Эптон Синклер - Oil!

The German submarines had sunk one American vessel too many, and America was going to war; Congress had been summoned, and the whole country was on tiptoe with belligerency. The newspapers had pages of despatches from Washington and New York, and from the capitals of Europe; so it was not surprising that the news of the Paradise oil strike got crowded out. Once in a while you saw an inch or two buried in a back page; three strikers had been arrested, charged with beating up a strike-breaker on a dark night; it was declared by the operators that the strikers had attempted to set fires in the district, and that German agents were active among the trouble-makers: some little thing like that, to remind you that three thousand men, and the wives and children of many of them, were waging a desperate struggle with starvation.

Dad of course had daily reports of what was happening, and so Bunny got the news. Little by little the operators had gathered up a supply of men, paying them extra wages, and bringing them to the field. They were seldom skilled men, and there were many accidents; nevertheless, a number of the wells were back on production, and in two or three cases some drilling was being done. But on the Ross tract everything stood idle; and Bunny could see that his father was irritated by this situation. He was losing a fortune every day, and at the same time losing caste with his associates, who thought he was either crack-brained, or a traitor, they could not make out which. Of course, the Big Five were glad enough to see one of the independents cutting his own throat; but they pretended to be indignant, and spread rumors and propaganda against their rival, and magnified the trouble he was causing in the field.

Bunny could see all this, and he got the sting of it from the gossip which Aunt Emma brought home from the clubs, and Bertie from her house-parties and dinner-dances. And then he would think of the men, clinging pitifully to their hope of a better life, and his heart would be torn in half. There was only one thing that could justify Dad’s course, and that was for the men to win; they must win, they must! It was the way Bunny felt when he sat and watched a foot-ball game, and cheered himself hoarse for the home-team. He had an impulse to jump into the arena and help the team—but alas, the rules of the game forbade such action!

There had been more trouble with the guards at the Ross tract, and Dad was going up to the field, and Bunny went along for a week-end. It was springtime now, and the hills were green, and the fruit-trees in blossom—oh, beautiful, beautiful! But human beings were miserable, millions of them, and why could they not learn to be happy in such a world? It was springtime all over the country, and yet everybody was preparing to go to war, and form vast armies, and kill other people, also groping for happiness! Everybody said that it had to be; and yet something in Bunny would not cease to dream of a world in which people did not maim and kill one another, and destroy, not merely the happiness of others, but their own.

They came to Paradise, and there was the strange sight of idle men, hanging about the streets; and of guards at the entrances to all the oil properties. There was somebody making a speech on a vacant lot, and a crowd listening. It was a great time for all sorts of cranks with things to teach—itinerant evangelists, and patent medicine venders, and Socialist orators—the people heard them all impartially. Bunny found that his reading room was being patronized now, there were men who had read all the magazines, even to the advertisements!

Dad interviewed a committee of his men. It was an impossible situation, they reported, the guards were deliberately making trouble, they were drunk part of the time, and didn’t know what they were doing or had done. Therefore the union had put up some more tents, and the men in the bunk-house were about to move out. Those who had families, and occupied the houses, would try to stay on, if Mr. Ross would permit it; there was no place for the families to go, and they dared not leave the women and children alone in the neighborhood of the guards. Dad interviewed the captain of the latter, and got the information that the men had liquor, of course; how could you expect men to stay in a God-forsaken hole like this without liquor? Dad had to admit that was true; men were like that, and when you had your property to protect in an emergency, you had to take what you could get. Bunny wasn’t satisfied with this argument, but then, Bunny was an “idealist,” and such people are seldom satisfied in this harsh world.

Bunny went up to see Ruth and Meelie—the place to get the news! The girls were hard at work baking, but that didn’t occupy their tongues, and from Meelie’s there poured a stream of gossip. Dick Nelson was in hospital with a part of his jaw shot away—that nice young fellow, Bunny remembered him, he had worked on Number Eleven well; he had knocked a guard down for dirty talk to his sister, and two other guards had shot him. And Bob Murphy was in jail, he had been arrested when they were bringing the strike-breakers into the Victor place. And so on, name after name that Bunny knew. Meelie’s eyes were wide with horror, and yet you could see that she was young, and this was more excitement than had ever come into her life before. If the devil, with his hoofs and horns and pitchfork and burning smell, had appeared at a meeting of the Tabernacle of the Third Revelation, Meelie would have enjoyed the sensation; and in the same way she enjoyed this crew of whiskey-drinking, cursing ruffians, suddenly vomited out of the city’s underworld into her peaceful and pious and springtime-decorated village.

Bunny asked about Paul, and learned that he had been put on the strike committee, and was editing a little paper which the union was publishing; it was lovely, and had Bunny seen it? They produced a copy—a double sheet, mimeographed on both sides for economy, and with a little oil-derrick at the top of the first sheet, alongside the title, “The Labor Defender.” It was full of strike news, and exhortations, and an appeal to the governor of the State against the violence of the deputies and the refusal of the sheriff to take their whiskey away; also there was a poem, “Labor Awake, by Mrs. Weenie Martin, a Tool-dresser’s Wife.” Paul had just got back from a trip to some of the other fields, where he had gone to persuade the men to join the strike; in Oil Center they had tried to arrest him, but he had got a tip and got away by a back road.

America was going to war, and everybody was thrilled about it; at school they were singing patriotic songs and organizing drill corps. This oil war was so little in comparison that nobody heeded it; but it got hold of Bunny, and came to seem the big war to him. All this arrogance of power, this defiance of law and decency, this miserable lying about workingmen! Here Bunny got the truth, he got it face to face with the men and women whom he knew; and then he would remember the tales he had read in the newspapers—and would hate himself, because he lived upon money which had been obtained by such means! His father was paying the “assessments” of the Federation, and thus paying the salaries of these blackguards—paying for their guns and ammunition, and for the bottles of whiskey without which they would not stay!

What did it mean? What was back of it? One thing—the greed of a little ruling group of operators, who wouldn’t pay their men a living wage, but would work them twelve hours a day. They were driving the men with revolvers and rifles, holding them away from the wells, their only source of livelihood, and starving them back to work on the old unfair terms. That was the story, just that simple; and here, in Ruth’s little kitchen, you saw the process from the inside. The girls had had to reduce the price of the bread they sold, because some people couldn’t afford it otherwise! Oil-workers never do save much, because they have to move about, and to bring their families, or to send them money. And now their savings were used up, and the contributions which came from other fields were not enough, and Paul, who had been saving money to study and become a scientist, was using it to support hungry families, and Ruth and Meelie were giving all their time, and even old Mrs. Watkins was helping when she could!