Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair

by Upton Sinclair

  VII

  There was a telephone call for Bunny—he was to call "long distance" in a city a hundred miles up the state. When he did so, there was a nurse in a hospital, with a message from Bertie; she wanted him to come to her. She was not in any danger, and there was no use worrying the family, therefore she wished him to say nothing about the matter. Bunny of course jumped into his car and made all haste. His sister had been visiting the Normans, a long way from this hospital. When he got there, the attendants told him that Bertie had had an operation for appendicitis, and was doing well. He was taken up to her room, and there she lay, pale, and strange-looking, because he had never seen her without her colors. Everything about her was spotlessly clean, a lacy white nightgown, and soft white pillows in which she lay sunken—nun-like, and pathetic in her gladness to see him. "Gee whiz, Bertie! How did this happen?" "It came quite suddenly. It was pretty bad, but I'm all right now. Everybody's been so good to me." There was a nurse in the room, and Bertie waited until she had gone out and closed the door. Then she fixed her tired eyes on her brother, and said, "We call it appendicitis, because that's the conventional thing, and what you'll have to tell Dad and Aunt Emma. But you might as well know the truth—I was going to have a baby." "Oh, my God!" Bunny stared at her, aghast. "You needn't begin acting up—you're no spring chicken, Bunny." "Who is the man?" "Now, don't start any melodrama. You know it might happen to anybody." "Yes—but who was it, Bertie?" "I want you to get this straight at the beginning—it wasn't his fault. I did it on purpose." Bunny didn't know what to make of that. "You might as well tell me, Bertie." "Well, I want you to behave yourself. I'm my own boss, and I knew what I was doing. I wouldn't marry him now for a million dollars—not for all his millions, because he's a yellow pup, and I despise him." "You mean Charlie Norman!" She nodded in assent; and as she saw Bunny's hands clench, she said, "You don't have to do any heroics. There can't be a shot-gun wedding when the bride refuses to attend." "Tell me about it, Bertie." "Well, we were in love quite desperately for a while, and I thought he was going to marry me. But then I saw he wouldn't lay off other women, and I thought it over, and I decided, if I had a baby, he'd have to marry me, so I tried it." "Good God, Bertie!" "You needn't make faces. Thousands of women do it—it's one of our tricks. But Charlie's a yellow cur. When I told him about it, he behaved so disgustingly, I told him to go to hell. I got the name of a doctor that would fix me up, and Dad will have a thousand dollars to pay, and that's all the damage." "Bertie," he whispered, "why in the world do you have to do things like that?" "Don't worry, I'll not do it again. I had to learn, like everybody else." "But why did you have to do it once? 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. Well, I fell down, and now I want somebody to be kind to me for a few minutes, if you've possibly got that in you." It looked as if the tears were coming into her eyes, so Bunny hastened to say, "All right, old girl, I'll lay off. But naturally I was taken aback." "You needn't be. The doctor says it's done a million times a year in the United States. I amused myself figuring that out—it's about once every thirty seconds. Life is a messy business. Let's talk about something else!" It was a time for confidences, and she wanted to know about him and Vee—was he going to marry her? He said he didn't know if she would have him. Bertie laughed—she would have him all right, she was playing her cards cleverly. But Bunny told how many times she got irritated at him, and why, and that gave Bertie occasion for a discourse. She was the same old Bertie; she might weaken for a few minutes, and ask him to be kind, but she still believed in money, and the things money bought. She discussed Vee from that point of view; it would be more dignified, and safer in the long run, for him to marry a lady, rather than an actress; but all the same, Vee had a lot of sense, and he might do worse. To go and wreck their happiness for the sake of his fool Bolshevik notions—that was just sickening! Then she wanted to know about Dad's affairs, and how that deal in Washington was going; would they really get the leases? And was it true that Dad had any real pull with the administration in Washington? Bunny was sure he had; and Bertie revealed what she had in mind. "I've been thinking it over—I've had a lot of time to think, lying here. I believe that what I'll do is to go back to Eldon Burdick. He's a good deal of a dub, but you always know where to find him, and that seems to me a virtue right now." "Would you tell him about this?" asked Bunny, wonderingly. "No, why should I? He's made his mistakes, I guess, and he doesn't advertise them. He knows I've been living with Charlie, but I think he's still in love with me. What I have in mind is that I could make a career for him; I'd get Dad or Verne to pull some wires and get him a good diplomatic post. I believe I'd like to live in Paris, you meet all the important people there, and it's very good form. We're going to have to take charge of Europe, Eldon says, and I think he's the sort of man they'll need. How does that strike you?" "Well, if it's what you want, I've no doubt you can get it. But it'll be rather tough on Eldon to have me for a brother-in-law." "Oh, you're going to behave yourself," said Bertie, easily. "This is just a sort of children's complaint that you'll get over."

