Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair

by Upton Sinclair

  II

  Amid this perplexity, Bunny found comfort in the backing of Billy George, who was Anglo-Saxon and broad-shouldered, and a senior besides. Billy assured him he was right, and suggested that they take some steps to make their ideas understood to the rest of the student body. Why not organize a little group, the Society for the Study of Russian Problems, or something of that sort? Bunny should ask Mr. Irving to advise them, and perhaps join them—it would be much better if they could have the backing of one of the teachers. So Bunny went to Mr. Irving, who said at once that he could not give any advice on the subject, for the reason that it would jeopardize his position to do so; the students would have to follow their own judgment. The young instructor did add this much, they ought surely not use the name "Russian," but take some inoffensive title, the "Liberal Club," or the "Social Problems Society." Bunny took that advice to the others, meeting in one of the class-rooms after hours. Billy George said it didn't seem very "spunky" of Mr. Irving; whereupon Rachel Menzies flared up, he had no right to hint at such a thing, they all knew what the teacher's position was, and he had a perfect right to keep out of trouble. What business had Mr. George to be finding fault, when he himself had done nothing publicly? The other demanded to know what he could do, and the girl was not backward in suggestions. Why not start a student paper, a little four-page sheet, once a week or even once a month? It would cost very little, and would make a hit, they could be sure; look how many people had wanted to read Mr. Ross's letter about Siberia! If they printed that letter they would set the campus on fire. Mr. George could have the honor of being editor, and Rachel would contribute her share of the cost. There was obvious irony in that, considering the quantity of iron pipe which Billy's father was known to be marketing in Angel City. But they discussed it gravely, and Billy didn't think he could take any responsibility; his old man would pull him out of college, and put him to work on a book-keeper's stool. Then, automatically, the eyes of the group turned to Bunny. What did he think? Bunny found his cheeks growing red. He had wanted to explain his ideas to other people, but had thought of doing it in some dignified way, privately and quietly. A paper would make such a noise! Rachel Menzies apparently didn't mind a noise, but Henrietta would, she would be horrified by the bare idea. Also there was Dad—the "education business" would be damned forever by such a venture. So Bunny had to say no; and Rachel Menzies said that was all right, there were plenty of excuses, and she didn't blame anybody for finding the best one, but at least they had no business criticizing Mr. Irving for lack of courage!

