Эптон Синклер - Oil!

He attended for the first time a meeting of his own trade union. It was at night, and lasted till one o’clock in the morning; and the next day being Saturday, Bunny came up to town and met his father at the hotel, and heard the story of what had happened. Most of the oil employers, it appeared, were exactly like J. Arnold Ross, in that they left the running of their union to others; there had been not more than forty men at this critical meeting, and the dominant group consisted of representatives of the “Big Five.” The chairman, and obviously the man who ran the organization, was an attorney for Excelsior Pete, who owned a small well, presumably to give him standing. He had a group which took the cue from him and voted with him. It had been rather a steam-roller affair, said Dad.

Bunny wanted all the particulars, and plied his father with questions. Dad had pleaded the men’s side, as tactfully as he could, and had found exactly two operators in the gathering who were willing to agree, ever so timidly, with his point of view. To the ruling group he had seemed something of a renegade, and they had hinted as much. “You know how it is, son,” Dad explained, “this is an ‘open shop’ town; that’s the way the crowd feels, and you might jist as well butt your head against a stone wall as argue with them about unions. There’s everything to be said for them—they’ve had trouble with organized labor, and it’s made them bitter. They say”—and Dad went on to detail the arguments that had been hurled at him; unions meant graft, unions meant “hold-ups,” unions meant disorder, unions meant strikes, unions meant Socialism.

“What are they going to do, Dad?”

“They’re jist not a-goin’ to let the men have a union—that’s all. I said, ‘It looks as if the Federation has turned into a strike-breaking organization.’ And Fred Naumann—that’s the chairman—snapped back at me, ‘You said it!’ They’ll be a strike-breaking organization, if and when and so long as there’s strikes in their field—that’s the way Raymond put it, the vice-president of Victor. And then Ben Skutt put in an oar—”

“Ben Skutt? ”

“Yes, he was there; it seems he’s been doing some ‘investigation work’ for the Federation—a polite name for spyin’. He knew jist exactly what I’d said to our men the day before; and he wondered if I realized the unfortunate effect of my attitude—it amounted to givin’ the strikers moral support. I told Ben that I usually took the liberty of saying what I thought; I was taking it in this meeting, and I’d take it in the newspapers if they asked me. Naumann smiled sarcastically: ‘I really don’t think they’re going to ask you, Mr. Ross.’”

And sure enough, they didn’t—either then, or later! The meeting was supposed to be secret—which meant that individual members were not allowed to be quoted, but the chairman or somebody gave to the press an official story, telling how the meeting had voted to stand firm against the threats of the union. It was a time for all lovers of America to uphold the country’s welfare against enemies without and within—so ran the statement in both the morning newspapers.

“What are you going to do?” asked Bunny.

“What can I do, son?” Dad’s face was grey, and deeply lined; he was not used to staying up so late, Bunny knew, and he had probably lain awake until morning, worrying over this situation.

And yet Bunny could not help making it harder for him. “Are we going to let those fellows run our business, Dad?”

“It looks as if we’d have to, son. I’m in no position financially to buck the game.”

“But with all the oil you’ve got!”

“I’ve got a good deal of oil, but it’s mostly in the ground, and what I’d need for this job would be a couple of million dollars in the bank.”

He went on to explain how modern affairs were conducted. A man never had enough money, no matter how much he had; he was always reaching out, doing business with the future, so to speak. He put money into the bank, and that gave him the right to take out more than he had put in; the bank would take his “paper,” as it was called. Here Dad was drilling a lot of new wells, he was buying machinery and materials, and paying for labor in advance—all on the certainty of the oil he was going to get next month and the month after; he knew he was going to get it, and the banks trusted him, on the basis of his reputation, and the known value of his property. But if Dad were to set out to fight the Federation, he might jist as well forget there was such a thing as a bank in the State of California; he’d have to pay cash for everything, he’d have to stop all his development work, and even then, he mightn’t be able to meet his notes when they fell due.

Bunny was appalled; for he had thought of his father as one of the richest men in the state, and one of the most independent. “Why, Dad, we don’t own our own business! We don’t even own our souls!”

That started the other on one of his stock themes. Business was business, and not the same as a tea-party. Property was hard to get, and, as he had told his son many times, there was always people trying to take it away from you. If there was going to be any security for wealth, there had to be discipline, and men of wealth had to stand together. It might seem harsh, if you didn’t understand, but it was the way of life. Look at that war over there in Europe; it was a horrible thing—jist made you sick to think about it; but there it was, and if you was in it, you was in, and you had to fight. It was exactly the same with the business game; there was no safety for you, unless you stood with the group that had power. If you stepped out of the reservation, the wolves would tear you to pieces in short order.

But Bunny was not satisfied with general principles; he wanted the details of this situation. “Please tell me, Dad, just who are these men we have to work with?”

Dad answered: they were a group, it was hard to define them, you might say the “open shop crowd”; they were the big business men who ran Angel City, and the territory which lived upon the city, or supported the city, according as you looked at it. They had several organizations, not merely the Petroleum Employers’ Federation, but the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bankers’ Club. They were interlocked, and a little group ran them all—Fred Naumann could call a dozen men on the telephone, and turn you into an outcast from business society; no bank would lend you a dollar, and none of the leading merchants would give you credit, some would refuse to do business with you even for cash.

To the hour of his death, the elder Ross never really understood this strange son of his. He was always being surprised by the intensity with which Bunny took things, which to the father were part of the nature of life. The father kept two compartments in his mind, one for things that were right, and the other for things that existed, and which you had to allow to exist, and to defend, in a queer, half-hearted, but stubborn way. But here was this new phenomenon, a boy’s mind which was all one compartment; things ought to be right, and if they were not right, you ought to make them right, or else what was the use of having any right—you were only fooling yourself about it.

“Listen, Dad,” the boy pleaded; “isn’t there some way we could break that combination? Couldn’t you stop your new developments, and put everything on a cash basis, and go slow? You know, that might be better, in a way; you’re trying to do too much, and you need a rest badly.”

The other could not help smiling, in spite of the pain he read in Bunny’s face. “Son,” he answered, “if I set out to buck that game, I’d never have another hour’s rest, till you buried me up there on the hill beside Joe Gundha.”