Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair

by Upton Sinclair

  VIII From such a week end Bunny would return to Angel City, and accompany Rachel to a meeting of the Young People's Socialist League. 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. With these young Socialists, as with the old ones, it was right wing versus left; everybody argued tactics, and got tremendously excited. The Communists also had an organization, the Young Workers' League, and the two rivals carried on sniping operations; sometimes they held formal debates, and young people would jump up and down in their seats, and carry on the controversy in their homes and working places for weeks afterwards. It was Moscow versus Amsterdam, the Third International versus the Second, the "reds" against the "pinks," as the mild Socialists were called. And this same struggle was going on in the soul of Bunny. Paul Watkins would pull him forward, and then Rachel Menzies would haul him back; and his trouble seemed to be, he was of the opinion of the one he talked with last. He was so prone to see the other fellow's point of view, and lose himself in that! Why couldn't he have a mind of his own? Theoretically it was possible to bring about the change from Capitalism to Socialism by peaceable, one-step-at-a-time methods. Anyone could lay out the steps. But when you came to take the first one, you confronted the fact that the capitalists didn't want to be evolved into Socialism, and wouldn't let you take any step. It was a fact that so far they had outwitted the workers at every turn; they had even forced the government to retrace the steps which had been taken in the emergency of war. It was also true, as Paul contended, that the capitalists would not permit the workers to be peaceable; they resorted to violence every time, and set aside the laws and the constitution when it suited their convenience. To Bunny that seemed a pathetic thing about the Socialists. Take a man like Chaim Menzies; he had the long vision, the patience of the elderly worker; with ages of toil behind him, and ages ahead of him, he did not shrink from the task of building an organization. But he was never allowed to finish the building, the masters would knock it down overnight; they sent in spies, they bribed the officials and sowed discord, and in time of strikes their police and gunmen raided the offices, and jailed the leaders, and drove the workers back into slavery. So here was a curious situation— the masters in their blindness working as allies of the Communists! Verne and his oil operators and the rest of the open shop crowd saying to the working people, "No, don't listen to the Socialists, they are a bunch of old fogies. The Communists are the fellows who can tell you what we are like, and how we are going to behave!" One thing Bunny had felt certain about—the workers ought to determine their tactics without bitterness and internal strife. But now he was beginning to doubt if even that were possible. The quarrel between the two factions was implicit in the nature of the problem. If you believed in a peaceable transition, your course of action would be one thing, and if you didn't so believe, it would be another thing. If you thought you could persuade the masses of the voters, you would be cautious and politic, and would avoid the extremists, whose violent ways would repel the voters. So you would try to keep the Communists out of your organization, and of course that would make them hate you, and denounce you as a compromiser and a "class collaborator," and insist that you were in the pay of the bosses, who hired you to keep the workers under their yoke. And then the Socialists would counter with the same charge of bribery. Chaim Menzies never failed to declare that some of the Communists were secret agents, paid by the bosses to split the movement, and expose it to raids by the police. Bunny knew, from talk he heard among his father's associates, that these big business men had elaborate secret agencies for the disrupting of the labor movement. And these agencies would work either way; they would hire old line leaders to sell out the workers, calling off strikes, or calling premature strikes that couldn't win; or they would send in spies to pose as reds, and split the organizations and tempt the leaders into crime. Incredible as it might seem, the government secret service, under that great patriot, Barney Brockway, was up to the neck in such work. At the trial of one group of Communists the federal judge presiding remarked that apparently the whole direction of the Communist party was in the hands of the United States government!