  VIII

  The navy department ousted the little company which had started drilling on the Sunnyside naval reserve. It sent in a bunch of marines to do it, and this unprecedented move attracted a lot of attention, which worried Dad and Verne. The latter had a man up there, to fix matters with the newspaper correspondents; and "Young Pete" was in Washington, seeing to things there. You began to notice in the newspapers items to the effect that the navy department was greatly worried because companies occupying lands adjoining the naval reserves were drilling, and draining the navy's oil; this would be a calamity, and the authorities were of the opinion that in order to avoid it the reserves should be turned over to the department of the interior, which would lease them upon terms advantageous to the government. Bunny didn't need to ask his father about that propaganda; he knew what it meant, and he waited, wondering—was it possible to get away with anything so crude? Could anybody fail to see that the government could have taken the adjoining lands, under the same powers which had set aside the present reserves? Or that the navy could have put down offset wells on its own property, exactly as any oil man would have done? But no, this administration was not thinking about the navy—it was thinking about Dad and Verne! When the oil men had bought the Republican convention, they had also got the machinery of the party, and that included the press, which now accepted meekly the "dope" sent out from Washington, and commended the prompt measures of the administration to protect the navy's precious oil. Then a peculiar thing happened. Dan Irving called Bunny on the phone, and made a date for lunch. The first thing he said, "Well, the labor college is flooey—naa poo!" He went on to declare, it was a waste of time to try to keep such an enterprise alive, so long as the present labor leaders were in power; they didn't want the young workers to be educated—it wouldn't be so easy for the machine to control them. Last week somebody had raided the college at night, and taken most of its belongings, except the debts; Dan had decided to pay these out of his savings and quit. "What are you going to do?" asked Bunny. And Dan explained he had been sending in news to a little press service which a bunch of radicals were maintaining in Chicago, and he had got a lot of information from Washington that had attracted attention. He had some friends there on the inside, and the upshot of it was that Dan had been offered fifteen dollars a week to go to the national capital as correspondent of this press service. "I can exist on that, and it's the best job I can do." Bunny was enthusiastic. "Dan, that's fine!
There's plenty of rascals that need to be smoked out!" "I know it; and that's what I want to see you about. One of these things I've got my eye on is these naval reserve oil leases. They look mighty fishy to me. Unless I'm missing my guess, the people behind it are Vernon Roscoe and Pete O'Reilly, and there's bound to be black wherever their hands have touched." "I suppose so," replied Bunny, trying to keep his voice from going weak. "There's talk in Washington that that's how Crisby came into the cabinet. The deal was fixed up before Harding got his nomination. General Wood says the nomination was offered to him if he'd make such a deal, and he turned it down." "Good Lord!" said Bunny. "Of course I don't know yet, but I'm going to dig it out. Then I remembered that Roscoe is an associate of your father's, and it occurred to me, it would be awkward as the devil if I was to come on anything—well, you know what I mean, Bunny—after your father was so kind to me, and you put up money for the college—" "Sure, I know," said Bunny. "You don't have to worry about that, Dan. You go ahead and do your job, just as if you'd never known us." "That's fine of you. But listen—I was afraid maybe some day there might be a misunderstanding, unless I got this clear, that I never got any hint on this subject from you. My recollection is positive, you've never mentioned it in my hearing. Is that right?" "It's absolutely right, Dan." "You never discussed your father's business with me at all— except the strike; and you haven't discussed Roscoe's or O'Reilly's, either." "That is true, Dan. There'll never be any question about that." "There will be, Bunny, rest assured—if I should bust loose in Washington, nothing would ever convince Roscoe and O'Reilly that I hadn't wormed it out of you. I'm afraid nothing would convince your father, either. But I want to be sure that your own mind is clear, I haven't been dishonorable." Bunny gave him his hand on it; and not one of the veteran poker-players who sat all night in the smoke-filled living-room of the "ranch-house" at Paradise could have acted more perfectly the part of impassivity. Bunny even made himself finish lunch, and he wrote a check to cover part of the debt of the labor college, and gave his friend a hearty farewell and best wishes for his new job. Then he drove off in his car, and was free to look as he felt, which was quite unhappy! He decided that it was his duty to tell his father about this conversation. It couldn't make any difference to Dan Irving's work, and it might yet be possible to keep Dad out of the mess. But when the elder Ross got home that evening, Bunny had no time to get in a word. "Well, son, we got those leases!" "You don't say, Dad!" "They've been approved, and Verne left for Washington today. They'll be signed next week, and you and me are going to take a trip and have some fun!"

