The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 19, 1927, Page 6

The Aftermath of “The Jungle’ » (Continued from Last Week) HE “Metropolis” and “The Moneychangers,” though better as propaganda than as art, are nevertheless of interest to us for what they reveal of their author’s psychology at this period. The former novel grew out of his observations of the life of the idle rich during -his fame as the author of “The Jungle.” His celebrity made him naturally an object of curiosity and interest to these rich people; and its secrets, such as they were, were readily exposed to him. It happened to be within his power, if so he chose, to remain in such a life. A group of capitalists had come to him, as he relates in “The Brass Check,” “with a proposition to found a model meat-packing establishment; they had of- fered me three hundred thousand dollars worth of stock for the use.of my name”; and he adds: “if I had accepted that offer and become the head of one of the city’s commercial show-places, lavishing full- page advertisements upon the newspapers, I might have . . . been invited to be the chief orator at banquets of the Chamber of Commerce and the Na- tional Civie Federation, and my eloquence would have been printed to the extent of columns; I might have joined the Union League Club and the Cen- tury Club, and my name would have gone upon the list of people about whom no uncomplimentary news may be published under any circumstances. At the same time I might have kept one or more apart- ments on Riverside Drive, with just as’ many beau- tiful women in them as I wished, and no one would have criticised me, no newspaper would have dropped hints about ‘love-nests.’” This opportunity, no temptation in reality, appears nevertheless to have intrigued his imagination sufficiently to make such a “temptation” the theme of his new novel. Its hero comes to New York and undergoes the temptation of wealth and luxury. It is a kind of ironic sequel to the unfinished trilogy of the Civil War; its hero is the son of the man who fought in Manassas to save the union from destruction. The union had, by that epic agony, been saved—for what? For this, says the disillusioned author, pointing to the waste and vulgarity and triviality of the life of the “Four Hundred”. . . . It will Le seen that the theme psychologically precedes that of “The Jungle”; and it is not surprising to find the book revelatory of an actually less mature point of view than is shown in that masterpiece. Its emotional effects are of a juicelessly ethical character. The young hero turns his back upon these temptations, and resolves to earn an honest living. One remembers Jurgis in “The Jungle”; he could not turn his back on Packingtown—he had to live its life; and only thus are we enabled to know what Packingtown was. Yet, through some iden- tification of himself with his young aristocrat in this later book, the author is unable to imagine his surrender to metropolitan luxury, even for a mo- ment; so®that we never learn, in any emotional sense, in any sense but that of factual detail, what metropolitan luxury means. The degringolade of a high-souled young man .uncer such influences—and possibly his eventual revolt under other influences— was the story called for by the theme. It was never written; only the surface details are presented. So meagre a use of the vast powers displayed in “The Jungle” suggests some internal conflict in connec- tion with this theme, and we may perhaps be per- mitted to lock there for the answer to this literary riddle—if it is permissible at all to inquire why a writer does not always remain at his best. “The Moneychangers,” a sequel to “The Metro- polis,” had the same central character. The story was based upon the panic of 1907. It might have bin treated as an epic theme; but it was viewed in too narrow and factual a way, through the eyes of this aristocratic young moralist-hero, who, as the total upshot of these events, is merely surprised ari-shocked that people can be so bad—and refuses to dine at the house of one of the scoundrels. There was to have been a third volume; it was written as a play, “The Machine,” an instructive piece in which the hero finally marries the rich scoundrei’s daugh- ter, who has become interested in settlement work and socialism, and has repudiated her father’s riches. It was this grand event toward which that whole creation moved! Jack London had written of “The Jungle”: “It is alive and warm. It is brutal with life.’ No one would say that of “The Metropolis” or “The Money- changers.” They are emotionally thin performances. In both, the hero remains essentially untouched by all that goes on about him, scarcely more than an observer—a disembodied ghost, as it were, of the author himself, looking on and taking note of all that happens with an admirable journalistie faculty, but capable of no depth of human emotions. In “The Brass Check” the author remarks that the critics were cross with his hero, saying that he was “a prig,” and that he “ought to have been really tempted by the charms of the lovely ‘Mrs. Winnie Duval,’” and he goes on to say: “It has happened to me, not once, but several times, to meet with an experience such as I have portrayed in the ‘Mrs. Winnie’ scene, and I never found it any particular temptation. The real temptation of the metfopolis is not the exquisite ladies with unsatisfied emo- tions; it is that if you refuse to bow the knee to the Mammon of Unrighteousness you beeome an outeast in the public mind. You are excluded from all influence and pewer, you are denied all oppor- tunity to express yourself, to exercise your talents, to bring your gifts to fruition. One of the reasons “The Metropolis” had a small sale was because I refused to do the conventional thing—to show a noble young hero struggling in the net of an elegant siren. The temptation I showed was that of the man’s world, not of the weman’s; the temptation of Wall street offices, not of Fifth avenue boudoirs. It was a kind of'temptation of which the critics were ignorant, and in which the public, alas, was uninterested.” Indeed, an interesting theme. And a pity it is that these novels did not actually deal with it. But we are now perhaps in a position to make at least a guess at the psychic conflict which held the author’s emotions so tight-locked during the composition of those two books; it might well have been, no vulgar conflict of worldly ambition By FLOYD DELL with his high ideals, but a conflict involving his old aristocratic emotions for he had been offered, Tantalus-like, the opportunities of public leadership, only to have them snatched out of his grasp—be- tween the poet-prophet, the Shelleyan “unacknowl- edged