  IX

  Bunny was always having the beautiful dream that his friends were going to be friends with one another. Now he took Rachel to call on Paul and Ruth; he liked them so, and they must share his feelings. But alas, they didn't seem to! Both sides were reserved, and avoided talking politics as carefully as if they had been visiting at the Monastery! But Bunny wanted them to talk politics, because he was trying to settle his own inner debate, and he felt that they were qualified, they were members of the working class, while he was only an outsider. Perhaps one might convert the other; but which one he wanted to be the converter, and which the converted, it would have been hard for him to say! Bunny questioned Paul, and learned that he had given up his carpentry job—the Workers' party was paying him a small salary to give all his time to organizing. Paul had met Joe and Ikey Menzies, the young "left wingers"; and Bunny told about how he and Rachel had helped to put Ben Skutt out of business at the trial. How he wished the Socialists and the Communists might work together like that, instead of making things easier for the enemy! Thus led on, Rachel said that she would be interested to understand the ideas of Comrade Watkins. (Whenever a Socialist wanted to be very polite to a Bolshevik, she called him by that old term, which had applied before the family row broke out!) How could a mass uprising succeed in America, with the employing class in possession of all the arms and means of communication? They had poison gas now, and would wipe out thousands of the rebel workers at a time. The one possible outcome would be reaction— as in Italy, where the workers had seized the factories, and then had had to give them up because they couldn't run them. Comrade Watkins replied that Italy had no coal, but was dependent on Britain and America, which thus had the power to strangle the Italian workers. As a matter of fact the Fascist reaction in Italy had been made by American bankers—Mussolini and his ruffians had not dared to move a finger till they had made certain of American credits. We had played the same role there as in Hungary and Bavaria; all over the world, American gold was buttressing reaction. Paul had seen it with his own eyes in Siberia, and he said, with his quiet decisiveness, that nobody could understand what it meant unless he had been there. 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. That is my criticism of the Socialist movement, it fails to realize the intellectual and moral forces locked up in the working class, that can be called out by the right appeal." "Ah," said Rachel, "but that is the question—what is the right appeal? I want to appeal to peace rather than to violence. That seems to me more moral." Paul answered, that to make peace appeals to a tiger might seem moral to some, but to him it seemed futile. The determining fact in the world was what the capitalist class had done during the past nine years. They had destroyed thirty million human lives, and three hundred billions of wealth, everything a whole generation of labor had created. So Paul did not enter into discussions of morality with them; they were a set of murderous maniacs, and the job was to sweep them out of power. Any means that would succeed were
moral means, because nothing could be so immoral as capitalism. When Bunny went out with Rachel, she said that Paul was an extraordinary man, and certainly a dangerous one to the capitalist class. He was a case of shell-shock from the war, and those who had made the war would have to deal with him. Then Bunny asked about Ruth, and Rachel said she was a nice girl, but a little colorless, didn't Comrade Ross think? Bunny tried to explain that Ruth was deep, her feelings were intense, but she seldom expressed them. Rachel said Ruth ought to think for herself, because she would have a lot of suffering if she followed Paul through his Bolshevik career. Bunny suggested that Rachel might help to educate her, but Rachel smiled and said that Comrade Ross was too naive; surely Paul would not like to have a Socialist come in and steal his sister's sympathy from him. In spite of all Bunny could do, his women friends would not be friends! Then later on Bunny saw Paul, and got Paul's reaction to Rachel. A nice girl, well-meaning and intelligent, but she wouldn't keep her proletarian attitude very long. The social revolution in America was not going to be made by young lady college graduates doing charity work for the capitalist class! What she was doing among the "Ypsels" was mostly wasted effort, according to Paul, because these Socialist organizations spent their efforts fighting Communism. The capitalists ought to be glad to hire her to do such work! But somehow it wasn't that way, Bunny found; the capitalists were narrow-minded, and lacking in vision! A few days later Bunny learned that Rachel was facing a serious dilemma. She had taken her four years course at the university with the idea of making a career as a social worker; but now a woman friend, upon whose advice she was acting, had warned her that she was throwing away her chances by her activity with these "Ypsels." It was hard enough for a Jewish girl, and one from the working-classes, to have a professional career, without taking on the added handicap of Socialism. Rachel should at least wait till she had got a position, and got herself established. So there were more troubles! What was Rachel going to do? The answer was that she was not going to desert her beloved young Socialists. It was all very well to say wait, but that was the way all compromising began; once you started, you never knew where to stop. No, Rachel would take her chances of the "Ypsels" being raided by the police, or placarded in the newspapers as a conspiracy to undermine the morals of youth! If it turned out that her friend was right, and the bourgeoisie wouldn't have her as a dispenser of their charities, she would find some sort of job in the labor movement. And Bunny went off to keep an engagement to a dinner party with Vee Tracy; he went with a sober face and a troubled conscience, neither of which he was clever enough to hide!

