We made two trips from coast to coast, lecturing about EPIC—including the detours, a distance of sixteen thousand miles, and I drove every mile of it. It took more than that long for the EPIC political movement to fade away; the self-help co-operatives hung on for years. I had visited many of them, and talked with hundreds of their members.
They included the inhabitants of what was known as Pipe City near Oakland, California. A most unusual name, but it was literally exact. The city of Oakland had been in the process of putting down a main sewer line with pipe six feet in diameter. The money had run out, and sections of pipe were lined up along the highway. They provided shelter from the rain if not from the cold, and hundreds of unemployed men wandering the roads ducked in and made Oakland their begging center.
Three of them happened to be men with education and business experience, and they had conceived the idea of a self-help co-operative. Instead of begging for food, let them beg for the means of production—the tools and goods that people possessed and could no longer either use or sell. Let the co-operators offer to do useful work in exchange for such goods. In the city where so many thousands were idle there was no kind of work, and no kind of material that could not be found and bartered for services. An idle building was found, and the people piled into it and before long were actually working. In the course of the depression the co-op became a successful business, and the lesson was learned. Before the New Deal had brought American industry back to life there were two or three hundred of these self-help co-operatives scattered all over the state.
I had conceived a form in which these events could be woven into a story. Each chapter would tell of some individual or family of a different character and a different occupation, either hearing about the co-op in a different way or stumbling upon it by accident, and so coming into the story. I saw it as a river, flowing continuously, and growing bigger with new streams added. So came the novel Co-op.
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.