Эптон Синклер - Oil!

Bunny got the news before it was in the papers, and he hastened to take it to Paul and Ruth. Paul had got work as a carpenter, and they had rented a little cottage on the rear of a lot. Ruth had started her nurse’s course in one of the big hospitals, and Paul had got some books, and there was a little of Paradise transported to a working-class part of Angel City. And oh, the happiness that shone in Ruth’s face when Bunny came in with the news! And then the strange mixture of anguish and pride, as Paul spoke: “It’s good of you, son, to have taken so much trouble, and I do appreciate it; but I’m afraid you won’t think me very grateful when you hear what I’m going to do with my freedom.”

“What is it, Paul?”

“I’ve decided to join the Workers’ party.”

“Oh, Paul!” Bunny’s face showed dismay. “But why?”

“Because I believe in their tactics. I always have, ever since my time in Siberia. I waited, because I didn’t want to hurt the strike; and after I got arrested, I couldn’t do anything without compromising the other fellows. But now it won’t hurt anyone but myself, so I’m going to say what I know.”

“But Paul! They’ll only arrest you again!”

“Maybe so. But this time they’ll arrest me as a Communist, and they’ll try me that way.”

“But they’ve already convicted so many!”

“That’s the way an unpopular cause has to grow—there’s no other way. Here I am, an obscure workingman, and nobody pays any attention to what I think or say; but if they try me as a Communist, I make people talk and think about our ideas.”

Bunny stole a look at Ruth: a pitiful sight, her eyes riveted upon her brother, and her hands clasped tight in fear. It was so that she had looked when Paul was going off to war. It was her fate to see him go off to war!

“Are you sure there’s nothing more important you can do, Paul?”

“I used to think I was going to do a lot of great things. But the last few years have taught me that a workingman isn’t very important in this capitalist world, and he has to remember his place. A lot of us are going to jail, and a lot more are going to die. The one thing we must be sure of is that we help to awaken the slaves.”

There was a pause. “You’re quite sure it can’t come peaceably, Paul?”

“The other has to say about that, son. Do you think they were peaceable during the strike? You should have been there!”

“And you’ve given up hope for democracy?”

“Not at all! Democracy is the goal—it’s the only thing worth working for. But it can’t exist till we’ve broken the strangle-hold of big business. That’s a fighting job, and it can’t be done by democracy. Look at the boobs that Eli has got in his tabernacle, and imagine them setting out to get the best of Vernon Roscoe!”

Bunny could not avoid a smile. “That’s exactly Verne’s own statement.”

“Well, he’s a practical man, and I’ve a great respect for him. He wants to do something, and he finds out the way, and he does it. He doesn’t let the government get in his way, does he? No, he overthrows the government by bribery. By the way, son, have you seen Dan Irving’s Washington letter this week?”

“The paper’s at home, but I didn’t stop to look at it.”

“Well, you’ll be interested. Dan says it’s known to all the newspaper men in Washington that Roscoe and O’Reilly made a deal with the attorney-general to buy the nomination for Harding, on condition that they were to get these naval reserve leases. They’ve been buying government officials right and left, and newspaper men also. There’s a clamor for an investigation, but the gang won’t let it happen.”

There was a pause. Paul, watching his friend’s face, saw an uneasy look, and added, “Don’t talk to me about it, son—I don’t want to know anything I’m not free to tell. But you and I both understand—that is capitalist government, and what has it got to do with democracy?”

Again Bunny didn’t answer; and Paul said, “I think about Verne, as you call him, because I’ve just had a run-in with him, and he’s the system to me. I want to take his powers away from him; and how am I going to do it? I’ve boxed the compass, trying to figure how it can be done legally. He’s got the courts, and they’ll call anything legal that he says; they’ll wind you up in a spider’s web of technicalities. He’s got the machinery for reaching the masses—you can’t tell them anything but what he wants them to hear. He’s got the movies—people say he has a movie star for a mistress—maybe you know about that. And you’ve been to college—O’Reilly attends to that, I’m told. We could never get a majority vote—because Verne has the ballot-boxes stuffed; even if we elected anybody, he’d have them bought before they got into office. The more I think of the idea that he would give up to paper ballots—the crazier it seems to me.”

“But then, Paul, what can you hope for?”

“I’m going to the workers! Verne’s oil workers are the basis of his power, they produce his wealth, and they can be reached, they’re not scattered all over. They have one common job, and one common interest—they want the wealth that Verne takes from them. Of course they know that only dimly; they read his newspapers, and go to his movies. But we’re going to teach them—and when they take the oil wells, how can Verne get them back?”

“He’ll send troops and take them, Paul!”

“He won’t send troops, because we’ll have the railwaymen. We’ll have the telegraphers, and they’ll send our messages instead of his. We’ll have the men in all the key industries—we’re going out to organize them, and tell them exactly how to do it—all power to the unions.”

Bunny was contemplating once more the vision which his friend had brought back from Siberia. And Paul went on, with that condescending air that had always impressed Bunny, and infuriated his sister. “It seems dreadful to you, because it means a fight, and you don’t want to fight—you don’t have to. The men for this job are the ones that have had the iron in their souls—men that have been beaten and crushed, thrown into jail and starved there. That’s how Verne makes the revolution, he throws us into jail and lets us rot. We lie there and have bitter, black thoughts. All the Bolsheviks got their training in dungeons; and now the masters are giving the same course in America. It’s not only that we’re tempted and made hard—it’s that we become marked men, the workers know us; the poor slaves that don’t dare move a hand for themselves, they learn that there are fellows they can trust, that won’t sell them out to Vernon Roscoe! I’m going back to Paradise, son, and teach Communism, and if Verne has me arrested again, the Moscow program will go into the court records of San Elido county!”

The newspapers announced a social event of the first importance, the engagement of Miss Alberta Ross, only daughter of Mr. J. Arnold Ross, to Mr. Eldon Burdick, a scion of one of the oldest families of the city, and recently chosen president of the California Defense League. A few days later came the announcement that Mr. Burdick had been appointed a secretary to the American embassy at Paris; and so the wedding was a state occasion, with more flowers than were ever seen in a church before, and Bunny all dolled up for a groomsman, and Dad looking as handsome as the ringmaster of a circus, and Aunt Emma, who considered that she had made this match, assuming the mental position of the bride’s mother, with the proper uncertain expression, half elation and half tears. “Mrs. Emma Ross, aunt of the bride, wore pink satin embroidered in pastel colored beads and carried pink lilies”—thus the newspapers, which set forth the importance of the Burdick family, and all about the Ross millions, and never mentioned that the father of the bride had once been a mule-driver, nor even that he had kept a general store at Queen Center, California!