  III

  Soon after that Bunny read in the paper that the transport "Bennington" had arrived in San Francisco with two thousand troops from Siberia. Paul's unit was listed; so Bunny called up Ruth on the telephone and told her the news, and said, be sure to let him know as soon as she got word. Two days later Ruth called him— Paul had arrived at Paradise. It was a Friday, so Bunny "cut" his afternoon courses, and jumped into his car. Dad had gone over to Lobos River, to see to a "fishing" job, and so missed this first meeting. It was almost twenty months that Paul had been away, and Bunny was keyed up with eagerness. The first glance gave him a shock, for Paul looked quite terrible—gaunt and yellow, his khaki jacket hanging loose upon him. "You've been sick!" cried Bunny. "Yes," said Paul; "but I'm getting all right now." "Paul, tell me what happened!" "Well, it was no picnic." And he seemed to think that would satisfy both his sister and his friend—after a year and a half! They were over in the cabin on the Rascum tract, where Ruth and Paul had first begun house-keeping. It was supper-time, and the girl had prepared a bounteous repast; but Paul wasn't much on eating just now, he said—afraid to trust himself with good food. While they sat at table he told them about Manila, where they had stopped; and about a storm on the Pacific; but not a word about Siberia! Of course that wouldn't do. After the meal they got Paul settled in an arm-chair, and Bunny said, "Look here, Paul, I've been trying to understand about this Russian business. I'm quarrelling with most everyone I know about it, and I counted on you for the truth. So please do tell us about it—just what happened to you." Paul sat with his head lying back. His face had always been sombre, a prominent nose and wide mouth with a tendency to droop at the corners; haggard as he was, this tendency was accentuated, he looked like a mask of sorrow. "What happened to me?" he said, in his slow voice; and then he seemed to raise himself to the effort of recalling it. "I'll tell you what happened, son; I was kidnapped." "Kidnapped!" The two of them echoed the word together. "Yes, just that. I thought I went into the army to put down the Kaiser, but I was kidnapped by some Wall Street bankers, and put to work as a strike-breaker, a scab." Ruth and Bunny could only sit and gaze at Paul, and wait for him to say what he meant by these strange words. "You remember our oil strike, Bunny? Those guards the Federation sent up here—husky fellows, with plenty of guns, and good warm clothes, rain-coats and water-proof hats and everything. Well, that's what I've been doing for a year and a half—putting down a strike for Wall Street bankers. The guards here at Paradise got ten dollars a day, and if they didn't like it, they could quit; but I got thirty a month and beans, and if I tried to quit they'd have shot me. That was the cinch the bankers had." Again there was a pause. Paul had closed his eyes, and he told a part of his story that way, looking at things he saw inside his mind. "First thing, the allies took the city of Vladivostok. The strikers had that city, with a perfectly good government, everything orderly and fine. They didn't make much resistance—they were too surprised at our behavior. We shot a few long-shoremen, who tried to defend one building, and the strikers had a big funeral with a procession; they brought the red coffins to the American consulate with banners that asked us why we had shot their people. It happened to be the Fourth of July, and we were celebrating our revolution; why had we overthrown theirs? Of course we couldn't answer; none of us knew why we had done it; but little by little we began to find out." Paul paused, and waited so long that Bunny thought he wasn't going on. "Why, Paul?" "Well, just outside that city, along the railroad track, there were fields—I guess there must have been ten or twenty acres, piled twenty feet high with stuff—guns and shells, railroad locomotives, rails and machinery, motor trucks—every kind of thing you could think of to help win a war. Some of it was in cases, and some without even a tarpaulin over it, just lying there in the rain, and sinking slowly—some of the heavy stuff two feet down in the mud. There was a hundred million dollars of it, that had been put off the steamers, intended to be taken across to Russia; but then the revolution had come, and there it lay. One of our jobs was to guard it. At first, of course, we thought it belonged to the government; but then little by little we got the story. Originally the British government had bought it for the Tsar's government, and taken bonds for it. Later, when we came into the war, the firm of Morgan and Company took over the bonds from the British government, and these supplies were Morgan's collateral, and we had overthrown the Vladivostok government to protect it for him." Again there was a pause. "Paul," said Bunny, anxiously, "do you really know that?" Paul laughed, but without any happiness. "Know it?" he said. "Listen, son. They sent out an expedition, two hundred and eighty men to run the railroad—every kind of expert, traffic men, telegraphers, linemen, engineers. They all wore army uniforms, and the lowest man had the rank of second lieutenant; of course we thought they were part of the army, like the rest of us. But they got fancy pay, and by God, it wasn't army pay, it was checks on a Wall Street bank! I've seen dozens of those checks. It was a private expedition, sent to run the railroad for the bankers." "But why, Paul?" "I've told you—to break the strike. The biggest strike in all history—the Russian workers against the landlords and the bankers; and we were to put the workers down, and the landlords and bankers up! Here and there were bunches of refugees, former officers of the Tsar's army, grand dukes and their mistresses, landowners and their families; they would get together and call themselves a government, and it was our job to rush them supplies, and they would print paper money, a
nd hire some adventurers, and grab a bunch of peasants and 'conscript' them, and that would be an army, and we'd move them on the railroad, and they'd overthrow another Soviet government, and slaughter a few more hundreds or thousands of workingmen. That's been my job for the past year and half; do you wonder I'm sick?" "Paul, did you have to kill people?" It was Ruth's voice of horror. "No, I don't think I killed anybody. I was a carpenter, and my only fights were with the Japs, that were supposed to be our allies. You see, the Japs were there to grab the country, so they didn't want either the 'white' Russians or the 'red' ones to succeed. The first thing they did was to counterfeit the money of the 'white' government; they brought in billions of fake roubles, and bought everything in sight—banks and hotels and stores and real-estate— they made themselves the capitalists, and broke the 'white' government with their fake money They resented our being there, and the fact that we really tried to help the 'whites'; they butted in on our job, and there were times when we lined up our troops and threatened to fire in five minutes if they didn't move out. They were always picking on our men; I was fired at three times in the dark—got one bullet through my hat and another through my shirt." Ruth sat there with her hands clasped together and her face white. She could see those bullets going through Paul's clothing right now! And be sure that she was not unlearning any of her dislike for war! "A lot of our fellows came to hate the Japs," said Paul; "but I didn't. I got a philosophy out of this—the only thing I did get. The ruling classes in Japan were grabbing half a continent; but all the poor soldiers were grabbing was pay even poorer than mine. They didn't know what they were there for—they, also, had been kidnapped. There were some that had been to America, and I got to talk with them, and we never had any trouble in agreeing. That was true of Czecho-Slovaks, and Germans—every nation I met. I tell you, Bunny, if the private soldiers could have talked it over, there wouldn't have been any war. But that is what is known as treason, and if you try it you're shot."

