high-tariff horror and says he couldn’t think of taking goods, it would
ruin the people inside his store who have the jobs of making that same
thing! “For God’s sake, take away your truck,” he exclaims. “Just mail
me another paper promise, and anything in the place is yours!”

I conclude with one more sentence for you to learn, Judd:

     _Our present system of “high finance” is a soap-bubble, which
     differs from other soap-bubbles in just one respect--it is as big
     as the world._

LETTER XIII

MY DEAR JUDD:

The essence of our industrial system is the private ownership of the
means of production; with profit for the private owner as the motive
power of industry. The capitalist produces the goods we need, and in
order to get them we pay him everything above the bare means of keeping
us alive and enabling us to raise the next generation. If this system
should break down, it is obvious that we must change to some form of
social ownership of the means of production; instead of having the
capitalist produce for us, we must do it for ourselves, and the motive
power will be, not the desire of the capitalist for profit, but our own
desire for the goods.

What difference will that make in the industrial system? At first you
might see no difference at all. The worker will go to the factory,
where he will find foremen and superintendents in charge, and a
time-clock keeping tab on him. On Saturday night he will get his pay
envelope, and will take the money and spend it at the stores. The goods
produced in the factory will be shipped to all parts of the world,
to people who pay for them by checks, which go through banks and a
clearing-house--you might follow the whole process, and fail to realize
there had been any change. At only one place would the difference
appear--inside the pay envelopes. There being no longer any absentee
owners, drawing off rent, interest and profits, those who do the work,
whether of hand or brain, will now be the only people to draw anything
out; and consequently there will be considerably more in each pay
envelope.

Wall Street propagandists are fond of figuring how much goes to labor
and how much to capital, and proving that to wipe out the capitalist
would add only a small percentage, say ten per cent, to the share of
each worker. This is a trick, for the reason that a great part of the
capitalist’s share appears, not as profits, but as various forms of
“fixed charges” against the industry: the interest on bonds, the rent
of land, the royalties to owners of various privileges. To give just
one illustration, the New York Central Railroad crosses a bridge near
Albany, and a private concern owns that bridge, and the railroad pays
one cent for every passenger, a small fortune every year. Our whole
industrial system is a tangle of grafts such as that; the railroads
are plundered by right-of-way companies, sleeping-car companies,
refrigerator-car companies; industrial concerns are plundered by
private railway lines, owned by “insiders,” or by companies having a
“cinch” on repairs or materials or accessories. Just the bookkeeping on
such rights is a vast industry, and the adjusting of them supplies a
living for thousands of lawyers and their clerks. To wipe all that out
will be to dump a mountain’s weight off the back of production.

But even suppose it was as the Wall Street propagandists argue--that
capital got only ten per cent--would that be the only gain for labor?
No, Judd, it would not; and here is the most important point that I
have to get across to you in these letters. The proposition may seem
difficult, but I beg you to put your mind on it and get it straight,
for it is not too much to say that all freedom and happiness for the
workingman in our time depend upon his understanding these matters, so
that the clever hired writers of privilege cannot befuddle his mind.

Whatever may be the percentage that goes to capital--whether ten per
cent, as Wall Street claims, or thirty or forty per cent, as I could
prove--nevertheless it is this percentage which causes our industrial
ills today. It is this surplus which, drawn off and re-invested in
more means of production, causes the glut of goods which we know as
“hard times”; it is this surplus which causes speculation and panics,
and turns the worker out to join the ranks of the “unemployed,” and to
beat down the wages of his fellows; it is this surplus which causes the
search for foreign markets, and draws the great industrial nations into
war. Figure to yourself a body having an iron ring riveted about it. At
first this ring makes no difference, but as the body grows it causes
strangulation, and the time comes when for all the agonies of that body
there is but one remedy, to cut the ring.

