CHAPTER CXI
A TEXT-BOOK FOR RUSSIA
Mrs. Ogi has been silent for some time; saving her energies in anticipation of that greatest satisfaction known to wives. Now she takes it. “I told you so!”
“What did you tell me?” asks Ogi, uneasily.
“You have filled up a book, and haven’t got in a word about Gloria Swanson’s salary, nor what Rupert Hughes really got for ‘The Sins of Hollywood’!”
“It’s this way,” says her husband. “I found I had so much material that I’d have to make two volumes, one dealing with the artists of the past, and the other with living artists.”
“I remember, eight years ago,” says Mrs. Ogi, “you started out to write a criticism of the world’s culture in one volume; and presently you came to me looking worried, and said you had so much about Religion it would need a volume to itself. So you took a hundred thousand words for Religion. And when you started after Journalism, and took a hundred thousand words to tell the story of your own life, and another hundred thousand to tell about the newspapers. And then Education; you came again and said you had so much about the colleges, you’d have to give a whole volume to them. You took two hundred and five thousand words for the colleges, and then a hundred and ninety-five thousand for the schools!”
As Ogi has no answer to this indictment, she continues: “Just what do you think you’ve written now?”
“I’ve written a text-book of culture.”
“For the schools?”--very sarcastically.
“It will be serving as a text-book in the high schools of Russia within six months.”
“In Russia, yes--”
“In every country in Europe, as soon as the social revolution comes. The workers, taking power, bring a new psychology and a new ethics; naturally they have to have a new art, and new art standards.”
“They may want to write their own text-books,” suggests Mrs. Ogi.
“No doubt they will--and better than mine. But so far no one has done it--and they will have to use such weapons as they find ready.”
Mrs. Ogi is one of those who observe the phenomena of religion with a mingling of fear and longing. It would be wonderful to believe like that! “Of course,” she says, “if your side has its way--”
“That is how history is made,” says Ogi. “Once upon a time a wealthy Virginia planter, with other wealthy gentlemen from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, rose up and declared rebellion against his king. A war was fought, and the rebel planter won; therefore he is known as the Father of His Country, and all little boys in school learn how he could not tell a lie. If he had lost his war against his king, he would have been a vile and traitorous varlet, and every little boy in school would have learned by heart a long list of the lies he had told. And just so it is with writers who take up the cause of the dispossessed and disinherited. If the proletariat wins in its war against capitalism, these outcast writers will become leading men of letters. On the other hand, if the proletariat loses, they will remain ‘propagandists,’ and ‘tub-thumpers,’ and ‘buzzards,’ and ‘muckrakers’--you recognize those terms.”
Yes, Mrs. Ogi admits that she recognizes them; and he continues:
“I have given the workers an honest book, a sound book, from the point of view of their hopes and needs. I say to them: Why should you read the books of your enemies, those who make their glory and their greatness out of your misery and humiliation? Why should you walk into the traps that are set for you? Life is very cruel, but assuredly this is the most cruel thing in your fate--that you should admire those actions which crush you, those tastes which spurn you, those standards which have as their beginning and end your enslavement and degradation.”
“None but workers are to see this book?” asks Mrs. Ogi.
“I use the word in its revolutionary sense, the strict scientific sense of those who do the useful and necessary labor, whether of hand or brain. I am pleading especially with the young brain-workers, the intellectuals. For the hand-worker is a slave by compulsion, but the young thinker, the student, has the ancient choice of Hercules, between virtue and vice. He may sell himself to the exploiters, he may take the dress-suit bribe, the motor-cars and the ‘hooch’ parties, and the beautiful, soft-skinned, hard-souled women; or he may heed my plea, and steel his soul, and go back to the garret which is the cradle of the arts, back to the ancient and honorable occupation of cultivating literature upon a little oatmeal.
