When the house was done, there was a party. The living room is extra fancy, with high, peaked ceiling, and lights way up, dim and mysterious; in a million years you’d never guess that it was once an old tailor shop, bought for a hundred dollars, and moved over here, and the upper floor taken out! Well, our friends came, some of them rich people in limousines, creating a sensation in our neighborhood. The neighbors were invited—it is a working-class part of town, and a few people came, shy and a little distrustful, and picked out seats with backs to the wall, and sat stiff and silent, while George Sterling, great poet and genial soul, told us intimate recollections of Joachim Miller and Ambrose Bierce and Jack London, and other old-time California writers.
Judd wore his best clothes, and a stiff collar, and brought a lady friend in black satin. We were surprised by this, for we knew that Judd was a widower of many years’ standing; we teased him afterwards about this lady, and he blushed, but insisted there was “nothing to it”—and apparently there wasn’t, for he still lives alone in the house he has built, with a fire-place made of every kind of shiny colored stone you can find on the beaches of California. There is a porch to this house and a lot of fancy concrete work, that will last Judd’s life-time and longer. You must understand, this is no “hard-luck story,” quite the contrary; Judd has got to be a rich man in the course of ten years, with war-time wages of a dollar an hour. He put his savings into two lots, and his spare time into building three houses on them, and now he has two of them rented, and he goes trout-fishing every spring, and deer-hunting in the fall, and he took a trip to Texas just to have the fun of spending some of his money, instead of leaving it all to his nephews. When he comes now to do odd jobs for us, it is by way of a favor; and he says, “Well, you got a new book now?” Of course I always have, and he demands a copy, and insists it must be cloth, and autographed; and then we have our regular argument as to whether he shall pay for it, and we compromise on the basis of his paying the wholesale price. He tells me what he thinks about my writings, and just what is wrong with my ideas.
Judd, you understand, is not the least bit of a “radical.” “I got no use for these ‘reds,’” he says, being a simon pure, hundred per cent American; there are too many foreigners in the country, and if they don’t like it, let them get out. But at the same time Judd is nobody’s fool. For one thing, he is “onto” the politicians; they are a bunch of crooks, and he proves it, telling me things that are going on right in Pasadena—he knows from this friend or that who works for the city. Also, Judd is “onto” the politicians at Washington; of course you can’t get the facts, because the newspapers won’t print them, but look at this oil business, and look at the fellows that got a billion dollars from the government, pretending to make airplanes for the war, and they never got a single fighting-plane to France. Judd supported the war, and bought liberty bonds with his savings; but he says that if the truth was known, we could have kept out of that war, if it hadn’t been for the munition-makers, and the bankers and their loans to England and France.
So you see, we have plenty to talk about while nailing down shingles and screwing up water-pipe! Once, not so long ago, Judd said to me, “By golly, I never thought of that!” I answered, “You’d be surprised to know how many things you never thought of.” Said he: “Why don’t you write a book for fellows like me? A workingman is tired when he gets home, and don’t have time for big books, and he don’t know the long words. But you write something short and easy, and show us little fellows just how we get it in the neck.”
Well, there are lots of things one would like to write, and one doesn’t get around to them all. But every now and then I think about Judd, and the millions of other Judds there are, scattered over this great land. I think of things I’d like to say to them, if only I could get to them. Here it is, Thanksgiving morning of the year 1925; and just why this morning should have chosen itself, I can’t imagine, but I am sitting at my typewriter, on the very porch that Judd helped to build, and came crawling out from under with his hair and eyes full of cobwebs—the old gopher! I am beginning the book he asked me to write, for him and the other American workingmen.
LETTER I
My dear Judd:
There are some things which you and I and all Americans take for granted, and don’t have to argue about. For example, every man has a right to get to heaven in his own way, if he can; we are not going to meddle with any one’s religion. Also, we believe that all men should be equal before the law. We don’t mean they all have equal abilities—for that would be a foolish thing to say; but they all have equal rights “to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Also, every man has a right to what he has produced by his own labor; and it is the business of government to protect him in this right.
Speaking generally, we think that men live better if they are let alone, to work out their own destinies. We don’t want any more government than there has to be; if the government will see that the other fellow keeps his hands out of our pockets, we’ll manage to build our own house, and live in it our own way. That is called individualism, and you are keen for it, Judd, and I am no less keen. The only time the government has been on our place in the past ten years has been when it came to inspect the foundations, the plumbing, and the fire-stops in the walls of the house; all of which concern the common welfare.