Cutting the ring is simply this: to take the surplus product away
from capital and give it to labor; so instantly you have remedied the
evil and relieved the pain. How so? Because labor now becomes able to
consume the entire product of industry. Labor can consume it, because
labor has the money to buy it. Before this, as we have seen, labor got
only part of the money, and so could buy only part of the product; the
rest had to be either wasted by the rich, or sold abroad. But give
labor the full value, the actual equivalent in purchasing power of the
amount of goods produced, and so consumption balances production, and
the factories can work merrily, as many hours as we desire, turning out
for each and every one of us as much goods as we care to consume. The
only restriction is the basic law of social justice--that before any
man consumes anything he must render to the community an equivalent
service.

The hired men of the exploiters do all they can to confuse this
argument; I hear them laugh that I have some kind of deluded horror of
a surplus. We ought to save, they insist, and provide against a “rainy
day”! Yes, of course--and not merely against rain, but against famine
and earthquake and tornado. I have no objection whatever to a surplus;
the question is, who is to own that surplus--those who do the work, or
those who live as parasites? That makes all the difference; for when
a workingman has made too much wealth for his master, the workingman
is out of a job; but when the workingman has made too much wealth for
himself, the workingman is on a vacation.

Here is this great rich country of ours, with all its natural
resources, its marvelous machines, its willing and clever workers; and
when we have broken the iron ring we can produce goods for ourselves,
and consume and enjoy them, and stay quietly within our own boundaries.
No longer do we keep our workers on starvation wages, and ship all
our surplus products abroad, to be consumed by Frenchmen and Italians
and Turks and Chinamen and Hindoos, in return for paper promises to
pay money to our capitalists! No longer do we have to go to war, to
seize foreign markets from other capitalists! The workers now own the
factories, and also they own the working capital, and they produce
goods for use, and if we have foreign trade it is because we want
things from abroad, and not because we have to get rid of our surplus
product under penalty of starving. This is what I describe as a Free
Society, Judd; I say that in such a society, with production rationally
planned, and all wastes removed, we should produce wealth in such
quantities, so quickly and so easily--well, you would think I was
joking. But leading engineers have told us that we have, in our machine
power, the constant labor of _three billion slaves_. In thirteen
industries, figured by the capitalist, Mr. Babson, we have _88 times_
the productive power we used to have by hand labor. Just think what
that ought to mean!

Or look at it another way. Twenty years ago Sidney A. Reeve, an
engineering expert, calculated how much we wasted by the competitive
production of goods, and in a big book full of tables and charts, he
worked out the figure of 70 per cent waste. We have seen the Hoover
Committee, considering merely the wastes _inside_ each industry,
giving figures as high as 60 per cent of waste. Mr. Stuart Chase, in
his wonderful book, “The Tragedy of Waste,” figures 50 per cent as the
minimum. Well, let us take the minimum, for a start. What does it
mean? I answer:

     _In a free society what we now have will cost us four hours labor
     a day._

And more than that, Judd--something absolutely vital to every poor man
in our country:

     _In a free society every man may work as many hours as he wants to
     work, and get the full value of what he produces._

So now we can make what would have seemed at the beginning a bold claim:

     _From a free society involuntary poverty will be banished._

And finally--one sentence more--and I beg you to learn this one:

     _The end of involuntary poverty means the end of most prostitution
     and crime, and of all war between civilized peoples._

LETTER XIV

MY DEAR JUDD:

It is an interesting thing to study the development of human society
through a long period of history. Men began in small tribes, in which
they were very much alike, and stood on an equal footing. These tribes
fought, and absorbed one another, and grew more complex, with greater
differences among the members; dukedoms and principalities arose, and
then kingdoms, and at last great empires, with rulers and subjects
ranged in classes, and the class lines rigidly drawn.

It was against such a form of society that our ancestors revolted; they
had a new theory of government, and established a new form--a republic,
owned and run by its citizens, all standing on an equal plane. The
process of evolution in the political world is still going on, and some
day we shall see a world-wide federation of republics, in which the
human race will share equal rights.

It is fascinating to realize that this same process is going on in the
world of industry. Here also we see the various enterprises struggling,
and some winning and absorbing the others, until today we have
industrial monarchies and empires. It is not merely a figure of speech
when we talk about coal barons and steel kings and emperors of finance,
for these men occupy the same positions and hold the same kind of power
as the rulers of old days. And just as we saw revolutions in the field
of politics, so we shall see them in industry. In fact, the first of
these great revolutions has taken place before our eyes; the workers
of Russia are now trying to show us that a government of industry by
the citizens of industry is a possible thing and a step in progress.
Our capitalist newspapers are sure that they must fail; but even if
they did, that would not upset the argument, for the first political
revolution in England failed, and the first two in France; but that has
not kept a whole string of other countries from turning into republics.

