Эптон Синклер - Oil!

“And the teachers?” demanded Gregor Nikolaieff.

“Once every three years, or every five years for the teachers.”

“And the founder! How often for the founder?” Peter clamored in glee; but Dan Irving said the founder would have to wait until he had got rid of his money.

They argued back and forth. Could you interest young people in the idea of self-discipline? Would your danger be in setting the standard too easy, so that you wouldn’t accomplish much, or in setting it too high, so that you wouldn’t have any students? Bunny, the young idealist, was for setting it high; and Harry Seager said that people would volunteer more quickly to die than they would to get along without tobacco. And he wanted to know, what were they going to do about the Communists. Harry was no politician any more, he was a social revolutionist, and only waiting for the day of action. Regardless of what Socialist party members might wish, they couldn’t keep Bolshevik students out of a college, and even if they did, the ideas would bust in.

Bunny answered by setting forth his ideal of the open mind. Why couldn’t the students do their own educating, and make their own decisions? Let the teachers give the information they were asked for: and then let the students thresh it out—every class room an open forum, and no loyalty except to research and freedom? They were all willing to admit that there would be no use starting a sectarian institution, to advocate one set of doctrines and exclude the others. Also, it took a partisan of each doctrine to set it forth fairly. So then, here was Bunny pinning them down: “Chaim, would you be willing for Harry to explain his ideas to your class? Harry, would you give Chaim a chance to talk?” Bunny could see his own job—the arbitrator who kept these warring factions out of each other’s hair!

Then said Chaim, the skeptic, “I vant to know, vot are you going to do about sex?”

Bunny admitted that this worried him. “I suppose we’ll have to conform to bourgeois standards.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Peter Nagle. “Let the bourgeoisie begin!”

Jacob Menzies, the student, had just been reading a book about Ruskin, the old time Socialist colony in Tennessee. It was the sex problem which had broken up that colony, he declared; and his father chimed in, “It vill break up any colony dat ever exists under capitalism! Dere is only vun vay you can make vun man live vit vun voman all his life, and dat is to shut dem up in a house togedder and never let dem out. But if you let dem get vit odder couples, den right avay vun man finds he vants some odder voman but de right vun.”

“But then,” said Dan Irving, “according to bourgeois standards, they get a divorce.”

“Sure ting!” said Chaim. “But not in a Socialist colony! If dey vould do it in a colony, it vould be a free love nest, and you vould be on de front page of de papers, and de American Legion come and bust you in de snoot!”

The upshot of the debate was that no one of them was sure the enterprise would be a success, but all the young ones were willing to pitch in and help, if Bunny was determined for a try. And Bunny said that he had already been looking about for a site, with good land and plenty of water, somewhere abut fifty miles from Angel City; he was going to make a first payment on land as soon as he could get the cash, and meantime they would work out the details. He would give his own time for three years to getting the institution on its feet, and if it proved possible to develop the right discipline and morale, he would make the institution self-directing, and furnish whatever money could be used effectively. They would need teachers, organizers, and business managers, so there were jobs for all.

And meantime, Bunny must go back to the interviews with lawyers, to try to save as much as possible of the estate. It meant long wrangles with Bertie, for their affairs were in a snarl, and getting worse every day. Verne insisted that Ross Operating must have funds to meet its current expenses; and did they want him to assess the stock, and force the estate to raise the money, or did they want him to buy the lease to the Ross Junior tract, the only asset of Ross Operating, except the claims against the insurance companies? Verne could do what he pleased, because the directors of the concern were himself and his trusted young executives. He was proposing to form another concern, the Paradise Operating Company—with other trusted young executives as directors, and sell himself the lease, which had twenty years still to run, and was worth nobody could tell how many millions of dollars, for the sum of six hundred thousand!

All right then, said Verne, let the estate do better. Bertie took up the challenge, and exchanged long cables with her husband in Paris, and went out among her rich friends—to make the embarrassing discovery that people who have six hundred thousand dollars in cash do a lot of investigating before they spend it, and then want to hog the whole thing for themselves. Bertie spent much worry and hard work—and what made her most furious was that she couldn’t do it for herself alone, but had to do it for the whole estate, giving the incompetent Bunny and the infamous Alyse the benefit of her labors. She got a proposition; and then the lawyers of the infamous Alyse turned up with another proposition; and Bertie declared they were bigger thieves than Verne.

And then Ross Consolidated needed money, and Verne was going to assess that stock—meaning to drive the estate to the wall and plunder it of everything. Presently he made a proposition—there was the Roumanian oil venture, into which Dad had put a million and a quarter in cash. Verne offered to purchase this back for the same amount, and the necessary papers were prepared—the heirs all had to consent to the sale, and they did so, and then the court must approve the proposal. This meant delay, and meanwhile the estate was delinquent in the assessment on the Ross Consolidated stock, and this stock was to be sold out. The money from the Roumanian deal was to save it, but to the consternation of the lawyers, the court refused its consent to this deal. There were technical points involved—the court questioned the authority of Mrs. Alyse Ross’s lawyers, and demanded her personal signature, attested in France. In short, the estate couldn’t get the money in time for the sale, and it was Vernon Roscoe who bought the Ross Consolidated stock at a bargain.

Oh, how Bertie raved and swore—the veritable daughter of a mule-driver! Verne, the filthy swine, had put that trick over on them! Not content with having stolen Dad’s papers, he had diddled them along like this, and got one of his crooked judges to hold up the order, so that he might grab another plum! Bertie threatened to take a gun to Verne’s office and shoot him down like a dog; but what she really did was to abuse her brother, who had been such a fool as to make a mortal enemy out of the most powerful man they knew.

It taught them a lesson. They would get themselves out of Verne’s clutches, get rid of everything that he controlled. Dad had put nearly a million into a concern called Anglo-California, which was to develop the big Mosul concession; and the lawyers of Alyse got an offer for that stock, but it included time payments, and Bertie wouldn’t agree to that, and the lawyers wouldn’t agree to Verne’s cash offer, and Bertie was in terror lest Verne would do some more hocus-pocus—organize an Anglo-California Operating Company, and lease the Mosul tract to it, and swipe all the profits!

Amid which wrangling came a letter from Alyse to Bunny. She was sure that he would not let horrid money troubles come between him and her, and break their sacred bond, the memories of dear Jim. Alyse had gone to consult her favorite medium, immediately upon her arrival in Paris, and at the third seance Jim had “manifested,” and ever since then Alyse had had his words taken down by a stenographer, and here was a bulky record, big as the transcript of a legal trial, and tied with blue ribbons of feminine elegance. Alyse hoped that Bunny had not failed to consult a medium, and would send her whatever dear Jim had had to say in his old home.