Эптон Синклер - Oil!

The rumor spread with magical swiftness through the university, and the quick imaginations of Bunny’s friends supplied all those details about which he had been silent. Bunny Ross knew a workingman who was an out-and-out Bolshevik, and had made Bunny into an out-and-out Bolshevik too; “the millionaire red” became his future designation. Men and women gathered round to question and argue with him; the arguments often broke up with furious word rows, but all the same it was interesting, and they came back for more. Bunny was made into a centre of Soviet propaganda; for, when they drove him to the wall with their arguments, what could he do but go to Paul for more facts, and then come back and hurl them at his adversaries’ heads? His fraternity brothers sat up half the night with him, wrangling over his challenge to everything they considered good.

With rest and home cooking Paul picked up considerably, and in a couple of weeks came down to Angel City to meet a friend. Bunny joined him, and had another adventure, in the person of Harry Seager. This man, ten years older than Paul, was the head of a small business college, who had put his affairs into a partner’s hands and gone in for “Y work” during the war. They had sent him to Siberia, to help those two hundred and eighty railway men whom the bankers were paying. He had travelled up and down the line, seeing everything there was to see, and now he had “kicked over the traces,” and was telling the truth about the situation, in spite of the protests of the “Y” authorities, and the army, and the state department, and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, and everybody that could put pressure on the head of a business college in Angel City.

Dad was up to the ears just then in work, on account of some wild-catting they were planning on the Bandy tract. But Bunny insisted he must meet Harry Seager, and lured the two of them to lunch, and Paul also, and before the soup was eaten they had got Dad so stirred up that he did not eat any more. Of course he was horrified at their story; but there was no use expecting his mind to work the same as Bunny’s. Dad couldn’t straighten out all the tangles in the world, and didn’t feel the impulse to try. What worried him was that the Japs were in Siberia; and that our diplomacy was so unaware of oil; and most of all, that his son was falling under the spell of wild and dangerous ideas.

This fellow Seager, for example—a big six-foot Westerner, handsome as a Viking, and picturesque because of hair turned prematurely grey by his labors; you couldn’t deny the fellow’s facts, you couldn’t think he was lying—but good Lord, there was no use being thrown off your base, and going round the country raising a public disturbance, attacking the government because it had made a blunder in the confusion of wartime, and then hadn’t known how to get out.

Bunny dragged his father to a Socialist meeting at which Harry Seager was to speak. It was in a big hall, with two or three thousand people packed into it, and Dad thought he had never seen so many dangerous people in all his life before: foreign faces, dark and sinister, intense-looking intellectuals with hair over their collars, women with short hair and big spectacles, workingmen, sullen and dull, or sharp-faced, bitter—oh, terrible, terrible people! And this man Seager, lashing them to frenzy! Telling about the “death-train” he had seen on the Trans-Siberian—more than two thousand men and women packed into cattle cars, prisoners of the “Whites,” who did not know what to do with them, but ran the train here and there, shunting it onto sidings for weeks, while the victims perished of hunger, thirst and disease. And American troops standing by, feeding such murderers, supplying them with money, protecting them with guns! Yes, and it was still going on! Right now Polish troops were invading Russia, wearing American uniforms, killing Russian workingmen with American ammunition! What did the people of America have to say?

What the people of America had to say was a roar that sent shivers down the spine of J. Arnold Ross. He looked about him at this human ocean tossed by a storm—hands waving, fists clenched, heads bobbing up and down with excitement; and he knew what it meant—nobody could fool him. When presently the crowd burst into cheering at the name of Lenin, they were not cheering for what the Russian Lenin had done, but for what some American Lenin meant to do. “Hands off Russia!”—that was mere camouflage; what they meant was, “Hands on Ross Consolidated!”

And then, out of the corner of his eye, Dad stole a glimpse at his son. Bunny apparently did not feel one particle of his father’s fear! Bunny was like the rest of the mob, his face shining with excitement. Bunny was shouting for “Hands off Russia!”—and either he did not know what this mob meant to do to Ross Consolidated, or else—worse yet—he did not care!

The little bunch of “reds” from the university had attended this Seager meeting, and next day were all a-thrill with it. Most of Bunny’s fraternity brothers had refused to go; and now they proceeded to criticize an argument they had not heard! Bunny’s feelings boiled over as he listened to them. All this rubbish about nationalization of women, these faked figures concerning millions of victims of Bolshevism! It was a disgrace to a university that such stuff should pass for knowledge, and no effort made to contradict it. Bunny voiced this idea to Peter Nagle, and Peter went home and talked to his father about it, and came back announcing that he was willing to serve as editor for a student paper to present the truth.

There was another meeting of the conspirators, and thirty dollars was quickly subscribed, and it was voted to publish a four-page weekly sheet of all kinds of truth-telling, to bear the name of “The Investigator.” It was agreed that the best approach to the Russian problem was Harry Seager, because he had been a “Y” worker in good standing; therefore Rachel Menzies was requested to write a two thousand word interview with Mr. Seager. Another young rebel was to collect facts and rumors concerning secret payments made out of an alumni fund to bring promising athletes to Southern Pacific. Bunny, as social light of the crowd, was assigned the theme of college snobbery, apropos of the fact that a Hindoo student with high scholarship records had been blackballed for the “Lit.”

And then Peter Nagle brought up his favorite hobby, in the form of a poem mildly satirizing God. There was some question as to the wisdom of bringing in the religious issue, but Peter asserted his prerogatives as editor; either he was or he wasn’t, and if he was, then he took his stand upon the Russian formula, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Billy George backed him up, insisting that the new paper should cover the whole field of modern thought.

Well, “The Investigator” was written, and edited, and set up into galleys, and pasted on a “dummy,” and then cut up and pasted differently. At last it was printed; there lay the sheets, fresh from the press, soft and damp, like locusts newly emerged from the chrysalis. Next day they would be dry; and meantime, “Ssh! Not a word!”

How were the papers to be distributed? There had been much discussion. Bunny, with his lordly ideas, wanted to give them away. But Rachel brought word from her father, the tailor, who was also literature agent for Local Angel City of the Socialist party, that the papers must be sold; people wouldn’t respect them otherwise. “What they pay good money for they will read,” said Papa Menzies, with proper Jewish insight; and his daughter added, with proper Socialist fervor, “If we really believe in our cause, we won’t mind a little ridicule.” It was a call to martyrdom, and one after another they responded—though not without qualms.