Mammonart: An essay in economic interpretation

by Upton Sinclair

This man had a method of opening safes, which consisted of filing his finger-nails off, so that with the quivering raw flesh he could feel the dropping of the “tumblers,” as he turned the dial of the lock. He was promised his liberty if he would open the vault for the great state of Ohio. He did it in ten seconds; and then the promise was broken, and he went back to die in prison. When his coffin was carted out, there was his old heart-broken mother in the slush and snow, toddling along with streaming eyes and stretched-out hands behind the cart.

That was a real story, you see; and O. Henry was in the prison when it happened, he felt the thrill of horror and fury that ran through the place when the pardon was denied. But, you see, if he had written that story, he would not have had any Christmas gifts to send to his little daughter, nor would he have been invited to Bagdad-on-the-Subway to be crowned the short story king. So unwilling was he to face reality that he did not even use the detail about Jimmy Valentine’s filing off his finger-nails. No, the crook in his story has to open the safe with a special fancy set of tools!

You see, O. Henry simply could not face the pain of life; he did not know what to do about it, and so he dodged it—just like the magazine writers and the magazine public of his period. He could not even face his own disgrace; his heart was dead in that prison, even the thought of freedom was a terror, because of the awful secret he would carry. Jennings quotes him: “The prison label is worse than the brand of Cain. If the world once sees it, you are doomed. It shall not see it on me. I will not become an outcast.”

Understand, he knew himself to be innocent; and yet he took the position of an ex-convict, crouching and trembling. There were other men who went to prison, for example, ‘Gene Debs, who also knew himself to be innocent; he came out a warrior and a saint. But O. Henry accepted the social system as permanent, identical with destiny.

He was often compared to Maupassant, and that hurt his feelings, for he said that he had never written a filthy line in his life, and he did not wish to be compared to a filthy writer. You see here the limitations of his understanding; morality means sex, and he is revolted by Gallic brutality, and practices sentimental Southern reticence. But in a more fundamental way his point of view is identical with that of Maupassant; for to both writers class greed has taken the place of God in control of the universe. The French writer jeers and hates, while the American smiles and weeps; but each finds the point of his story in the incongruities and absurdities which this artificial economic fate inflicts upon its helpless and uncomprehending victims.

Strike through the pathos and the tragedy of O. Henry at any point, and what do you find? Everywhere and inevitably one thing, the Big Business system of America. Here is a waitress in a restaurant with white porcelain walls and glass-topped tables and a ceaseless clatter of crockery. Yes, it is pathetic for a girl to carry loads of crockery all day, and try to keep virtuous on a starvation wage. Then close the O. Henry book, and consult Moody’s Manual of Corporations, and you discover that the great chain of restaurants has been bought by Standard Oil; America’s “great clamorer for dividends” has doubled the prices of the food without improving its quality, and has failed to raise wages to keep pace with the cost of living.

Or take James Turner, who presses hats all day and has to stand on his feet, which makes them sore; he finds his escape in reading Clark Russell’s sea-tales, and having got a copy, he is happy even in jail. Consult a study of the sweated trades, and you note that hat pressing is a secondary and parasitic industry, incapable of being organized; therefore the poor devil has no one to protect his sore feet. A part of his equipment is a jeering scorn for those who are striving to enlighten him. “Say,” he asks, “do I look like I’d climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?” That is his way of saying that he has no vision of a better world; it is O. Henry’s idea of being a sociologist. (If you have any curiosity concerning Helicon Hall and its fire-escapes, the story is in “The Brass Check.”)

The obscure and exploited masses of New York, the waitresses and hat-pressers and soda-jerkers and bums and taxi drivers and policemen, O. Henry’s Four Million, adopted him as their favorite writer, because he knew their lives, he loved them, and they felt that love under the cover of his laughter. And in truth it is a pleasant thing when you are in trouble to find a heart which feels with you; but it is an even more important thing to find a head which understands the causes of your trouble and can help you to escape it. The Four Million will have to look elsewhere than to O. Henry for that head.

There was an essential fact about him which his official biographer fails to mention; he was a true Southern gentleman in another respect—that he drank too much. Al Jennings records that he was half drunk when Jennings encountered him, sitting in front of the American consulate in the little town of Trujillo, Honduras. They proceeded to get all the way drunk, and to celebrate the Fourth of July by shooting up the place. And there is much other drinking scattered through the story. In the prison O. Henry was in charge of certain supplies, and he found that contractors were robbing the prison, and he wanted to expose them; but Jennings showed him that if he did so, he would get himself thrown into the hole, and beaten to death by the prison powers who were sharing in the graft. So our poor Southern gentleman kept silence, and received large presents of wine and liquor. When he came to New York, this habit had him in its grip, and never let him go.

So here is a point about the O. Henry stories; they are alcoholic stories, and take the alcoholic attitude toward life. The friends of O. Henry, who spent their time trying to save him, will understand what all of us know who have had to do with Southern gentlemen of the old school: that a victim of alcohol can weep with pity and can mingle laughter with his tears; he can be charming and beautiful, gentle and kind; but one thing he can rarely have, and that is a firm grasp of the realities about him; another thing he can never by any possibility have, and that is an attitude of persistent and unflinching resolve. Yet these are exactly the qualities which the Four Million will have to develop before they can escape from their slavery in Bagdad-of-the-Traction-Trust.