Working Days

by John Steinbeck

  ENTRY #34

  Request from CIO. The Congress of Industrial Organizations was formed in 1936 as a separate group from the American Federation of Labor. The CIO sought union representation among farm workers by chartering, in 1937, the United Cannery, Agricultual, Packing and Allied Workers of America. Through his affiliation with the Lubin Society (which supported the UCAPAWA), Steinbeck—fast coming to be considered an “expert” on farm labor issues (a role he did not voluntarily promote)—was being asked to help raise money to recruit members. Skeptical reaction from Tom Collins made Steinbeck change his mind about heading the committee, though he agreed to lend his name. The “Steinbeck Committee to Aid Agricultural Organization” was chaired first by lawyer and civil rights author Carey McWilliams (see Entry #96 below), then by actress Helen Gahagan Douglas. According to Walter J. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), the committee issued a pamphlet in 1938, What Is the John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Agricultural Organization? (p. 274). The group was active during a November 1938 cotton strike in Bakersfield. A documentary record is available in the two-volume work by Howard M. Levin and Katherine Northrup, eds., Dorothea Lange: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1939 (Glencoe, Illinois: The Text-Fiche Press, 1980), and in Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood, In This Proud Land: America 1935-1943 as Seen in the FSA Photographs (New York: Galahad Books, 1973), where one of Lange’s brilliant photographs of the committee meeting appears on p. 172. On Christmas Eve 1938, the group, with support of many Hollywood liberals and artists, organized an enormous Christmas party at Shafter for 5,000 children of migrant worker families. In his announcement of the event, “The Stars Point to Shafter,” Progressive Weekly, 2 (December 24, 1938), p. 2, Steinbeck wrote: “Movie stars, businessmen, farmers, writers are backing this program.... A radio nationwide hookup with such speakers as Edward G. Robinson, Melvyn Douglas, and other stars will place squarely before our country the problem of these courageous but destitute men and women and children who want to work and eat and live and yet are being denied those elementary principles of civilization.”

  Soule phoned. Frederick Soule had been contacted on July 6, 1938 by John Fischer, Director of the Farm Security Administration’s Division of Information in Washington, to arrange a meeting between Steinbeck and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss “Migrant Problem.” Soule wired to a correspondent on July 11: “STEINBECK FIFTY MILES DOWN COUNTRY BUSY ON BOOK BUT WILLING TO COOPERATE IN ANY PLAN.” (Courtesy of F.S.A. Files, National Archives, San Bruno, California; forwarded to me by Susan Shillinglaw). Roosevelt was on a hectic cross-country rail junket to gauge public sentiment and to drum up support for New Deal candidates in upcoming state elections. (Roosevelt’s advocacy helped Culbert L. Olson, a proponent of labor reform, win election as the first Democratic governor in California in the twentieth century). He spoke on July 14 at the Administration Building of San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, where he expressed hope for world peace and extolled the positive virtues of the WPA. Nothing was said of migrant conditions. Their meeting fell through, but Steinbeck later called officially on Roosevelt in Washington in 1940. (See Entries #112 and #118 below.) On September 6, 1938, Soule asked Steinbeck to appear on a radio show with John Franklin Carter to discuss F.S.A. relief camps. Pare Lorentz, knowing Steinbeck’s antipathy to public speaking of any kind, put friendship above politics and advised Steinbeck not to appear. (See Entries #66-68.)

  ENTRY #35

  That ranch. Carol’s father, Wilbur Henning, a San Jose realtor, had found a forty-seven-acre homestead, known locally as the “Old Biddle Ranch” (settled originally around 1850). It was located in an isolated area off the Santa Cruz Highway near the Summit, about five miles out of Los Gatos. Edna B. Stone, the owner, was asking $16,000. The Steinbecks considered her price too steep and began negotiating to lower it, a process that consumed a great deal of attention and emotion during the coming weeks. Views of the Biddle ranch site are available in Anne-Marie Schmitz, In Search of Steinbeck (Los Altos, CA: Hermes Publications, 1978), pp. 11, 12, 15, 16; and in Don Herron, The Literary World of San Francisco & Its Environs (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1985), p. 221. In 1985, the ranch, with about twenty acres of intact land, was selling for over $500,000.

