The only house we went to in Pasadena was that of Mrs. Gartz. This was a couple of miles up the slope from our home, and occupied a whole block of beautiful grounds, like a park. The house was built around a central court containing palm trees, ornamental plants, and a swimming pool. On the front of the house was a wide veranda and a flight of stone steps. The veranda looked out over the whole of Pasadena, and it was a pleasant place to sit and listen to arguments over the future of mankind.
Every Sunday afternoon Mrs. Gartz would invite some lecturer, and after she met Craig, all these lectures dealt with the so-called radical movement. It appeared that when the very rich become radical they go the whole way. She became far more radical than we were, and it was Craig’s function to tone her down; but, alas, this service was not appreciated by Mrs. Gartz’s husband, who blamed us for all his troubles. I could tell many funny stories of those meetings in a millionaire’s palace with a raging millionaire husband roaming through the rooms, growling and grumbling to himself.
The whole of the class struggle was represented in that tormented home. Wobblies, when they got out of jail, would come and tell Mrs. Gartz their stories; the tears would come into her eyes, and she would write indignant letters to the newspapers—which the newspapers did not print. Also, there were the pacifists of all varieties, and later the communists, who finally “captured” the gullible great lady.
Mrs. Gartz took up the practice of writing to public officials about these outrages against civil liberty, and as her letters were not always coherent she would bring them to Craig to revise. Craig would take occasion to tone them down a bit; so presently she was in charge of all the great lady’s public relations. Craig hit upon the idea of publishing a little volume entitled Letters of Protest. This made a hit, and thereafter every year there would be a little volume that Mrs. Gartz distributed to everyone on her mailing list. In all there were seven pretty little books, and no doubt they helped somewhat to diminish the stodginess of our millionaire city.
VII
I have given a few glimpses of Mary Craig’s skill as a social practitioner. I must also tell a little about her as a homemaker.
To the north of the “brown house” we had bought, there extended seven lots rising slightly to a corner, from which the view over the Arroyo was still more attractive. Craig said nothing to me about her plans, but she bought those lots on installment payments. When I started the magazine it was on our dining-room table; so she went out traveling on foot about the town and found an old house that she bought for a hundred and fifty dollars and had moved onto the lot next to ours. She had a carpenter build a long table, and that was where the magazines were wrapped and prepared for the mail. One little cubbyhole in that house became my office, and several books were written there.
Of course, as the subscriptions came in we had to have still more help. We had no car in those days, but somehow Craig found another house and had it moved and connected up with the first one. Before she got through, she had bought four houses and fitted them in a row on two lots, and bought a fifth house to be wrecked for lumber to join the other houses together. I wrote an article about it in my magazine, Upton Sinclair’s, and printed a photograph of the houses.
It made a really funny story, because every house was a different color. I described the consternation of the neighbors; but they recovered when the job was finished, for Craig really made a beautiful home of it, with a long porch along the front and, of course, a uniform coat of paint. It was an especially good home for us because Craig could have her room at the south end and I could practice my violin at the north end.
There was an old carpenter named Judd Fuller who worked for Craig, making old houses into new. Many a time I sat on a roof with him, nailing down shingles; and all the time we talked politics, and the state of the world. I tried to make a socialist out of an old-style American individualist, and I learned how to deal with that kind of mind. Some years later I wrote a pamphlet called Letters to Judd, and of course made him very proud. I printed something over a hundred thousand of the pamphlet, and with the help of Haldeman-Julius distributed them over the country.