I clipped one sample during the war—two columns, twelve point leaded, with caps here and there: “The One Tremendous Thought.”
And what is this thought which overwhelms the “Times”? The thought “that in this war the world is to be made safe, not so much for democracy, as for men’s souls.” This war, “sinister, cruel, bloody and bestial though it be,” has placed our soldier-boys under the care of religion. “Upon the Protestant soldiers are the sleepless eyes of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Around our Catholic soldiers are the faithful arms of the Knights of Columbus.” Christianity had been weakening before “the noisy school of the sciences”; but—
Now cometh the war! And behold, a professedly Christian world that had been slipping away from belief in THE GREAT MIRACLE OF THE AGES, now swings back to the old belief again. The Christian world is more truly Christian.
This then is the striking fact of the war.
And this is the one tremendous thought.
And from this overpowering sublimity, take a jump to the news columns, in which the “Times” reports family scandalsin minute detail. Observe the chaste refinement of its headlines—this pious organ of sanctity!