  ENTRY #36

  My letters. Steinbeck’s letters appeared in John Barry’s San Francisco News column, “Ways of the World,” on Wednesday, July 13, 1938, p.14; they are reprinted here for the first time in fifty years. Barry, a founding member of the newly convened Bay area Citizens Committee for a Public Forum on Labor Problems, asked Steinbeck to cooperate in a nonpartisan forum between labor and capital designed to “help in the important work of ending those [recent] strikes that have done so much harm in the past and threaten the future.” Steinbeck replied: “Forgive me for not answering your letter sooner than this. I am working very hard now and could not possibly take part in a forum. As to the use of my name—I should be very glad to have it used under certain circumstances. In the first place, I am not in favor of ending those strikes that have done so much harm until the abuses, on the part of the employer groups which have caused the strikes, are removed. In the second place, I am alarmed by the tendency of liberal forums to be liberal for a very short time. Such a liberal group as the Committee of 43 is absurd. Let us put it this way: If on the steering or executive committee of this forum, militant organized labor (not Vandeleur, AFL) is represented in strength sufficient to block a reactionary tendency, or if not able to block, at least to expose such a tendency, then I will very gladly offer my name, but if such labor representation is not there, I would not allow my name to be used.” Steinbeck’s decisiveness prompted Barry to re-emphasize his group’s unbiased stance in promoting a “public hearing.” His note brought forth a second, even more direct, letter (written on June 30, 1938—see Entry #28) from Steinbeck: “Your card alarms me, although I suppose it shouldn’t. I am afraid of that word non-partisan. The Committee of 43 is non-partisan. The Associated Farmers are non-partisan. In fact, the word non-partisan describes one of two kinds of people: 1.—Those who through lack of understanding or interest have not taken a side, and, 2, those who use the term to conceal a malevolent partisanship. I am completely partisan. Every effort I can bring to bear is and has been at the call of the common working people to the end that they may eat what they raise, wear what they weave, use what they produce, and in every way and in completeness share in the works of their hands and their heads. And the reverse is also true. I am actively opposed to any man or group who, through financial or political control of means of production and distribution, is able to control and dominate the lives of workers. I hope this statement is complete enough so that my position is not equivocal. And please let me repeat—I shall not want my name used unless organized labor is strongly represented in the governing body of your group. I am writing this once for all to put to an end any supposition that I am non-partisan.” Chastened, Barry thanked Steinbeck for giving him a lesson in “language.”

  ENTRY #38

  My map. Probably a map Steinbeck had used when, in 1937, he and Carol had driven back to California from New York, following Route 66 through Oklahoma and the Southwest.

  ENTRY #42

  Reprint of M & M. Burns Mantle, one of the New York Drama Circle Critics, wanted permission to reprint Of Mice and Men in his annual series. It appeared in The Best Plays of 1937-38 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938), pp. 31-66.

  ENTRY #43

  Henning. Carol’s father, Wilbur Henning, had written concerning negotiations for the Biddle property. Later in the day Steinbeck replied: “We have a definite price that we can pay. You know that we never borrow money under any circumstances.... If Mrs. Stone will understand that we are not investing money in property but are looking for a place to live, and if she does not find it necessary to adhere to the stated price, which, frankly, seems exorbitant to us, we shall definitely be interested
, but if she cannot make some price concession ... our interest will be only a sad and regretful one.” (July 25, 1938; courtesy of Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University). Steinbeck’s frankness turned the trick—Henning sent his son-in-law’s letter, and one of his own, to Mrs. Stone, who eventually dropped the selling price from $16,000 to $10,500.

  O’Brien guy. Edward J. O’Brien, editor and anthologist, wanted permission to reprint “The Chrysanthemums” (originally in Harper’s, October 1937). O’Brien had already chosen it once for The Best Short Stories 1938 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938), pp. 277-87; he now wished to include it in a forthcoming prize collection. Already one of Steinbeck’s most popular stories, “The Chrysanthemums” appeared in O’Brien’s 50 Best American Short Stories: 1915-1939 (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1939), pp. 783-95.

  Cerf. Bennett Cerf (1898-1971), President of Random House (whose Modern Library imprint had issued Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men) wired to say that he was willing to take over Steinbeck’s contract (for $7,000) and help Covici out of his immediate financial difficulties by publishing The Long Valley. (Cerf could not, however, offer Covici an editorial job at Random House.) In the margin of this entry, Steinbeck later noted, “It didn’t work.” Two days later, on July 27, 1938, hoping to press an advantage, Cerf claimed, “I can tell you, in all honesty, that I’d rather add you to the Random House list than any other author in America today.” Steinbeck was flattered, but wrote back to remind Cerf that he would “not interfere with [his agents’] negotiations.” When the dust settled, and Steinbeck and Covici had joined The Viking Press, Cerf sent congratulations on August 18, 1938: “Viking is a fine house and I know they will do a brilliant job for you.” (All communications courtesy of Random House Files, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.)

  Three days ... lost. Steinbeck added this small paragraph on July 28. With the week’s many distractions—Carol’s tonsilectomy chief among them—his concentration broke and he had been unable to work on the novel since the twenty-fifth of July. He managed a commiserative letter to Elizabeth Otis, though, on whose shoulders he was sure the burden of “carrying” Covici-Friede and fielding the offers of several other interested publishing houses had fallen. Despite weariness and fears “about whether all of it is getting over,” he promised the book would be ready by Christmas, and warned: “... this is a rough book, as rough as the people it deals with. It deals with them in their own terms. So in choosing a publisher (if you must) be sure there are neither moral traits nor reactionary ones, because a revolution is going on and this book is revolutionary. And I wouldn’t want it changed to fit the policy of an old house” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [July 28, 1938]; courtesy of Stanford University Library).

  ENTRY #44

  Brod Crawford. The actor, who had a reputation for being “difficult,” arrived unannounced into a chaotic Steinbeck household, which Steinbeck was trying to manage single-handedly. Steinbeck “took him out to meals and he was very nice.” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [August 4 and 5, 1938]; courtesy of Stanford University Library).