“To this young intellectual, hesitating at the parting of ways, I say: Comrade, this world of organized gambling and predation in which we live seems powerful and permanent, but it is an evil dream of but a few more years; the seeds of its own destruction are sprouting in its heart. I am not referring to its moral failure, the fact that it thwarts the most fundamental of human cravings, for justice and for freedom; I mean in the bare material sense--it fails to employ its own workers, it makes misery out of its own plenty, and war and destruction of its abounding prosperity. It is as certain to fall as a pyramid standing on its tip; and when it falls, what is left but the workers? What other force is there, having solidarity, the sense of brotherhood, the ideal of service, of useful labor, as against the buying and selling and exploiting, the robbing, killing and enslaving which is capitalism?
“This great new force is shaping itself in our world, preparing for the making of the future. And shall this new life not have an art? Shall men not thrill to this vision, and rouse others to make it real? Here lies your task, young comrade; here is your future--and not the timid service of convention, the million-times-over repetition of ancient lies, the endless copying of copies of folly and cruelty and greed. The artists of our time are like men hypnotized, repeating over and over a dreary formula of futility. And I say: Break this evil spell, young comrade; go out and meet the new dawning life, take your part in the battle, and put it into new art; do this service for a new public, which you yourselves will make. That is the message of this book, the last word I have to say: that your creative gift shall not be content to make art works, but shall at the same time make a world; shall make new souls, moved by a new ideal of fellowship, a new impulse of love, and faith--and not merely hope, but determination.
“That is what this book is about,” says Ogi; “and maybe not many will get me, but a few will, and they will be the ones I am after.”
Mrs. Ogi comes to him and puts her arms about him, trembling a little. “Yes, of course,” she says; “and I’m glad you wrote it, in spite of all my terrors.”
“Ah, now!” says Ogi, smiling. “We ought to have a picture of this! A happy ending, in the very best bourgeois style!”
INDEX
Roman numerals refer to chapters, Arabic numerals to pages
Adams, Francis, 352
Adams, F. P., 64
Æschylus, 49, 94, 180
Alcibiades, XVII
Alexander, 41
Amos, 31
Anderson, 239, 260, 270
Archimedes, 41
Ariosto, 89
Aristophanes, XX, 129, 210
Aristotle, 117
Arnold, 47, 181, LXXI, 323, 379
Assisi, 74
Austen, LII
Babbitt, 138, XLV
Bacon, 95
Bakunin, 212
Balzac, LX
Barrett, 225
Baudelaire, 302
Beer, 348
Beers, 186
Beethoven, L
Bellamy, 238, 352
Bennett, 189
Bernhardi, 293
Bernhardt, 123
Besant, 352
Bierce, CII
Blake, 202
Boccaccio, XXVIII
Borgia, 80
Brandes, 294
Brawne, 187
Brooks, 327
Brown, Bishop, 74
Brown, J. G., 12
Browning, 80, LXX
Buchanan, 352
Buddha, 39
Bunyan, XXXVIII, 239, 283
Burbank, 279
Burns, XLIX, 244, 339
