Эптон Синклер - Oil!

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 Siddhartha, 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 Shuddhodana’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!

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!