  IX

  Joe and Ikey Menzies had been out of jail for a couple of months, their comrades of the Workers' party having scraped together the bail. Now came their trial, with several other members of the party. The state was undertaking to show that this organization was nothing but the Communist party under a camouflage; it was the "legal" part of the organization, but the real direction was in the hands of an "underground" group, which received funds and took orders from Moscow. It advocated the forcible overthrow of the "capitalist state," and the setting up of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," after the Russian pattern. On the other hand, the indicted men claimed that they had organized a legitimate working-class political party, and their attitude to violence was purely defensive. They believed the capitalists would never permit the power to be taken from them peaceably; it was the capitalists who would overthrow the constitution, and the workers would have to defend themselves. The prisoners were all tried at once, and the procedure took three weeks and was quite an education in contemporary problems—or would have been, had the newspapers reported both sides. To get the workers' side, you had to sit in the court room; and Bunny went whenever he could get loose from the university. He was there when the prosecution sprung a "surprise" witness, and it was a surprise to Bunny also—his boyhood friend, Ben Skutt! Ben, it appeared, had grown a moustache and taken a course in the Moscow dialect, and had turned up as an oil worker out of a job, and been admitted to the Workers' party, and before long had got a job in the office. Now he had harrowing stories to tell of the criminal things he had heard said, and of efforts the party had made to incite the oil workers to rise and destroy the wells. On the other hand, so Bunny was told by Ikey Menzies, the Communists were ready to swear that Ben Skutt had himself done all the proposing of destruction—at the crisis of the strike he had spent his time insisting that the only way to save the situation was to get a bunch of real fighting men and burn up half a dozen oil fields. Bunny went home to his father. "Dad, just what was it made you get rid of Ben Skutt?" "Why, I found he'd been taking commissions from the other feller. He'd been up to other rascalities, too." "Just what?" Dad laughed. "He had a scheme that was a wonder. You know, down there at Prospect Hill, people were in a crazy hurry to drill; the owner of the next lot was getting his well down first, and draining all the oil away. Ben and another feller would find a bunch of lot owners just on the point of making a good lease; and Ben would have his pal give him a quit-claim deed to one of those lots. Ben would record the deed, and of course, when the title company come to report on the property, there was that cloud on the title. The owner would come hustling after Ben Skutt in a panic, what the hell was this? And Ben would look shocked, and tell how he had bought the lot from some feller in good faith. Who was the feller? Well, the feller had disappeared, and nobody could find him. But there Ben had the lease tied up, and the drilling couldn't start. The lot owner would rage and swear—all the lot owners in the lease was all tied up together, and nobody could do anything with their property till that one lot had got free. To go into court and clear the title would take six months or so, and meantime the chance to lease would be gone; so the owners would have to chip in and pay Ben five thousand or so— whatever he claimed he had paid to the other man." "I should think that trick would have been tried a lot of times," remarked Bunny; and Dad answered, it would be tried just long enough for the news to git round, and then some lot owner would stick a gun under Ben's nose, and settle it that way. What had happened in his case was the usual thing, a woman had got hold of him and plucked him clean, and that was why he was doing spy work for the patriotic societies. Bunny knew that his father didn't owe anything to this slippery rascal, and wouldn't mind his being exposed, provided Bunny's name was not dragged in. It would be easy to trace the matter down, by looking up Ben's real estate transactions in the county records; he would have given a quit-claim deed to the lot owners whom he had held up, and if these men were still in the neighborhood, no doubt they would testify, or could be made to. Bunny saw Rachel at the university next morning and told her the story, and gave her a hundred dollar bill to cover the costs of a title search. She passed it on to Joe or Ikey, and two days later Ben was confronted by half a dozen infuriated citizens, male and female, who did a good deal to shake the jury's faith in his testimony as to secret conspiracies in the Workers' party! The jury disagreed in the case of all but two men, the leading party directors; these got six years apiece, but the Menzies boys got off, and the party held a celebration, which was described in the newspapers as an orgy of red revolutionary raving.