The way human beings learn is by trying; and we are in the stage of
history where men are getting ready to try democracy in industry.
There will be mistakes, and a great deal of waste and suffering;
nevertheless, we shall press on, and in the end we shall achieve a
higher type of society than anything conceivable under industrial
monarchy, or imperialism such as we have today.

You remember King Louis of France, the “grand monarch,” who said,
“The state, it is I”; well, imagine the scoffing you would have met
with, if you had talked with some haughty marquis of that court, and
tried to tell him how some day in France the common “riff-raff” would
have votes, and choose parliaments, and decide the issues of war and
diplomacy. He would have been quite sure they could never do it; and as
a matter of fact, they don’t, Judd--but they will; yes, even here in
the United States the people will some day decide!

Today our great captains of industry are no less certain that common
workingmen cannot possibly have intelligence enough to run factories,
to say nothing of deciding the broad policies of business. The masters
have won the money fight, and got the power, and they mean to hold on
to it, and train their descendants and found great money-dynasties.
But the same thing happens that we saw two hundred years ago with the
French kings--the new generations become enervated and worthless,
and the wealth of the community flows into the lap of idlers and
parasites, who squander it in dissipation and display; the poor become
discontented and rebellious, and the rumble of the approaching deluge
is heard.

Our capitalist newspapers never get tired of harping upon the failures
of government ownership, the waste and the graft. Private ownership
is the way to efficiency! Well, Judd, there is a lot of present-day
efficiency which I am ready to do without, beginning from this very
hour. For example, efficiency in maiming and killing workers--which
caused one million in our country to be disabled in 1925! Labor today
works under the lash of the slave-driver, and I am willing to see
industry slow down, so that workingmen may be human beings. And then, I
examine the graft under public ownership, and what do I find? Private
owners seeking private profits out of government! Here is a slogan,
Judd:

     _The cause of graft is not public ownership of industry, but
     private ownership of politicians!_

How can we stop that? We have tried the plan of sending the grafters
to jail, but that doesn’t work, for the reason that the grafters buy
the prosecuting officials and the judges; in the few cases where we get
them into jail, they buy the jailers. So I suggest a new plan--that we
take away the motive to graft, by making it impossible for any man to
exploit the labor of his fellows, or to monopolize those things which
are necessary to the life of all.

Learning industrial democracy is like learning to swim. You stick one
foot into the water, and you see that it sinks, and so you draw it out
in a hurry, and decide, it is impossible for you to stay on top of the
water. And then along comes a man who says: “Yes, you can swim, but not
until you go all the way in.” It seems an absurdity at first, yet it is
the literal truth about government ownership; you can own and run it
all, but you can’t own and run a small part!

At present private ownership is making all the big profits, and so,
of course, it is paying all the big salaries, and getting most of the
competent men. Not content with that, it is undermining the competition
of government, using its huge resources to buy the political parties,
and nominate incompetent men to public office. That is no wild
statement, but a fact of big business policy. Our masters, who control
the political parties, are afraid to have competent men in public
office, for fear they might take up a notion to do something real for
the public welfare. They prefer a man who can’t kick over the traces,
because he is too feeble. That is why at the last nominating convention
they turned down a really competent and loyal servant of theirs, Mr.
Herbert Hoover, and gave us poor, shy, pitiful Mr. Coolidge, who can
never by any possibility do anything, for the reason that he doesn’t
know what to do.