Byron, LVII, 181, 203, 228, 241, 251, 301
Cade, 103
Calas, 133
Carlyle, 13, 77, LXVIII, 311, 337
Caroline, 180
Cartier, 95
Cervantes, XXXII
Chambers, 114, 356
Charles I, 106
Charles X, 195
Clemens, C, 91, 334, 340, 348, 359, 369
Cleon, 53
Coleridge, LIV, 251
Collier, 115
Collins, 20
Comstock, 105
Congreve, 114
Conrad, CIX
Coolidge, 141, 327
Corneille, XL, 316
Crane, CIV
Cromwell, 113, 173, 195
Dana, 32, 53
Dante, XXIX
Davidson, 352
Davis, CIII
Dawes, 57
Day, 346
Debs, 361
de Mille, 114
de Young, 340
Dickens, LXXII, 236, 277
Diderot, 136
Dobson, 64
Doré, 12
Dostoievski, LXXXIV-V
Douglas, 305
Dreiser, 270
Dreyfus, 282, 381
Dryden, XXXIX, 143
Eddy, 241
Edison, 41
Edward, 123
Elijah, 31
Eliot, 235
Emerson, 58, 217, 233, LXXV, 253
Euripedes, 51, 52, 54
Fielding, XLVIII
Flaubert, LXV, 276
Fox, 74
France, CX
Frederick, 133, 147, 219
Galileo, 106, 117
Gandhi, 274
Garrison, 245
Gautier, 187, 196, LXII, 208
George IV, 165, 180
Gibbon, 171
Gifford, 171
Gilder, 347
Gladstone, 48, 323
Glyn, 114
Goethe, 39, 153, LI, 183
Gogol, LXXXII, 263
Goncourt, LXXXVII
Gorki, 259, 273, 328, 335, 339
Gosse, 301, 319
Gracchus, 59
Grant, 330
Gronlund, 339
Haldeman-Julius, 190
Hale, 355
Hallam, 223
Hamilton, 172
Hanska, 194
Hardie, 173
Harper, 335-6
Harris, 98, 99, XCV
Harvey, 331
Hastings, 162
Hawthorne, LXXVIII, 322
Hazlitt, 185
Hearn, 187, 336
Heine, 64, LXVI
Henley, 14
Henry, CVII, 349, 375
Herriot, 282
Hichens, 303
Hippocrates, 41
Hohenzollern, 219
Homer, XVIII, 60
Horace, XXIV
Howells, CI, 328, 348
Hughes, 28, 383
Hugo, 200, 203, 216, LXI, 280, 296, 298
Hunt, 184, 185, 186
Ibsen, XC, 339
Ingersoll, 331
Irwin, 53
Isaiah, 30
Jackson, 246
James, H., 13, 73, 82, 193, 264, XCVIII, 379
James, W., 318
Jaurès, 381
Jennings, 359-60, 362
Jeremiah, 30
Jesus, 38, 39, 257, 293
Joan, 102
John, 31
Johnson, 34
Juvenal, XXIV
Keats, LIX, 180, 245
Kingsley, 352
Kipling, 14, 129
Kubla Khan, 168
Lamb, 185
Lanier, 254
Lassalle, 352
Leacock, 53
Lee, 232
Lee-Higginson, 141
Lenin, 36
Lewes, 39, 235
Lewis, 206
Lincoln, 256
Lloyd-George, 377
Lockhart, 186
London, CVIII, 338, 349, 351
Longfellow, LXXVI
Louis XIV, XLI
Louis XVIII, 195
Louis Napoleon, 197, 214
Louis-Philippe, 196
l’Ouverture, 194
Ludwig, 215, 294
Luther, 74, 83
Mackail, 43
Mæcenas, 64
Marie Antoinette, 156, 172
Marlowe, 96
Martin, XV
Marx, 294
Maupassant, LXXXIX, 286, 340, 361
Medici, 86, 120
Mencken, 105
Meredith, XCVII, 375
Micah, 31
Michelangelo, XXXI, 150
Millet, 206
Milton, 14, XXXVII, 152, 173, 183, 189, 198, 234, 239, 242, 305
Moliere, XLII, 261
Moore, G., 308
Moore, T., 181
Mordell, 78, 108, 111
More, P. E., 228, 229, 379
More, Sir T., 352
Morgan, 140, 141, 270, 293, 350-1
Morrell, 351
Morris, LXXIV
Mozart, 151
Murray, 57
Musset, LXIII, 302
Napoleon, 152, 156, 157, 163, 222
Nelson, 172
Newton, 131, 173, 254
Nicholas, 269
Nietzsche, 13, XCII, 257
Norris, CV
Palgrave, 109, 190
Palmer, 79, 141, 163
Pasteur, 41
Patrick, 20
Pericles, 41
Phelps, 268, LXXXV
Phillips, CVI, 349
Pindar, 50
Plato, 13, 352
Plimsoll, 376
Plutarch, 152
Poe, LXXIX, 302, 253
Pope, 131
Porter, CVII, 349, 375
Pushkin, 260, 261
Queensbury, 305