  X

  Dad was not so much troubled by the news which Bunny told him, that Dan Irving was on the trail of Vernon Roscoe in the national capital. There was bound to be gossip about the lease, of course; there were always "soreheads," trying to make trouble, but everybody would understand it was just politics. It was the biggest "killing" of Dad's life-time, and of Verne's, too; they would go ahead and drill the land and out the oil, and nothing else would count. You had to be a sort of hard-shell crab in this game; it was too bad Bunny wasn't able to grow the necessary shell. Also, it was too bad that a nice young feller like "the professor" couldn't find anything better to do with himself than to go smelling round Verne's out-house. There had been a new company formed, to develop this greatest oil field in America, and Dad was part owner of the stock, and a vice-president, with another hundred thousand a
year for directing the development work. But he wasn't going to wear himself out with detail, he promised Bunny; he had trained some competent young fellers by now, and all he had to do was direct them. It was a wonderful job, and he was all wrapped up in putting it through, working harder than ever, in defiance of his doctors. A telegram came from Verne; the leases had been signed. Bunny arranged to get a week off from his studies—such favors could be had by a grave old senior, especially when there was hope that his father might endow a chair of research in petroleum chemistry. They took a long drive to Sunnyside, a remote part of the state, grazing country, with very few settlers, and poor roads. They stayed in a crude country hotel, and inspected the new fields, riding horseback part of the time. Dad's geologists were there, and the engineers and surveyors; they decided upon the drilling sites, and the roads, and the pipe lines, and the tank-farm—yes, even a town, and how the streets were to run, and where the moving picture theatre and the general store were to be! The necessary wires had been pulled, and the county was to start work on a paved road next week. It was all hunkydory! Bunny ought to have been interested in all this; he ought to have been proud of the "killing," like any loyal son. Instead of that, here he was as usual, "smelling round the out-house" to use the ex-mule-driver's crude phrase. The fates which willed that Bunny should be always on the wrong side of his father's work followed him here to this country hotel, and brought him into contact with an old ranchman, a feeble-faced, pathetic old fellow with skin turned to leather by sixty years of baking heat and winds. Anxious watery blue eyes he had, and a big case of papers under his arm, which he wouldn't leave in his room for fear they would be stolen. He wanted Dad to consider a lease, and of course Dad had no time to fool with little leases, and told him so, and that settled it. But the old man found out somehow that Bunny lacked the customary hard-shell of the big oil-crabs, and succeeded in luring the young man to his room and showing his documents. It was a certified file from the department of the interior, all fixed up with impressive red seals and blue ribbons—but all the same it wasn't complete, the old man declared; somebody had stolen the essential documents from the government files, which showed how "Mid-Central Pete" had done him out of his homestead. "It's a feller named Vernon Roscoe, one of the big crooks in this game." The old man, Carberry, had set out to homestead a claim to some lands nearby; and oil had been discovered, and Mid-Central Pete had just come in and shoved him out, paying him not a cent for his twenty-two hundred dollars of improvements. They could do this—the old man had a copy of the law to show how it read, excluding "mineral lands" from homestead rights; there were thousands in this part of the state who had been caught in that trap. But Carberry had actually got a patent on his land, and so had a valid claim; but somebody had managed to doctor the government records, and now for several years he had been struggling for redress. With pathetic trustfulness he had written to his congressman, to get a lawyer in Washington to represent him, and the congressman had recommended a lawyer, and Carberry had sent him money several times with no result—and then, going to Washington, had discovered that the alleged lawyer was simply a clerk in the congressman's office, plundering land claimants and presumably dividing the graft with his employer! A pitiful, pitiful story—and the worst part of it, you could see it wasn't a single case, but a system. One more way by which the rich and powerful were plundering the poor and weak! Carberry had with him a government document he had managed to get in Washington, the report of a congressional investigation of California land cases. Bunny spent an evening glancing through it—a thousand pages of wholesale fraud and stealing in close print. For example, the seizure of oil rights by the railroads! The government land grants had turned over to the railroads every other section of land along their right of way, but had specifically exempted all "mineral lands." Wherever minerals might be discovered, the roads were bound to surrender these sections and take other sections. Under the law, the word "minerals" included petroleum; but were the railroads paying any attention to that law? The Southern Pacific alone had California oil lands to a value of more than a billion dollars; but every effort to recover these properties for the state had been blocked by cunning lawyers and purchased politicians and judges. As they drove home, Bunny tried to tell his father about this; but what could Dad do? What could he do about old Carberry, who had been robbed of his home by "Mid-Central Pete"? You could be sure that Dad wasn't going "smelling round Verne's out-house"!