When you and I, Judd, and the rest of the useful workers of America,
get ready to run our own business, we can do it. We shall do it, if
for no other reason, because we have to--because we need food in our
cities, and machinery on our farms. We shall hire the best experts
to run our industries; and many of them will be the very men who are
running them now--they will be just as well content to work for the
American people as for Johnny Coaloil, who is now taking a yachting
trip with a dozen chorus girls on the Riviera, or for Mrs. Silly
Splash, who is setting the new fashion in diamond-embroidered bathing
suits at Palm Beach. Yes, Judd, we shall find ways to run our business
without these elegant idlers; and whatever waste there may be won’t be
so bad as having them corrupt a whole generation of our young people
by their vicious folly. If there is graft, we’ll find ways to stop it,
and if more efficiency is needed, we’ll get it--because it will be our
business, and our loss if we fail.

I’ll go even further, Judd; I’ll assert that the amount of waste
inherent in capitalism is so frightful, that no amount of inefficiency
under a free system can approach it. Remember the “iron ring,” and what
it will mean to us to get into the factories, with the right to run
them for ourselves! Remember our figures on the wastes of competition!
Let us have a “slogan,” for you to paste in your hat and learn, Judd:

     _To compare the productive powers of a free system with those of
     capitalism, is to compare a normal human being with a vicious
     maniac._

Just a sentence or two, Judd, to remind us what this maniac has done:

     _Capitalism, between 1914 and 1918, deliberately destroyed
     30,000,000 human lives, and $300,000,000,000 worth of property!_

And again, Judd:

     _Capitalism in the United States keeps an average of five million
     men out of work all the time!_

And again, Judd:

     _Capitalism in Europe last summer had nine million men working
     hard at learning to destroy the wealth which the rest of the
     workers were creating!_

And then paste this sentence in your hat, Judd:

     _While our population increased 200 per cent in the past 50 years,
     capitalism increased our expenditures for mass-slaughter more than
     2400 per cent!_

LETTER XV

MY DEAR JUDD:

We are going to take over the industrial plant of the United States,
and run it as one planned enterprise for the benefit of the whole
people.

Just what do we mean to take? Roughly speaking, all railroads,
telegraphs and telephones, all banks, the mines and large factories,
the large oil fields with pipe-lines and refineries, the large
packing and canning plants, the large warehouses and stores, and what
office buildings are necessary for these enterprises. We do not want
the homes, nor the personal property, nor the automobiles, nor the
livestock; nor, if I have my way, shall we want farms. Some old-time
Socialists will contest this, but the new generation will agree, I
think. The reason is interesting, and it may help to clear up the whole
matter if we begin by considering the problem of the land.

Karl Marx thought that the farms would go the same way as the
factories; that is, they would get bigger and bigger, under capitalist
ownership. He failed to allow for the essential factor--that no
capitalist can work his employes so hard as the small farmer works his
women and children. So the small farmer has stayed on his small farm;
a free man--except that every year he is deeper in debt to the banker,
and in a larger percentage each year he loses the ownership, and is
merely a tenant, supporting an absentee landlord. The modern Socialist,
recognizing that situation, does not propose to walk into the trap, but
seeks a different solution of the land problem.

The single taxer comes, urging us to take the burden of taxes off
improvements, which are made by human labor, and put it on the land,
which is the gift of Nature. He points to the rise of land values in
cities, the so-called “unearned increment”; values go up, because
people crowd into the city, and private owners get a colossal increase,
which they have done nothing whatever to earn; their gains make a
heavy burden on production, which the whole community must pay. That
sounded reasonable, and so for a while I was a single taxer; you’ll be
interested to know, Judd, that the reason I gave it up was you!

We had a big single tax campaign here in California in 1916, and I
put in some hard work at it; among other things I spent a day arguing
with my friend Judd. We were sitting on the roof of the garage, laying
shingles, and all the time I tried to make you “see” the single tax.
But you had read in the Los Angeles “Times” that it would increase
the taxes on your two lots, and that had made you mad; also, you had
read that it would take the taxes off the rich man’s bonds, and off
his wife’s jewels, and that had made you madder. I tried to get you to
see the absurdity of believing that the “Times” could be interested in
keeping any taxes on the rich; I tried to show the actual reason, that
the tax collector couldn’t find the rich man’s bonds, nor his wife’s
jewels. But you didn’t get it, Judd, and when I saw the votes of all
the other Judds in that election, I decided that the single tax is a
tactical blunder. Never again will I be caught proposing to take any
taxes off the rich; from that day forth I have been a multiple taxer--I
want to put just as many kinds of taxes on the rich as the imagination
can invent.

