Chapter XXXII: The Roof-Garden of the World

After these strenuous adventures I retired to private life to recuperate. I edited “The Cry for Justice,” and then, finding that I was still haunted by the Colorado situation, I wrote “King Coal.” Meantime I had moved to Southern California, seeking an open-air life. I have been here four years, and alas, I have had a new set of experiences with newspapers. As preliminary to them, there must be given a brief account of this “Roof-garden of the World.”

It exists because of climate. There are, of course, ranchmen who raise fruits and vegetables, and there are servants and chauffeurs and house-builders and plumbers, but the main industry of Southern California is climate. Everybody is consuming climate, and in addition to this, nearly everybody is trying to sell climate to “come-ons” from the East. The country has been settled by retired elderly people, whose health has broken down, and who have come here to live on their incomes. They have no organic connection with one another; each is an individual, desiring to live his own little life, and to be protected in his own little privileges. The community is thus a parasite upon the great industrial centres of other parts of America. It is smug and self-satisfied, making the sacredness of property the first and last article of its creed. It has a vast number of churches of innumerable sects, and takes their aged dogmas with deadly seriousness; its social life is display, its intellectual life is “boosting,” and its politics are run by Chambers of Commerce and Real Estate Exchanges.

There are, of course, a great number of ladies in Southern California with nothing to do. They have culture clubs, which pay celebrities to come and entertain them, and next to marrying a millionairess, this is the easiest way to get your living in Southern California. They will pay you as much as a hundred dollars for a lecture, and such an opportunity is naturally not to be sneezed at by a strike-agitator in debt. I had been living quietly for a year or so, working on “King Coal,” when I was invited to meet at luncheon one of the officials of the ultra-exclusive Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles. I was duly inspected and adjudged presentable, and received an invitation to set forth my intellectual wares before the club assemblage.

Now, this was an important opportunity, as my friends pointed out. There are many such clubs in Los Angeles, and scores of others in the leisure-class towns round about. This first lecture was a test, and if I “made good,” I would receive more invitations, and might be able to live quietly and do my writing. The ladies who came to hear Upton Sinclair would, of course, come expecting to be shocked. If I didn’t shock them at all, my lecture would be a failure; I must be judicious, and shock them just exactly enough, so that they would come for more shocks. I am fortunate in having a wife who understands the psychology of ladies, and who undertook to groom me for this new role of leisure-class lecturer.

In the first place, there was the question of clothes. “You haven’t had a new suit in four or five years,” said my wife.

“How about the one I bought in England?”

“That heavy woolen suit? If you wore that on a summer day, the perspiration would stream down your face!”

“Well,” I ventured, “mightn’t they think it proper for a Socialist to wear old clothes? Mightn’t I be pathetic——”

Said M. C. S. “They don’t want anybody around who is not well dressed. It’s depressing. You must have a new suit.”

“But—we just haven’t the money to spare.”

“You can get a Palm Beach suit for ten dollars.”

“Isn’t that rather festive? I never wore anything like it.”

“Idiot! Papa wears them all the time.”

Now “papa,” you must understand, is—well, what “papa” does is the standard. So it was arranged that I should go into Los Angeles an hour or two earlier in the morning, and provide myself with a Palm Beach suit and pair of white shoes for two dollars. “They will be made of paper,” said my wife, “but you won’t have far to walk, and they’ll do for other lectures.”

M. C. S. does not go with me on these adventures, having not been well since the Colorado excitement. She stays at home and mends socks and writes sonnets, while I administer shocks to the leisure-class ladies. Her last injunction was a hair-cut. “The day of long-haired geniuses is past. Promise me you’ll have your hair cut.”

I promise, and I get the Palm Beach suit and the shoes, and then look for a barber. It is ten or eleven months before America’s entry into the war, but the “preparedness” enthusiasts are having some kind of celebration in Los Angeles, and the streets are a mass of red and white bunting; I walk a long distance, and find half a dozen places with red and white ribbons wound about poles, but they are not barber-shops. At last, however, I find one, just in the nick of time, and at ten o’clock sharp I present myself, all freshly groomed, to the charming ladies of the club, and am escorted onto the platform.

My theme is “The Voice of the Ages,” and I bring with me a copy of “The Cry for Justice,” and read passages from eminent ancient authors, startling my hearers by the revelation that Plato and Euripides and Isaiah and Jesus and Confucius and Dante and Martin Luther and George Washington were all members of the I. W. W. of their time. I read them Isaiah on “Ladies of Fashion”—all save one obscene sentence, which could not be uttered before modern ladies. I give them just exactly the proper number of thrills, mixed with the proper number of smiles, and they bombard me with questions for an hour, and we have a most enjoyable time.