  IV

  Paul and Bunny talked, that Friday night, and a lot of Saturday and Sunday, and Paul explained the Russian revolution. There was an easy way for Bunny to understand it, Paul said; if there was anything that puzzled him, all he had to do was to remember their oil strike. "Ask yourself how it would have been at Paradise, and then you know everything about Russia and Siberia—yes, and Washington and New York and Angel City. The Petroleum Employers' Federation, that fought our strike, they're exactly the sort of men that sent our army into Siberia—often they're the same individuals. I read in the paper yesterday how a syndicate of oil men in Angel City has got some concessions in Saghalien. I remember one name, Vernon Roscoe. He's one of the big fellows, isn't he?" Paul said this seriously, and Bunny and Ruth exchanged a smile. Paul had been away so long, he had lost track of the oil-game entirely! Said Paul, "The operators are the same, and so are the strikers. Do you remember that little Russian Jew, Mandel, a roughneck that was in our strike? Used to play the balalaika, and sing us songs about Russia—we wouldn't let him make speeches, because he was a 'red.' Well, by jingo, I ran into him in Manila, on the way out. He'd been travelling steerage on a steamer, on the way to Russia, and they found he was a Bolshevik, and threw him ashore and took away everything he had, even his balalaika. I loaned him five dollars, and six months later he turned up at Irkutsk, in a ‘Y' hut. Lying on a shelf there was a balalaika, and he said, 'Why, that's mine! How did it get here?' They told him a soldier had brought it, but didn't know how to use it. 'You can have it if you can play it,' they said, so he played it all right, sang us the Volga Boatman, and then the Internationale—only of course nobody knew what it was. A few days later there were orders to arrest him, but I helped him get away. Months after that we came on him out in the country, not far from Omsk; he had been a Soviet commissar, and the Kolchak people had captured him, and buried him alive, up to his nose, just so that he could breathe. When we found him the ants had eaten most of his eyes, but there was still some life in him, his forehead would wrinkle." It was while Paul was alone with Bunny that he told this; and the younger man sat, speechless with horror. "Oh, yes," said Paul; "that's the kind of thing we had to see—and know we were to blame for it. I could tell you things much worse—I've helped to bury a hundred bodies of people that had been killed, not in battie, just shot down in cold blood, men and women, children, even babies. I've seen a 'white' officer shoot women in the head, one after another; and with our bullets, brought there by our railway men—I mean our bankers' railway men. A lot of our boys went plumb crazy with it. Out of the two thousand that came off our transport, I doubt if there were ten per cent quite normal. I said that to our surgeon, and he agreed."

  V

  All this was so different from what Bunny had been taught that it was hard for him to adjust his thoughts to it. He would go off and think it over, and then come back with another string of questions. "Then Paul, you mean the Bolsheviks aren't bad people at all!" Paul answered, "Just apply the rule—remember Paradise! They were workingmen, like any other workingmen on strike. A lot of them have come from America—got their training here. I used to meet them and have long talks—all kinds of fellows, that had been all over this country. They are people with modern ideas, trying to dig the Russians out of their ignorance and superstition. They believe in education—I never saw such people for teaching; everywhere, whatever they were doing, they were always preaching, having lectures, printing things—why, son, I've seen newspapers printed on old scraps of brown butcher paper, or wrappings our army had thrown away. I learned Russian pretty well—and it was just the sort of thing our strikers printed at Paradise, only of course these people have got farther in their struggle against the bosses, they see things more clearly than we do." Bunny was staring, a little frightened. "Paul! Then you agree with the Bolsheviks?" Paul laughed, a grim laugh. "You go up to Frisco and talk with the men on that transport! That army was Bolshevik to a man— and not only the privates, but the officers. I guess that's why they brought us home. There was mutiny in Archangel, you know—or maybe you don't." "I heard something—" "Let me tell you, Bunny—I've been there, and I know. The Bolsheviks are the only people in that country that have any faith or any solidarity; and they're going to run it, too—mark my words, the Japs will get out, the same as we did. You can't beat people that will die for their cause, the last man and the last woman." Said Bunny, timidly, "Then it isn't true what we've been told— I mean about their nationalizing the women?" "Oh, my Lord!" said Paul. "Is that the sort of rot you've been thinking?" "Well, but how can we know what to think?" Paul laughed. "Come to think of it, I met some women that had been nationalized by the Bolsheviks—as school-teachers. They taught the men in their armies to read and write, and made every man swear to teach ten others what he had learned. I saw a couple of dozen such women in a cattle-car on the Trans-Siberian railway, without a single blanket, nothing but blocks of wood for pillows, not even a bucket to serve for a toilet. They had several cases of Asiatic cholera among them, and they'd been that way for ten or twelve days—prisoners of war, you understand, waiting until they got to Irkutsk, where they'd be shot without a trial. 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. You can set this down for a fact about the Russian revolution, all the way from Vladivostok to Odessa and Archangel—that where the 'reds' did any killing or executing, the 'whites' did ten, and a hundred times as much. You never hear about 'white' atrocities, because the newspapers don't report them—they are too busy telling how Lenin has murdered Trotsky, and Trotsky has thrown Lenin into jail."