Joking aside, Judd, I changed my whole strategy as result of that day
on the roof with you. For twelve or thirteen years I had been expecting
to see Socialism brought about by some sort of tax on wealth; but you
made me realize how passionately every human creature hates taxes.
Could one not find some easier way? I realized that all men like money,
the more the merrier; and then came the war, and I saw our government
making money by the billions, just by acts of Congress and the waving
of a presidential pen. Then came the panic, and I saw our wonderful
Federal Reserve System making more billions for the use of the big
bankers and the trusts; so a great light dawned upon me, a heavenly
light! I see now, Judd, that we shall forget taxes altogether, and take
a leaf out of Wall Street’s new book; we shall make as many billions of
new money as the emergency requires, and instead of having Wall Street
put that new money off on us, we shall put it off on Wall Street!

I know some young workers in our country who call themselves social
revolutionists, and are impatient when they hear me talk about
compensation for the capitalists. These young people feel ugly towards
the capitalists, and for this I do not blame them, seeing how they
have been treated. But the point of my criticism is that these young
enthusiasts want to be ugly to the capitalists in an old-fashioned, out
of date way, with guns and barricades, while I want to be ugly in the
modern way of high finance.

What is it we really want? Is it to kill the capitalists? No, but
merely to take from them their power to exploit labor. And how do
they get this power? By guns and barricades? They hold it that way,
of course; but inside each modern country they have devised the new
and infinitely more effective scheme of financial manipulation, the
creation of imaginary money with which to buy everything in sight.
And it is this weapon I want to turn against them. Why, for heaven’s
sake, do we want to have insurrections and riots, when by means of this
modern Aladdin’s magic we can walk peaceably into every factory and
take charge? The capitalists have created the magic lamp for us--this
wonderful new Federal Reserve System; all we have to do is to turn
out the present board of bankers’ bankers, and put in a new board of
workers’ bankers, and create a hundred billion dollars of new money,
and pay for the industries, and there you are! Not a court in the land
can stop us, and if any capitalist tries to, he is a revolutionist, and
we have criminal syndicalism laws for him!

This is “inflation,” we are told; and inflation raises the cost of
goods, and so brings no benefit to the worker. Yes, Judd, but get the
point clear--inflation is one thing if you use it to buy goods, and
quite a different thing if you use it to buy factories. In buying
goods, you buy on a rising market, but in buying factories you buy at a
fixed price, and so it is the owners who suffer the loss. And that is
the beauty of this scheme I am unfolding; these Wall Street gentry have
“passed the buck” to us--and we pass it right back!

The Russian revolutionists made a grave mistake in their dealings with
world capitalism; they were too honest. They repudiated the debts of
the Tsar’s government--declaring that the money had been spent to
enslave the Russian workers, and they would never repay it. Therefore
world capitalism went to war with Russia, and is still at war, and
that error in tactics has cost the new government many times the
debts of the old regime. But how much more clever were the capitalist
governments of Italy and France! They also owed us money; but they
were so polite--they are the politest people in the world! They owed
it, of course, and they would pay, of course; never would they dream
of failing to pay their debts; but just now they were very poor, and
couldn’t pay, and wouldn’t we please lend them another hundred million
or so? We loaned it--because if they go bankrupt they will also go
Bolshevik, and that scares the gizzard out of our bankers. So these
smooth capitalist nations have never paid us a dollar, but their
credit is still good, and we never think of them as criminals and
murderers--oh, nothing like that, it is all between gentlemen in Wall
Street, and the worthless bonds have been worked off on the general
public, and all is serene!

So, Judd, I say, let us be gentlemen, too, and pay! Pay any price the
capitalists ask--anything to get them out of the factories, and get
the workers in! It will mean that we support a horde of parasites for
awhile; but we are doing that, anyhow, and can do it better then,
because we shall double production. Young Johnny Coaloil will still be
able to keep his yacht and his chorus girls on the Riviera, and Mrs.
Silly Splash will continue to wear diamond-embroidered bathing suits at
Palm Beach; but notice the difference, Judd--from now on they can buy
nothing but goods with their money, they can no longer buy the means of
production, and so they will not be able to increase their income!

