Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair

  a hundred different tales he could invent! "Then we've simply got to take what that scoundrel allows us!" cried Bertie; and the lawyers agreed that was the situation. Being themselves on a percentage basis, their advice was sincere! Then an incident that multiplied the bitterness between Bertie and her brother. Bunny went to the storage warehouse where his belongings had been put away, and in an atlas that his father had occasionally consulted he came upon five liberty bonds for ten thousand dollars each. It was some money Dad had been keeping handy—possibly to bribe the officers in case he should be caught; anyhow, here it was, and Bunny would have been free to consider it a part of the million which Dad had tried to give him in Paris. But he haughtily decided that he would not join in plundering the estate; he would turn the bonds in, to be counted as part of the assets. But he made the mistake of telling Bertie about it—and oh, what a riot! The imbecile, to make Alyse and her lawyers a present of twenty-five thousand dollars! Instead of quietly dividing with his sister, and holding his mouth! That twenty-five thousand became to Bertie a thing of more importance than all the millions that Verne had got away with; these bonds were something tangible— or almost tangible—until Bunny took them out of her reach, and made them a present to those greedy vultures! And right when both of them needed cash, and were having to go to one of their father's bankers to borrow money on the basis of their claims to the estate. Bertie raved and stormed, and Bunny, to get it over with, took the bonds to the bank and turned them in; and after that Bertie never forgave him, she would mention his imbecility every time they were alone. She was making herself ill with all this hatred and fuming; she would sit up half the night poring over figures, and then she couldn't sleep for excitement. Like all young society ladies, she set much store by the freshness of her skin and its freedom from wrinkles; but now she was throwing away her charms, and making herself pale and haggard. In after years she would be going to beauty specialists and having the corners of her mouth lifted, and the skin of her face treated with chemicals and peeled off—because now she could not control her fury of disappointment, that she was to get only a paltry one or two million, instead of the glorious ten or fifteen million she had been confident of some day possessing.

  V

  Rachel had published a brief article about Bunny's return from abroad, quoting him as saying that he intended to use his inheritance for the benefit of the movement. And this statement had attracted the attention of a bright young newspaper woman, who had written a facetious article: MILLIONAIRE RED TO SAVE SOCIETY And now it appeared that there were a great many people who had ideas as to how to save society, and they all wanted to see Bunny, and waited for him in the lobby of his hotel. One had a sure cure for cancer, and another a perpetual motion machine actually working; one wanted to raise bullfrogs for their legs, and another to raise skunks for their skins. There were dozens who wanted to prevent the next war, and several who wanted to start colonies; there were many with different ways of bringing about Socialism, and several great poets and philosophers with manuscripts, and one to whom God had revealed Himself—the bearer of this message was six-feet-four and broad in proportion, and he towered over Bunny and whispered in an awe-stricken voice that the Words which God had spoken had been set down and locked in a safe, and no human eye ever had beheld them, or ever would. Several others wrote that they were not able to call because they were unjustly confined to asylums, but if Bunny would get them out they would deliver their messages to the world through him. There was one more "nut," and his name was J. Arnold Ross— no longer "junior." He had a plan, which he had been turning over and over in his mind; and now he gathered his friends to get their reaction. Old Chaim Menzies, who had been a long time in the movement, and watched most of its mistakes; Chaim was working in a clothing shop, as usual, and giving his spare time to getting up meetings. And Jacob Menzies, the pale student—Jacob had got a job teaching school for a year, but then he had been found out, and now was selling insurance. And Harry Seager, who was growing walnuts, and escaping the boycotts. And Peter Nagle, who was helping his father run a union plumbing business in an open shop city, and spending his earnings on a four page tabloid monthly ridiculing God. And Gregor Nikolaieff, who had done his Socialist duty working for a year in a lumber camp, and was now assistant to an X-ray operator in a hospital. And Dan Irving, who had come from Washington at Bunny's expense—these six people sat down with Rachel and Bunny at a dinner party in a private dining room, to discuss how to save society with a million dollars. Bunny explained with becoming modesty that he was not putting forth his plan as the best of all possible plans, but merely as the best for him. He wasn't going to evade the issue by giving his money away, putting off the job on other people; he had learned this much from Dad, that money by itself is nothing, to accomplish anything takes money plus management. Moreover, Bunny himself wanted something to do; he was tired of just looking on, and talking. He had thought for a long time about a big paper, but he had no knowledge of journalism, and would only be a blunderer. The one thing he did know was young people; he had been to college, and knew what a college ought to be, and wasn't. "What we're doing—Rachel and Jacob and the rest of us Ypsels—is trying to work on young minds; but the trouble is, we only get them a few hours in the week, and the things that count for most in their lives are the enemy's—I mean the schools, the job, the movies—everything. So I want to get some students together for a complete life, twenty-four hours a day; and see if we can't build a Socialist discipline, a personal life, with service to the cause as its goal. Rachel will agree with me in this—I don't know if anyone else will—I think one reason the movement suffers is that we haven't made the new moral standards that we need. Our own members, many of them, are personally weak; the women have to have silk stockings and look like the bourgeoisie, and their idea of freedom is to adopt the bad habits of the men. If the movement really meant enough to Socialists, they wouldn't have to spend money for tobacco, and booze, and imitation finery." "Dat lets me out!" said old Chaim Menzies, who had already lighted his ten-cent cigar. The substance of what Bunny wanted was a labor college on a tract of land somewhere out in the country; but instead of spending his million on steel and concrete, he wanted to begin in tents, and have all the buildings put up by the labor of the students and teachers. Everybody on the place was to have four hours' manual labor and four of class work daily; and they were all to wear khaki, and have no fashionable society. Bunny had the idea of going out among the colleges and high schools, and talking to little groups of students, and here and there seducing one away from football and fraternities to a new dedication. Also the labor unions would be invited to select promising young men and women. It was a thing that should grow fast, and take little money, because, with the exception of building materials, everything could be produced on the place; they would have a farm, and a school of domestic arts—in short, teach all the necessary trades, and provide four hours' honest work of some sort for all students who wanted to come.