  Stanford. Steinbeck attended Stanford University intermittently from the fall of 1919 through the spring of 1925. At least twice—in the spring of 1920 and again in the fall of 1920—he fell behind and had to withdraw. He never received a degree. (Stanford University Undergraduate Transcript).

  ENTRY #45

  Nearly crazy. Steinbeck wanted “to kill” Wallace Ford because newspaper reporters had been told that Ford was staying with Steinbeck. “I haven’t seen Ford, but I’ve talked to a lot of reporters for him.” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter [August 4 and 5, 1938]; courtesy of Stanford University Library.)

  ENTRY #47

  Threat to ... printers. A few weeks earlier Steinbeck and Louis Paul had been discussing the injustices of the royalty system, in which the writer is paid only “after every other claim has been retired” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter, [August 1, 1938]; courtesy of Stanford University Library). With Pat Covici in debt to them for an enormous sum, the printing firm of J. J. Little & Ives was threatening to take over his company, which meant, of course, that their accounts would be settled before Steinbeck ever saw a cent in royalties, if indeed he saw any at all. Relying on the legal power of his contract as leverage, Steinbeck sent a “brutal” threat—through Elizabeth Otis—that the printers settle fairly, or he would abrogate his relationship with them by submitting unprintable books that could not be marketed. He also cooked up an equitable scheme of royalty payment, featuring monthly accounting (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter, [August 4 and 5, 1938]; courtesy of Stanford University Library). See Entry #49 below.

  George and Gail. George Mors, a close friend from Steinbeck’s student days at Stanford (AB, 1924), and his wife, Gail, lived in Los Gatos. They took Carol to “the City”—San Francisco—about fifty miles north.

  ENTRY #48

  Muni. The actor Paul Muni wanted to acquire the movie rights to Tortilla Flat (1935), and wanted Steinbeck to write the film script. The deal fell through, however, because Steinbeck made several ironclad “conditions”: “... 1 That I must finish this book first[.] 2 That I would not go to Hollywood but must do the work here. 3 That I have the help of a scenarist (shall specify Louis Paul). 4 That it will cost them a lot of money.... It would be a salary job” (John Steinbeck/Elizabeth Otis, letter, August [10 and 11] 1938; courtesy of Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University). The movie—written by John Mahin and Benjamin Glaser, and directed by Victor Fleming—eventually appeared in 1942, with Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, and Hedy Lamarr in leading roles. See Millichap, Steinbeck and Film (p. 196).

  ENTRY #49

  Viking Press. Time magazine reported in their August 29, 1938, issue: “Owing somewhere around $170,000, the ten-year-old publishing house of Covici-Friede last week was taken over by its printers, J. J. Little & Ives, who alone were in for a reported $103,000. Main asset of interest to creditors was Novelist John Steinbeck, ex-laborer and reporter whose tender tale of proletarian brutality, Of Mice and Men, had netted Covici-Friede about $35,000. How much Steinbeck was considered to be worth by publishers was disclosed last week when his contract was sold for $15,000 to Viking Press, which in addition gave Publisher Pascal Covici a job....” (p. 47). Elizabeth Otis was responsible for “breaking things open” during the negotiations and securing the favorable contract. “... the new agreement sounds fine,” Steinbeck told her. “You’ll never know how glad we are to have you” (John Steinbeck/ Elizabeth Otis, letter, August [10 and 11] 1938; courtesy of Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University).

  Wellman Farley. Farley was president of the San Francisco Theatre Union, a group of “committed” actors (all of whom held outside jobs) devoted to presenting works with strong social themes. He starred as Lennie Small in their May 1937 production of Of Mice and Men, which—even though it was more like a dramatic reading of the novel—predated by six months the phenomenally successful George S. Kaufman Broadway production. Farley wanted to be hired for the touring production of the play. Though Steinbeck had not seen either the San Francisco or Broadway production, he had been told (by John Hobart, the San Francisco Chronicle’s drama critic) that “... Farley was far finer in the part than Crawford.... [I]f the question ever arises and you have a say, please note that I would like Wellman to play ... Lennie on the road” (John Steinbeck/Annie Laurie Williams, letter, pm May 28, 1938; courtesy Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University).

  Trouble ... in M & M. In the ledger he kept while writing The Long Valley stories and Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck recorded similar daily arguments, notes of self-loathing, and wishes for death, all of which temporarily paralyzed his “resolution of will.” (Courtesy of Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University).

  ENTRY #51

  Mother and dad ... ill. Steinbeck’s Long ValleylOf Mice and Men ledger book carries this entry, dated August 1934: “What a
year this has been.... A year and three months ago we came north to find mother ill. Then ten months of paralysis. Then Dad slipping and slipping....” (Courtesy of Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University). Steinbeck’s mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck (b. 1867), died in 1934, while her son was writing Tortilla Flat. His father (see Entry #16 above), “that poor silent man,” died in May 1935, during the final stages of In Dubious Battle. It should have been a far darker time for Steinbeck than the one he was currently witnessing, though it isn’t always clear that he saw it that way. See his letters to George Albee in Steinbeck and Wallsten, eds., Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (pp. 83, 93).