Эптон Синклер - Oil!

There were so many things Bunny wanted to know about. He took Paul to dinner, in an outdoor cafe, and they spent a good part of the evening, French fashion, conversing there. Paul told about the schools; all the new educational discoveries that had been made in America, but could only be applied in Russia. And the papers and books—the modern, progressive writers being translated and spread over the half of two continents. And industry—the colossal labors of a people to build a modern world out of nothing, with no capital and no help from the outside. Paul described the oil industry under this Soviet system; a state trust, in which the workers’ unions were recognized, and given a voice in labor affairs. The workers published papers, they had clubs and dramatic societies, a new culture, based upon industry instead of exploitation.

Then, of course, Bunny wanted to know about Ruth, and about Paul’s arrest and his trial, and what was he going to do now. He was on his way back to America, and would probably be put to organizing in California, because that was the place he knew best. He had been in Paradise and held secret meetings with the men; until at last he had been found out and put off the tract—the place where he had been born, and had lived nearly all his life! But that was all right, the party had a “nucleus,” as it was called, in the field, and literature was being distributed and read.

Bunny told what he had learned in Vienna, and how his article on Roumania had been stolen; Paul said that in every European capital there were more spies than there were lice. Very probably there was some agent sitting at one of these tables, trying to hear what they said. His baggage was rifled every few days. The imbecile governments, trying to crush the workers’ movement—and at the same time piling up their munitions, getting ready for the next war, that would make Bolshevism as inevitable as the sunrise!

“You really think there’ll be another war, Paul?”

The other laughed. “Ask your eminent brother-in-law! He’ll know.”

“But he wouldn’t tell me. We barely speak.”

Paul answered that armaments produce wars automatically; the capitalists who make the armaments have to see that they are used, in order to get to make more. Bunny said that the idea of another war seemed too horrible to think about; and Paul replied, “So you don’t think about it, and that makes it easy for the business men to get it ready.”

He sat for a bit in thought, and then went on, “Since I’ve been travelling in Europe, I find myself remembering that night when you and I met for the first time. Do you recollect it, son?”

When Bunny said that he did, Paul went on, “I wasn’t in my aunt’s living room, and I didn’t see those people that had come to lease their lots; but I listened outside and heard the wrangling; and now, as I go about Europe I say to myself, that is world diplomacy. A wrangle over an oil lease! Every nation hating every other one, making combinations and promising to stick together—but they’ve sold each other out before night, and there’s no lie that any one hasn’t told, and no crime they haven’t committed. You remember that row?”

How well Bunny remembered! Miss Snypp—he hadn’t known her name, but her face rose before him, brick-red with wrath. “Let me tell you, you’ll never get me to put my signature on that paper—never in this world!” And Mr. Hank, the man with the hatchet-face, shouting, “Let me tell you, the law will make you sign it”—only there was no law in European diplomacy! And Mrs. Groarty, Paul’s aunt, glaring at Mr. Hank and clenching her hands as if she had him by the throat. “And you the feller that was yellin’ for the rights of the little lots! You was for sharin’ and sharin’ alike—you snake in the grass!”

Said Paul: “Those people were so blind with greed, they were willing to throw away their own chances for the satisfaction of beating the others. They did that, I think you told me—threw away the lease with your father. And everybody in the field behaved the same way. I wonder if you happen to know, it’s government statistics on that Prospect Hill field—more money was spent in drilling than ever was taken out in oil!”

“Yes, of course,” said Bunny. “I’ve seen derricks there with platforms actually touching.”

“Each one racing to get the oil, and spending more than he makes—isn’t that a picture of capitalism? And then the war! You remember how we heard the racket, and ran to the window, and there was one fellow hitting the next fellow in the nose, and the whole roomful milling about, shouting and trying to stop the fight, or to get into it!”

“One said, ‘You dirty, lying yellow skunk!’ And the other said, ‘Take that, you white-livered puppy!’”

“Son, that was a little oil war! And a year or two later the big one broke out, and if there’s anything you don’t understand about it, all you need is to think about what happened in my aunt’s home. And remember, they were fighting for a chance to exploit the oil workers, to divide the wealth the oil workers were going to produce; in their crazy greed they killed or injured seventy-three per cent of all the men they put to work on Prospect Hill—that’s government statistics also! And don’t you see how that’s the world war exactly? The workers doing the fighting, and the bankers getting the bonds!”

So many things to talk about! Bunny told the story of Eli, concerning which Paul had heard no rumor. The latter said it was easy to understand, because Eli always had been a chaser after women. It was one reason Paul had been so repelled by his brother’s preaching. “I wouldn’t mind his having his girl,” he said, “only he denies my right to my girl. He preaches a silly ideal of asceticism, and then goes off secretly and does what he pleases.”

Here was an opportunity for which Bunny had been seeking. He took a sudden plunge. “Paul, there’s something I want to tell you. For the past three years I’ve been living with a moving picture actress.”

“I know,” said Paul; “Ruth told me.”

“Ruth!”

“Yes, she saw something about it in the papers.” And then, reading his friend’s thought, Paul added, “Ruth has had to learn that the world is the way it is, and not the way she’d like it to be.”

“What do you think about such things, Paul?”

“Well, son, it’s a question of how you feel about the girl. If you really love her, and she loves you, why, I suppose it’s all right. Are you happy?”

“We were at first; we still are, part of the time. The trouble is, she hates the radical movement. She doesn’t really understand it, of course.”

Paul answered, “Some people hate the radical movement because they don’t understand it, and some because they do.” After Bunny had had time to digest that, he went on, “Either you’ll have to change your ideas, or you’ll have a break with the girl. That’s something I’m sure about—you can’t have happiness in love unless it’s built on harmony of ideas. Otherwise you quarrel all the time—or at least, you’re bored.”

“Have you ever lived with a woman, Paul?”

“There was a girl I was very much attracted to in Angel City, and I could have had her, I guess. But it was a couple of years ago, when I saw that I was going Bolshevik, and I knew she wouldn’t stand for it, so what was the use? You get yourself tangled up in a lot of emotions, and waste the time you need for work.”

“I’ve often wondered about you and such things. You used to think the way Eli talks, when we first met.”

Paul laughed. “I’d hardly keep my Christian superstitions when I became a Communist organizer. No, son; what I think is, find a woman you really love, and that wants to share your work, and that you mean to stick by; then you can love her, you don’t need any priest to give you permission. Some day I suppose I’ll meet a woman comrade—I think about it a good deal, of course—I’m no wooden post. But I’ll have to wait and see what happens at my trial. I’d be little use to a girl if I’ve got to spend twenty years in Leavenworth or Atlanta!”