  VI

  What did they think about it? Chaim Menzies was, as always, the first to speak. Perhaps his feelings had been hurt by the reference to tobacco; anyhow, he said it looked to him like it vas anodder colony; you didn't change a colony by calling it a college, and a colony vas de vorst trap you could set for de movement. "You git people to go off and live by demselves, different from de rest of de vorkers, and vedder dey are comfortable or vedder dey ain't—and dey von't be!—all de time dey are tinking about someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld." "That's quite true," said Bunny. "But we shan't be so far from the world, and the purpose of our training will be, not the colony, but the movement outside, and how to help it." "De people vot are going to help de movement has got to be in it every hour. You git dem out vun mont' and dey are no good any more; dey have got some sort of graft den, someting easy, dey are no longer vorkers." "But this isn't going to be so easy, Comrade Chaim " "Listen to him! He is going to git nice young college ladies and gentlemen to come
and live lives dat vill not seem easy to de vorkers!" "You might as well admit it, Bunny," put in Harry Seager. "You'll have a nice polite place, with all the boys and girls wearing William Morris costumes. They'll work earnestly for a while, but they'll never be efficient, and if you really have any buildings put up, or any food raised, you'll have regulation hard-fisted work-ingmen to do it. I know, because we're picking walnuts now!" "I don't want a polite place," said Bunny. "I want a gymnasium where people train for the class struggle; and if we can't have discipline any other way, how about this as part of the course—every student is pledged to go to jail for not less than thirty days." "Attaboy!" cried Peter Nagle. "Now you're talking!" "Vot is he going to do—break de speed laws?" inquired Chaim, sarcastically. "He's going into Angel City and picket in a strike. Or he's going to hold Socialist meetings on street corners until some cop picks him up. You don't need me to tell you how to get arrested in the class struggle, Comrade Chaim." "Yes, but he might run into some judge dat vould not understand de college regulation, and might give him six mont's." "Well, that's a chance we'll have to take; the point is simply, no senior student is in good social standing until he or she has been in jail for at least thirty days in a class struggle case." "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!"

  VII

  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 prof
its! 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. Bunny went through the record, and it gave him a strange thrill. There were pages and pages of sentimental rubbish about this happy shore and this new state of bliss, with angel's wings and the music of harps, and tell my dear ones that I am with them, but I am wiser now, and my dear Bunny must know that I understand and forgive—all stuff that might have come out of the conscious or subconscious mind of a sentimental elderly lady or of a rascally medium. But then came something that made the young man catch his breath: "I want my dear Bunny to know that it is really his father who speaks to him, and he will remember the man who got all the land for us, and that he had two gold teeth in the front of his mouth, and Bunny said that somebody would rob his grave." How in the name of all the arts of magic was a medium in Paris to know about a joke which Bunny had made to his father about Mr. Hardacre, the agent who had bought them options on ranches in Paradise, California? By golly, it was something to think about! Could it really be that Dad was not gone forever, but had just disappeared somewhere, and could be got hold of again? Bunny would go for a walk to think about it; and through the streets of Angel City he would hear the voice of Eli Watkins booming over the radio. Eli's Tabernacle was packed day and night, with the tens of thousands who crowded to see the prophet who had been floated over the sea by angels, and had brought back a feather to prove it; all California heard Eli's voice, proclaiming the ancient promise: "Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."