  X

  Graduation time was at hand, and all the grave old seniors had the job of choosing their future careers. Dad asked Bunny if he had made up his mind, and Bunny answered that he had. "But I hate to tell you, Dad, because it's going to make you unhappy." "What is it, son?" A look of concern was upon the old man's round but heavily lined features. "Well, I want to go away for a year, and take another name, and get myself a job as a worker in one of the big industries." "Oh, my God!" A pause, while Dad gazed into his son's troubled eyes. "What does that mean?" "Just that I want to understand the working people, and that's the only way." "You can't ask them what you want to know?" "No, Dad, they don't know it themselves—except dimly. It is something you have to live." "Good Lord, son, let me help you! I've been there. It means dirt and vermin and disease—I thought I was saving you from it, and making things easier for you!" "I know, Dad, but it's a mistake; it doesn't work out as you thought. When a young fellow has everything too easy for him, he gets soft, he has no will of his own. I know what you've done, and I'm grateful for it, but I have to try something different for a time." "You can't possibly find anything hard enough for you in the job of running an oil industry?" "I might, Dad, if I could really run it. But you know I can't do that. It's yours; and even if you gave it to me, Verne and the operators' federation wouldn't let me do what I'd want to do. No, Dad, there's something vitally wrong with the oil industry, and I can never play the game with the rest. I want to go off and try something on my own." "You mean to go alone?" "There's another fellow has the same idea, and we're going together. Gregor Nikolaieff." "That Russian! Couldn't you possibly find an American to associate with?" "Well, it just happens, Dad, that none of the Americans are interested." There was a long pause. "And you really mean this seriously?" "Yes, Dad, I'm going to do it." "You know, son, the big industries are pretty rough, most of them. Some of the men get badly hurt, and some killed." "Yes; that's just the point." "It's pretty hard on a father that has only one son, and had hopes for him. You know, I've really thought a lot about you—it's been the main reason I worked so hard." "I know, Dad; and don't think I haven't suffered about it; but I just can't help doing it." Another pause. "Have you thought about Vee?" "Yes." "Have you told her?" "No, I've been putting it off, just as I did with you. I know she won't stand for it. I shall have to give her up." "A man ought to think a long time before he throws away his happiness like that, son." "I have thought, all I know how. But I couldn't spend my life as an appendage to Vee's moving picture career. I should be suffocated with luxury. I have convictions of my own, and I have to follow them. I want to try to help the workers, and first I have to know how they feel." "It seems to me, son, you talk like one of them—I mean the red ones." "Maybe so, Dad, but I assure you, it doesn't seem that way to the reds!" Again there was a silence. Dad's supply of words was running short. "I never heard of such a thing in my life!" "It is really quite an old idea—at least twenty-four hundred years." And Bunny went on to tell about that young Lord Sid-dhartha, in far off India, who is known to the western world as Buddha; how he gave up his lands and his treasures, and went out to wander with a beggar's bowl, in the hope of finding some truth about life that was not known at court. "The palace which the king had given to the prince was resplendent with all the luxuries of India; for the king was anxious to see his son happy. All sorrowful sights, all misery, and all knowledge of misery were kept away from Siddhartha, and he knew not that there was evil in the world. But as the chained elephant longs for the wilds of the jungle, so the prince was eager to see the world, and he asked his father, the king, for permission to do so. And Shuddhodana ordered a jewel-fronted chariot with four stately horses to be held ready, and commanded the roads to be adorned where his son would pass." And then Bunny, seeing the bewildered look on Shuddho-dana's face, began to laugh. "Which would you rather I become, Dad—a Buddhist or a Bolshevik?" And truly, Dad wouldn't have known what to decide!

  XI

  There has been during the present century a new universe opened up to knowledge—the subconscious mind—and many strange things are told about it. It is accustomed to make determined efforts to have its own way; and sometimes when it is balked it will go to such lengths as to make the body ill. A jealous wife will suffer nervous collapse, a quite genuine case, thus retaining the attentions of her husband; and so on through a catalog of strange phenomena. But the Freudian theories, not being consistent with Methodist theology, had not yet penetrated into Southern Pacific. So Bunny was entirely unsuspicious when it happened, just after his graduation, and before he set out with Gregor Nikolaieff, that Dad came down with a severe attack of the flu. Of course Bunny had to postpone his leaving, and was able to find all the trouble he needed at home. There were several days when it was not certain if Dad would live; and Bunny felt all the remorse that Vernon Roscoe had foretold. Also he faced the alarming prospect, he might have to take over control of all those millions of Dad's money! The old man pulled through; but he was very weak, and pitiful, and the doctor warned his family that the flu was apt to leave the heart in bad condition, and he would have to be guarded and kept from shock. Down in the deeps of Dad there must have been a merry chuckling, for now it was impossible for Bunny to go away. The father clung to his boy's hand like a child, and Bunny must sit and read to him the sad and tender story of the young Lord Siddhartha. Had Dad said something to Vee about the plot, or was it a telepathic
contact between two subconscious minds? She came frequently to the house, and was so kind and sympathetic—the wild elephant in Bunny's spirit was tied down with a million silken cords. And then, when Dad was able to be about, and to sit on the porch in the sunshine, his shrewd conscious mind started work, and presently he had a scheme. "Son, I've been thinking about your problem, and I realize that you have a right to express your ideas. I've been wondering if we mightn't work out a compromise, and let me help." "How, Dad?" "Well, you might have some money that you could use in your own way, and wouldn't feel you were taking from mine. Of course, I wouldn't feel it was right to help you do anything that was against the law; but if there is some kind of education that isn't for violence, why, that would be all right, and if you had an income of a thousand dollars a month that you might use for such propaganda—would that help?" A thousand dollars a month! Gee whiz! Bunny forgot the standards of his own class, according to which a thousand dollars a month would not keep a string of polo ponies or a small racing yacht; he thought according to the standards of the radicals, to whom a thousand dollars a month meant a whole labor college or a weekly paper! Nothing was said about Bunny's staying at home, but he understood that the offer was a bribe; he would have to administer the fund! He yielded to the temptation, and hastened to phone Rachel—he had a job in sight for her! He invited her to lunch; and all the way as he drove to the place, his busy mind was flying from scheme to scheme. Rachel would remain secretary of the "Ypsels," and be paid a salary for her work, the same as she would have got as a social worker. The young Socialists would hire a larger hall, and would publish a weekly paper, aimed at the high schools and colleges of Angel City. Bunny was now free from the promise he had made to Dr. Cowper, not to make propaganda in Southern Pacific. And he was going to make it, you bet! The students of that university and all others would learn something about modern thought, and about the labor movement, and about Socialism, and—well, not too much about Communism, of course, because Dad would call that violence, and it might be breaking the law!