Rabelais, 383
Racine, XLI, 195, 199
Raphael, XXX, 200
Rasputin, 268, 269
Reade, 352
Reed, 37, 38
Renan, 383
Richardson, XLVII, 277
Richelieu, 117
Robespierre, 141
Rockefeller, 109
Roeckel, 212
Rogers, 331
Roland, 88
Roosevelt, 354
Rossetti, 188
Rousseau, 117, 118, XLIV, XLV, 155, 271, 291
Ruskin, 173, 236, 238, 309, 352
Russell, 362
Saintsbury, 113, 115, 299
Sand, 203, LXIV, 225
Savonarola, 74, 84
Schiller, 158
Schopenhauer, 216
Scott, LIII, 171, 181, 186, 188, 247, 249
Shakespeare, 39, 48, XXXIII-VI, 129, 131, 151, 183, 195, 241
Shaw, 17, 63, 93, 211, 215, 287, 292, 339
Shelley, 176, 177, LVIII, 185, 198
Sherman, 228
Sinclair, 107, 328, 335, 345, 347, 353, 363-6, 372
Socrates, 41, 54
Sophocles, 51
Southey, 163, 167, LV, 177
Spencer, 290
Squires, 181
Sterling, 93, 94, 338-9, 341
Stowe, 176, 352
Strauss, 304
Strindberg, XCI, 291, 294
Swanson, 28, 383
Swift, 131, XLVI
Swinburne, 168, XCIV
Symonds, 297
Taft, 269
Tennyson, LXIX, 109, 188, 217, 279, 301, 346
Thackeray, LXXIII, 191
Tolstoi, 135, 211, LXXXVI, 257, 279, 283, 332, 335, 339
Turgenev, LXXXIII, 271
Twain, 91, C, 334, 340, 348, 359, 369
Untermeyer, 64
van Eeden, 265
Vasari, 83
Verestchagin, 12
Verhaeren, XCIII
Verlaine, 302
Victoria, 174, 220, 224, 316
Virgil, XXIII, 79
Voltaire, XLIII, 195, 209, 240, 282, 383
von Suttner, 352
Wagner, LXVII, 294
Ward, XCIX
Washington, 41, 384
Watts-Dunton, 299
Weber, 152
Webster, 246
Wells, 317
Westbrook, 182
Whistler, 187, XCVI, 250
Whiteing, 352
Whitman, LXXX, 275, 282, 297
Whittier, LXXVII, 253
Wilde, XCV, 346
Witte, 331
Wood, 110
Wordsworth, LVI, 181, 182
Wycherley, 114
Zola, LXXXVIII, 296, 349, 381
W. B. C.
* * * * *
Who Owns the Press, and Why?
=When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And whose propaganda?=
=Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it honest material?=
=No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a book.=
THE BRASS CHECK
A Study of American Journalism
By UPTON SINCLAIR
Read the record of this book to August, 1920: Published in February, 1920; first edition, 23,000 paper-bound copies, sold in two weeks. Second edition, 21,000 paper-bound, sold before it could be put to press. Third edition, 15,000 and fourth edition, 12,000, sold. Fifth edition, 15,000, in press. Paper for sixth edition, 110,000, just shipped from the mill. The third and fourth editions are printed on “number one news”; the sixth will be printed on a carload of lightweight brown wrapping paper--all we could get in a hurry.
The first cloth edition, 16,500 copies, all sold; a carload of paper for the second edition, 40,000 copies, has just reached our printer--and so we dare to advertise!
Ninety thousand copies of a book sold in six months--and published by the author, with no advertising, and only a few scattered reviews! What this means is that the American people want to know the truth about their newspapers. They have found the truth in “The Brass Check” and they are calling for it by telegraph. Put these books on your counter, and you will see, as one doctor wrote us--“they melt away like the snow.”
