II
Craig didn’t like communists. I am sad to have to report that there were also some socialists with whom she failed to get along. Indeed, they almost disillusioned her with the socialist movement—for she was a personal person and thought that idealists ought to live up to their programs.
During the EPIC campaign, old Stitt Wilson, California socialist leader and several times candidate for governor, had seen that the EPIC movement was a tide and had decided to swim with it. He spoke at our huge Fourth of July celebration in the Arroyo Seco. He was one of those orators who take off their coats and wave their arms and shout, even in a Fourth of July midday sun. After it was over, he was driven to our home and ordered Craig to draw him a bath. She wouldn’t have minded helping an old man, but she did mind taking an order; so, while he got his bath he lost her regard.
Then came Lena Morrow Lewis, tireless lecturer and strictly orthodox Marxian. She was a guest in my absence and followed Craig around the house, insisting on reading passages from Marx to her. Then she asked to be allowed to stay in the house for a week or two while Craig was away, and she left everything in a state of disarray—including the soiled dishes. If Craig had been a guest in anybody’s house, there would not have been a pin out of place, and every dish would have been polished. So, the socialist movement went still lower in my lady’s esteem.
Oddly enough, those who won her favor were the IWW. They had a most terrible reputation in the capitalist newspapers. They were said to drive copper nails into fruit trees. I made inquiries among arboriculturists, but could not find a single one who could see what harm copper nails could do in a fruit tree. Anyway, the “wobblies” were freely sent to jail in California, and when they got out of jail, they would frequently come to me because I had written a play about them—Singing Jailbirds. They wanted to tell me their stories and have me write more. Without exception they were decent and honest men, and they won Craig’s heart. They would not even let her give them money—only, in one case, fifty cents to get back to Los Angeles.
As the years passed, the communists succeeded more and more in their effort to take possession of the word “socialism.” Craig saw no possibility of countering this—especially when the effort had to be made by her husband. More and more she wanted me to give up the word, which I had worn as a badge all my life. Craig’s effort was supported by her brother Hunter, who was with the government in Washington prior to World War II and knew many labor men. It was amusing when now and then a newspaper reporter would come for an interview, and Craig and Hunter would conspire together to make me into an ex-socialist.
I have mentioned the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which I founded in 1905 and which later changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy. “Now surely,” Craig pleaded, “that is a good-enough name. Why not be an Industrial Democrat?” It is a rather long name to say, but I do my best to remember, and Hunter Kimbrough helps by reminding me it was he, after all, who persuaded Harry Flannery, head of the educational department of the AFL-CIO, to make use of books such as The Jungle, King Coal, and Flivver King; they did, and a great deal about them has gone out in print and over the radio. That, of course, is what I have lived for.