legislater of mankind,” and the newer hum- bler role of the imaginative novelist who identifies himself with weak, suffering, stumbling, pitiful humanity itself. For a moment he had taken the latter role, and produced a masterpiece of prose fiction. But the poet in him demanded another destiny; and in that conflict he became neither poet - nor quite novelist, but journalist-agitator. In the meantime, in 1907, hé had published a book entitled “The Industrial Republic.” Its dedication, “To H. G. Wells, ‘the next most hopeful,’” is an allusion to an inscription written by Wells in a book presented to him: “To the most hopeful of socialists, from the next most hopeful!” The Wells book was “A Modern Utopia”; and in this book Sinclair goes him one better. It is sub-titled, “A Study of the America of Ten Years Hence.” It is a socialist America that is thus described, though not one brought about by revolutionary socialists. “If Mr. Bryan would only procure and read a really. authori- tative treatise upon modern scientific socialism (say Vandervelde’s “Collectivism and Industrial Evolu- tion”) he would understand that his prograin is so close to that of the socialists that the difference would require a microscope to discern.” And this Bryanesque government-ownership socialism was to be achieved by the election, in 1912, of a radical democratic president, probably William Rando!ph Hearst. “It may be, of course, that some one else will get the democratic nomination in 1912; that matters not at all in my thesis—the one thing cer- tain is that it will be some man who stands pledged to put an end to class-government. “Following it there will be a campaign of an in- tensity of fury such as this country has never be- fore witnessed in its history.” This is a remarkably accurate, if somewhat exaggerated, foreshadowing of the Wilson-Roosevelt-Taft campaign of 1912, which was fought fiercely on social issues. But he goes on to predict an industrial crisis, a new “Coxey’s army” marching on Washington, a panie, and. then the revolution; need!ess to say a peaceful one. The captains of industry wil’ have been told by the president that, “since they can no lenger run their business, they must allow the govern- ment to take possession and run it—-the price to be paid for their stock being a matter for future ne- gotiation, and s matter of no great -smportanee to then in any case, because of the income and in- heritance laws just then being rushed through con- gress.” The revolution, thus defined, was to take place “within one year after the presidential elec- tion of 1912.” It was a youthful guess that one need not be ashamed of having made, though one may smile at the rashness of putting it on record in print; it was based on some quite widespread 5 social revolutionary expectations of the period, and its immediacy seemed natural enough to a young Utopian in a great hurry. But, with a revolution coming so easily in six years, there might have seemed the less reason for him to discipline his imagination to the more dif- ficult and humble task of representing human na- ture. If this young writer was to be henceforth of distinguished use to American literature, he had to suffer more hurts and disillusionments. ; (The book on the life of Upton Sinclair by Floyd Dell from which the two installments published in The New Magazine-are taken will be published next May.) Liebknecht as a Lawyer (From Simplicissimus Jan. 10, 1927). CLIENT, represented around 1910 in a crim- inal case by attorney Karl Liebknecht, gener- ally found it no easy matter to see the Reichstag deputy, Karl Liebkne¢ht, personally. Liebknecht raced perpetually to and fro between the court of justice and the Reichstag. In court, politics often prevented him from working through judicial reports, and in parliament he often found no time to study the proposed bills because he had to chase through criminal documents, rushed back and forth between the two fountain-heads of cul- ture by a flying messenger. However, one day I caught him unexpectedly in his office as a proletarian client entered who attempted, rather awkwardly, to present his case. I remember distinctly how appalled I was when I heard Liebknecht brusquely cutting off the .man: “Have you ten marks with you to pay down?” And I see even now how the worker, bewildered, shelled out a ten mark gold-piece and handed it to the lawyer, whereupon he wes tersely and objectively passed on to the office manager. Before I could say anything Liebknecht added the ten marks to other change in an envelope, rang the bell, and gave the messenger orders to take the letter instantly to a certain hotel. “Tja,” said Liebknecht, who had very. well no- ticed my astonished looks, “I just needed the ten marks for a Russian fugitive who is waiting for the necessary funds to proceed.” Then we became immersed in the documents per- taining to my case, and he painted, with his pecul- iar fervor, how good the prospects were for us to get off splendidly in court. But when the trial took place I was confronted by a great imperial animal, Graf von ——, officer of the equery, etc., whom I was supposed to have insulted. The Graf was aided by the geatest legal guns, Thus the party of the second part was fully represented; but, the party of the first part was — not, for deputy Karl Liebknecht was not there. The trial began. I was fiercely set upon by the SS Se TO A CERTAIN CHURCHMAN A placid face your seething soul belies Glossed over by veneer of holy learning, Fanatic flames are leaping in your eyes— I hear the screams of many witches burning. You rumble threats of brimstone as you raise Your jeweled hands to exorcise the devil, C.ntriving such a God as you would praise, * Devising your own laws of good and evil} --HENRY REICH, JR. . ade presiding judge, the prosecuting attorney, and thase legal celebrities. I defended myself as best I could, staring in between times everlastingly toward the door. But the man who did not appear, that was depu- ty Karl Liebknecht. It began to look as if I would be smoked out. The Graf, with his glittering monocle, was already smiling triumphantly. The presiding judge spoke about my only n ignominious compro- mise—when the door opened and into the court- room stormed, with fluttering robe, swinging his brief-case—the attorney Karl Liebknecht, very ap- _ parently uninformed, but with ingenious instinct immediately sizing up the situation. And upright, standing with stilted legs, his head thrown back audaciously. like Luther’s in the parliament at Worms, he thundered with a cutting voice toward the confused prosecutor, the astounded legal guns, and the dumbfounded court: “We don’t even dream of compromise—we invite presentation of proofs!”