But one tragedy befalls. I am quoting Frederick the Great on the subject of Militarism, and am moved to mention the fact that Los Angeles is now in a military mood. “I promised my wife I would get a hair-cut before I came here, but I almost missed it, because there were so many red and white decorations on the streets that I couldn’t find a barber-shop.” The instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had, as the boys say, “spilled the beans.” Driving home with a friend who is a member of the club, she told me what a success the lecture had been, and I replied: “Ah, no, you are mistaken! I ruined everything!”

“How?” asked my friend.

“Didn’t you hear me confuse the American flag with a barber-pole?”

“Nonsense!” said my friend. “They all laughed.”

“May be so,” said I. “But wait until you see the papers tomorrow morning!”

And sure enough, it was as I said! Next morning the “Los Angeles Times” published an account of the lecture, in which I was portrayed as a dandified creature who had appeared before the ladies decked in tennis flannels. Having since met Alma Whitaker, the woman who wrote this account, I dare stake my life that she knows perfectly well the difference between a Palm Beach suit and tennis flannels; but she wanted to make me hateful, and that was such a little lie! She went on to tell about my lecture, in which I had sneered at Jesus, and compared the American flag to a barber-pole! My audience had been highly indignant, according to her account, and one eminent lady had left the room in disgust.

And so next morning there was an editorial in the “Times,” of which I will quote about half. You will be struck by its peculiar style, and may be interested to know that it was written by General Otis himself, being a fair sample of the vitriol which every day for thirty years he poured out upon everything enlightened in California:

UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS

Many people believe that the prattlings of an anarchistic Upton
Sinclair before a woman’s club are unworthy of serious attention; but
the fact that the hall of the Friday Morning Club was filled to
overflowing at his programme, and that the great majority of them sat
throughout the entire lecture, would seem to prove that such illogical
ravings have at least some power to impress. Some few women have been
found courageous enough to voice their indignation that the club
rostrum should be used for such ungodly purposes.

It is depressing to find a great number of intelligent women, well
able to think for themselves, lending time and ear to a piffling
collection of more-or-less brilliant quotations upholding anarchy,
destruction, lawlessness, revolution, from the lips of an effeminate
young man with a fatuous smile, a weak chin and a sloping forehead,
talking in a false treble, and accusing them of leading selfish,
self-indulgent lives. It would be laughable if it were not a little
disconcerting. These women, who are doing such earnest work for their
city, who, indeed, rank among the best intellect of the city, who have
deeds rather than words to their credit—it seems incredible that they
should be prepared to lend encouragement to such unintelligent,
witless, anarchistic outpourings.

While slyly veiling his false doctrines as quotations from
“intelligent ancient peasants,” and the prophet Isaiah, and the Greek
classics, Upton Sinclair nevertheless makes no secret of his sympathy
with dynamiters and murderers, and considers it an example of
exquisite wit to speak of Jesus Christ with patronizing irreverence.
His sense of humor also demanded that he belittle the flag of the
United States, and, after pretending to confuse it with a barber’s
pole scoff at the great national wave of emotion for the country’s
righteous defense and honor.

An assembly of men of the same standing as the women of the Friday
Morning Club could never be induced to listen to such insults to their
creed and their country without violent protest. Never before an
audience of red-blooded men could Upton Sinclair have voiced his weak,
pernicious, vicious doctrines. His naïve, fatuous smile alone would
have aroused their ire before he opened his vainglorious mouth.

Let the fact remain that this slim, beflanneled example of perverted
masculinity could and did get several hundred women to listen to him.

Now, as a matter of fact, it happened that I had given a far more radical lecture at the monthly dinner of the University Club, where three hundred men of Los Angeles had heard me with every evidence of cordial interest. The secretary of the club had told me that it was the only occasion he could remember when none of the diners had withdrawn to play chess until after the speaking was finished. But I had, of course, no way to make known this fact to the readers of the “Times,” nor even the true sentiments of the ladies of the Friday Morning Club. It happened that my friend George Sterling spoke at the club the following week, and I went with him and was asked to speak at the luncheon. I referred playfully to what the “Times” had said about me, and was astonished at the ovation I received. The women rose from their seats to let me know that they appreciated the insult to them involved in the “Times” editorial. It is the same thing that I have noted everywhere, whenever I refer to the subject of our newspapers. The American people thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!