From the pastor of the Community Church, New York:
“I am writing to thank you for sending me a copy of your new book, ‘The Brass Check.’ Although it arrived only a few days ago, I have already read it through, every word, and have loaned it to one of my colleagues for reading. The book is tremendous. I have never read a more strongly consistent argument or one so formidably buttressed by facts. You have proved your case to the handle. I again take satisfaction in saluting you not only as a great novelist, but as the ablest pamphleteer in America today. I am already passing around the word in my church and taking orders for the book.”--John Haynes Holmes.
=440 pages. Single copy, paper, 60c postpaid; three copies, $1.50; ten copies, $4.50. Single copy, cloth, $1.20 postpaid; three copies, $3.00; ten copies, $9.00=
Address: UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, Cal.
* * * * *
THE GOOSE-STEP
A Study of American Education
By Upton Sinclair
=Who owns the colleges, and why?=
=Are your sons and daughters getting education, or propaganda?=
=And whose propaganda?=
=No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a book.=
From H. L. MENCKEN:
“‘The Goose-Step’ came in at last yesterday afternoon, and I fell on it last night. My very sincere congratulations. I have read on and on with constant joy in the adept marshalling of facts, the shrewd presentation of personalities, the lively and incessant humor. It is not only a fine piece of writing; it is also a sound piece of research. It presents a devastating, but, I believe, thoroughly fair and accurate picture of the American universities today. The faults of ‘The Brass Check’ and ‘The Profits of Religion’ are not in it. It is enormously more judicial and convincing than either of those books. You are here complaining of nothing. You simply offer the bald and horrible facts--but with liveliness, shrewdness, good humor. An appalling picture of a moral and mental debasement! Let every American read it and ponder it!”
A few questions considered in “The Goose-Step”: Do you know the extent to which the interlocking directors of railroads and steel and oil and coal and credit in the United States are also the interlocking trustees of American “higher” education? Do you think that our colleges and universities should be modeled on the lines of our government, or on the lines of our department-stores? Do you know that eighty-five percent of college and university professors are dissatisfied with being managed by floor-walkers? Do you know for how many different actions and opinions a professor may lose his job? Do you know how many professors have to do their own laundry? Do you know why American college presidents with few exceptions are men who do not tell the truth? Do you know to what extent “social position” takes precedence over scholarship in American academic life? Do you know to what extent our education has become a by-product of gladiatorial combats?
A few of the institutions dealt with:
The University of the House of Morgan; The University of Lee-Higginson; The University of U. G. I.; The Tiger’s Lair; The Bull-dog’s Den; The University of the Black Hand; The University of the Lumber Trust; The University of the Chimes; The Universities of the Anaconda; The University of the Latter Day Saints; The Mining Camp University; The Colleges of the Smelter Trust; The University of Wheat; The University of the Ore Trust; The University of Standard Oil; The University of Judge Gary; The University of the Grand Duchess; The University of Automobiles; The University of the Steel Trust; The University of Heaven; The University of Jabbergrab.
500 pages, cloth $2.00, paper $1.00, postpaid.
UPTON SINCLAIR, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
series of chonicle=> series of chronicle {pg 101}
here we seen Sensibility=> here we see Sensibility {pg 160}
be became poet laureate he became poet laureate {pg 173}
Two laters later his=> Two years later his {pg 179}
a crime aganist=> a crime against {pg 182}
the old god, see too late=> the old god, sees too late {pg 214}
enlightment ought to help them=> enlightenment ought to help them {pg 264}
worse criminals that he=> worse criminals than he {pg 267}
most efficient sytem=> most efficient system {pg 269}
out of thir minds=> out of their minds {pg 287}
be became the prophet=> he became the prophet {pg 292}
to feel wraranted=> to feel warranted {pg 319}
long and successfuly=> long and successfully {pg 348}
live a single genration=> live a single generation {pg 351}
him to suceed=> him to succeed {pg 354}
presents a devasting=> presents a devastating {ad page}