I
It was a relief to me to have coughed up that EPIC alligator, and to Craig it was the coughing up of a whole aquarium. It was days before she could be sure that we were really out—and by then she discovered that we couldn’t be, because there were still the headquarters and the EPIC News, and all those poor people who had put everything they had into the campaign. It was unthinkable to quit, but—we had no money. I sat myself down and wrote the story of the campaign as I have told it here, and offered it for serial purposes to California newspapers. Some thirty accepted. I had based the price upon the circulation of the newspaper, and some of them actually paid. Those that failed to pay I suppose had been calling EPIC dishonest. I put the whole story into book form: “I, Candidate for Governor—and How I Got Licked.” What I have written here is a summary for a new generation.
I had made plans for a lecture trip, to travel over the country and tell about the campaign and answer questions about production for use. A friend had presented us with a lovely German shepherd, and we had the protection of that affectionate creature all over the United States. No one could ever come close to our car.
We crossed the continent twice, and I could make quite a story out of our adventures. In Seattle the governor of the state called out the troops, and I didn’t know whether his idea was to protect me or to arrest me. Anyhow, I made the speech. In Portland I spoke in a baseball park, and there I had the company of a young newspaperman, Dick Neuberger, who later became United States Senator. In Butte we found ourselves in a hotel amid a convention of rifleshooters, and discovered that some shooter had either bored or shot a hole through the door of our hotel room so that he could peek in at us. It was the wild and woolly West.
Once we got lost in lonely mountains, and because we were desperately tired we asked shelter in one of two shacks by the roadside, where some rough-looking men were living. One shack was given to us in all kindness. Craig was a little scared of our hosts; but in the morning we were politely asked how we had slept, and when Craig asked the price, she was told, “It’s hard times, lady, would twenty-five cents be too much?” She gave him a couple of dollars.
Also, I never get tired of telling my experience in St. Louis, where there was a large auditorium and a distinguished gentleman to introduce me—the head of the astronomical observatory, I was told. The gentleman made a most gracious speech and concluded, “And now ladies and gentleman, I have great pleasure in introducing Mr. Sinclair Lewis.” The audience began to laugh, the astronomer looked worried, and his son jumped up and ran to him. I comforted him by saying that I had had much experience with that mistake.
In Chautauqua I debated before a huge audience with Congressman Hamilton Fish, Republican aristocrat from Franklin Roosevelt’s district up the Hudson. Fish had come to know me well, as we had had the same debate in Hollywood and in Chicago. Craig never went in to my talks but sat in the car under the protection of “Duchess.” When the debate was over the audience strolled by, and Craig listened. Presently came “Ham,” and Craig heard him say, “I really think he got the better of me.” But you may be sure he didn’t say that from the platform!
At Princeton I lectured in the university auditorium. Albert Einstein was teaching there, and I spent the afternoon with him. He had consented to introduce me at the debate, which was to be with a chosen representative of the senior class. To our pained surprise there were not more than twenty or thirty persons in that auditorium. I was interested to hear Albert Einstein tell the students and faculty of Princeton University what he thought of their interest in public affairs.
My opponent in the debate was a well-bred young gentleman, and I didn’t want to be hard on him. I told the audience how I had lived in a tent north of Princeton just thirty years previously. I had come to know some of the students then and had walked in the hills with a senior who had specialized in economics. I was interested now to discover that instruction at Princeton had not changed a particle in thirty years; what my opponent had said in 1935 was exactly the same as my student friend had said in 1904. America had changed, but Princeton stood like a rock in the middle of a powerful stream.
We made two trips from coast to coast, lecturing about EPIC—including the detours, a distance of sixteen thousand miles, and I drove every mile of it. It took more than that long for the EPIC political movement to fade away; the self-help co-operatives hung on for years. I had visited many of them, and talked with hundreds of their members.
They included the inhabitants of what was known as Pipe City near Oakland, California. A most unusual name, but it was literally exact. The city of Oakland had been in the process of putting down a main sewer line with pipe six feet in diameter. The money had run out, and sections of pipe were lined up along the highway. They provided shelter from the rain if not from the cold, and hundreds of unemployed men wandering the roads ducked in and made Oakland their begging center.
Three of them happened to be men with education and business experience, and they had conceived the idea of a self-help co-operative. Instead of begging for food, let them beg for the means of production—the tools and goods that people possessed and could no longer either use or sell. Let the co-operators offer to do useful work in exchange for such goods. In the city where so many thousands were idle there was no kind of work, and no kind of material that could not be found and bartered for services. An idle building was found, and the people piled into it and before long were actually working. In the course of the depression the co-op became a successful business, and the lesson was learned. Before the New Deal had brought American industry back to life there were two or three hundred of these self-help co-operatives scattered all over the state.
I had conceived a form in which these events could be woven into a story. Each chapter would tell of some individual or family of a different character and a different occupation, either hearing about the co-op in a different way or stumbling upon it by accident, and so coming into the story. I saw it as a river, flowing continuously, and growing bigger with new streams added. So came the novel Co-op.