VIII
I decided to muckrake world literature. I had read a mass of it in the one language my mother had taught me, in the three that my professors had failed to teach me—Latin, Greek and German—and in the two I had taught myself—French and Italian. To me literature was a weapon in the class struggle—of the master class to hold its servants down, and of the working class to break its bonds. In other words, I studied world literature from the socialist point of view.
That had been done here and there in spots; but so far as I knew it had not been done systematically, and so far as I know it has not been done since. Of course, Mammonart was ridiculed by the literary authorities; and of course I expected that. It was all a part of the class struggle, and I had set it forth in the book. Great literature is a product of the leisure classes and defends their position, whether consciously or by implication. Literature that opposes them is called propaganda. And so it is that you have probably never heard of my Mammonart.
I had now studied our culture in five muckraking books: The Profits of Religion, The Brass Check, The Goose-Step, The Goslings, Mammonart. After that, I took up American literature, mostly of my own time. I had known many of the writers, and some liked me and some didn’t, according to which side they were on. I had published the five earlier books myself—in both cloth and paper; but there were not so many libel suits in the field of literature, so now I found a publisher. From that time on for many years my arrangement was that the publisher had his edition and I had mine, always at the same price. I had a card file of some thirty thousand customers.
I called the new book Money Writes! Its thesis was that authors have to eat; in order to get food they have to have money, and for that to happen the publisher has to get more money. So, in a commercial world it is money that decides what is to be written. My discussion of this somewhat obvious truth gave offense to many persons.
IX
When I was working on a book, my secretary had orders never to disturb me. But one day she did disturb me by bringing in a visiting card attached to a hundred-dollar bill. (She judged I would consider that a fair price for an interruption.) I looked at the card and saw the name, King C. Gillette, familiar to all men who use a safety razor. Some years earlier I had noted on the shelves of the Pasadena Public Library two large tomes entitled World Corporation and Social Redemption. I had taken them down and examined them with curiosity; they were written by a man who apparently had never read a socialist book but had thought it all out for himself. (I could guess that I might be the only person who had ever taken those tomes from the library shelf.)
Gillette, of course, was pleased to hear that I knew his books. He was a large gentleman with white hair and mustache and rosy cheeks; extremely kind, and touchingly absorbed in the hobby of abolishing poverty and war. But I discovered that he had a horror of the very word socialism. To him that meant class struggle and hatred, whereas he insisted that his solution could all be brought about by gentle persuasion and calm economic reasoning. He would take the time to explain this to anyone on the slightest occasion. I discovered that the joy of his life was to get someone to listen while in his gentle pleading voice he told about his two-tome utopia.
He had come to me for a definite purpose. He knew that I had an audience, and he wanted me to convert that audience to his program. He had a manuscript, and he wanted me to take it and revise it—of course, not changing any of his ideas. For this service he was prepared to pay me five hundred dollars a month; and a little later when he met my wife he raised his offer. He said, “Mrs. Sinclair, if you will get him to do this for me you will never have to think about money again as long as you live.” That had a good sound to Craig, and she said I would do it.
She told me so, and of course I had to do what she said. Little by little I discovered what it meant: Mr. Gillette was coming for two mornings every week to tell me his ideas—the same ideas over and over again. He was a bit childish about it. He didn’t remember what he had said a week or two previously and said it again, most seriously, impressively, and kindly. It became an endurance test. How often could I listen to the same ideas and pretend that they were new and wonderful? The time came when I could stand no more, not if he had turned over to me all the royalties from Gillette razors and blades. I had to tell him that I had done everything I could do for him.