On the contrary, we can proceed at once to cut it down, by means of
an inheritance tax. We already have such a tax--the Coolidge crowd is
trying to get rid of it at this moment, and likewise the publicity
clause of the income tax, which exposes the big exploiters to
uncomfortable daylight! But we can put it back, Judd; we can make the
provisions that gifts in anticipation of death count as inheritance;
we can register the owners of the bonds, and so wipe out that whole
mass of privilege in a generation or two. I promised to show you how
the useful workers of America can take possession of their industrial
plant, and here is the way. Nothing prevents them but lack of
knowledge; and that is why I am writing these letters!

LETTER XVI

MY DEAR JUDD:

We have been discussing the problem of how the workers are to get
possession of the industrial machinery of the country. I have proposed
to pay for it; but there are some who insist that the workers should
seize the plant. It has been built by the workers, and taken from
them by fraud; if we purchase it, we merely continue exploitation
under another form; the government replaces the owners as task-master,
and collects the profits and pays them to the owners in the form of
dividends.

This statement sounds all right, but it overlooks the essential factor
in our business situation--that “iron ring” I have been telling you
about. At the present time not one per cent of our factories are
run at full capacity all the year round; but when we get possession
for the workers, we break the iron ring, and can run them all day
and all night. We have five million unemployed--the average of good
years and bad, you remember--five million men to go to work, to turn
out more goods for themselves and for all. We cut out the wastes and
reduplication; and according to the lowest estimate, we double our
production of goods.

The plant we propose to buy is worth, roughly, one hundred billion
dollars, and its annual product is twenty billions, possibly thirty;
let us say twenty, to be safe. We pay for it with five per cent bonds,
which means the former owners get five billions a year. If we double
production, we have forty billions a year, which leaves thirty-five
billions for us. In other words, Judd:

     _We can work half an hour a day for the owners, and four hours a
     day for ourselves, and be twice as rich as at present._

So you see why I am in favor of compensation! Not because I love the
owners, but because, as a matter of cold cash, we shall do better that
way. I will go so far as to argue that if we try to pay nothing, we
shall really pay more. If we try to kick the bosses out, and seize the
factories, and run them by workers’ councils--obviously, that may mean
civil war. The bosses have the factories, and they have machine-guns
and airplanes and poison gas--a system for wiping out the lives of
thousands of workers, if necessary. One of the embarrassments of
physical force revolution is that it may fail, and the workers, instead
of getting the factories, may get castor oil and Fascist clubs. There
is a big group of our masters who think that is what the workers need,
and would take delight in administering it.

I know some young revolutionists who are prepared to die for the
proletariat, in a fine spirit of martyrdom. They are impatient of talk
about money, but I beg them to pause and consider the balance sheet of
Compensation versus Confiscation. Even though they succeed in their
revolution, they surely cannot do it without industrial waste. They
will have to stop the machines while they are fighting; they may shoot
holes in the factories, and even burn some of them down. And just what
will that cost? We are reckoning, you understand, on our possible
double production--forty billions a year. The interest we pay the
owners is five billions a year. So now:

     _If in the course of our revolution we destroy one-eighth of our
     industrial plant, it would have been cheaper to pay the owners for
     the whole thing._

Or, suppose we have the good luck to get by without much fighting--what
then? Well, the present management, which knows the industry, and is
keeping the plant going--this management is hired by the owners, and
is loyal to the owners, and will have to be booted out the back door,
which will certainly stop production, cripple it for months, perhaps
years. But if our government comes to the owners in a business deal,
and buys the plant, the management will stay on, as it did when we
took over the railroads during the war. On that basis, we shall not
lose an hour of the plant’s time, nor will the workers lose an hour
of their wages. And how does this figure up, in the balance sheet of
Compensation versus Confiscation? Listen:

     _If our industrial plant is idle for six weeks, we have lost what
     would have paid the owners for a year._

And again, an obvious consequence:

     _Every day over six weeks that the plant is idle, the workers are
     paying from their own pockets!_

Our young revolutionists are going by the Russian model, and that is
natural, because many of them come from there. But Russia had a small
industrial plant, and we have a great one, enormously complicated.
Moreover, Russia had no middle class, while we have a powerful one,
ready to turn out at a moment’s notice and use machine guns and poison
gas in the interest of property rights. The workers’ revolution
succeeded in Russia, because the country was broken by war; but to
bring us to a similar state of disorganization would take decades of
suffering and waste--I venture the guess that it would be twenty times
cheaper to buy the capitalists out, than to bring America to the point
where a physical force revolution could prevail.

And yet, having said all that, fairness compels me to admit another
side. I have been setting forth the ideal procedure; but this is not an
ideal world, and many times we have to take what we can get, instead of
what we want. Having told you my hopes, I will now tell you my fears.

The masses of our country are ignorant and unorganized. More than half
of them do not vote at all; a large percentage value their votes at
two dollars each, and the rest take their party as they take their
God--from their grandfathers. They are interested in baseball and
prize fighting, and jazz, and the doings of the “smart set”; they do
not know how to think, and they never read anything but the “kept”
newspapers and magazines, which tell them they are the greatest people
in the world. Never in history has there been so elaborate a system
for the hoodwinking of a hundred million people; and they lap up the
propaganda, and go to the polls and vote their government into a
branch-office of J. P. Morgan and Company.

But all this does not stop the process of industrial evolution; rather
it speeds it up--giving the rich more money to produce more goods, and
causing the poor to have less money to buy the goods. So the crisis
comes on like a cyclone; and we shall find ourselves with our factories
idle and millions of people starving, and no idea of the next step
to take. There will be no time to teach the masses, no machinery for
reaching them; but the desperate workers in our cities will hear the
voice of the Communist soap-boxer, saying, “Take the factories, and
produce goods for yourselves and your fellows.” The soap-boxer will
ask: “Do you have to starve, because the majority has not voted you
food?” He will ask: “Does a man have to remain a slave because the
majority has not voted him free?” So it may happen that the hungry
workers seize the factories and attempt to run them; and we shall have
to make the best of it and help them to success.

In such an emergency, the social changes will be sudden and drastic;
and that is the reason why I do not attempt to foretell what the new
industrial forms will be. Just how the business will be managed depends
in great part upon those who now have the power in their hands; they
may choose either to be stubborn and brutal, or to display vision and
a sense of justice, not to say of common prudence. You can see the
difference this makes if you compare the great French revolution of
a century and a half ago with the series of changes that have taken
place in England during the same period. England has become a partly
democratic country in fact, while remaining a monarchy in form; the
reason being that the governing classes never pushed the people to the
last extreme, but made concessions, just enough to keep themselves in
power.

There is room for a variety of compromises between the workers and
the capitalists, and also between the workers and the state. The
capitalists may permit the setting up of shop committees, with
the right of control over working conditions; they may consent to
representation of the workers in boards which oversee each industry,
with power to make adjustments and enforce decrees. Or both sides may
prefer to call upon the government to do the adjusting. Or again, the
workers may get control of the government, and laws may be passed
providing for the taking over of control by the trade unions. A
practical program has been worked out by the railway brotherhoods, the
Plumb plan; providing for the purchase of the roads by the government,
and their operation by a board representing the government, the
brotherhoods, and the bondholders until the latter have been paid off.
The day may come when the money-masters of this country will wish they
had had the statesmanship to put that plan into operation while there
was time.

I have argued here for government ownership of industry; but you must
understand--that is not the same thing as operation of industry by
politicians. The people who understand an industry are those who work
in it; and the way to combine democracy with efficiency is to make each
industry a self-governing unit, and confine the part of government to
supervision, and the regulation of prices. Let us have an industrial
constitution and an industrial parliament, and let every man become
a citizen of industry, with a voice in the control, and equal rights
with all other citizens. That is the goal we work towards, and it is a
strictly American goal, in line with American traditions. The practical
steps are, first, to organize the workers in each industry, and make
them class conscious, awake to their own interests; and second, to use
the power of the state to open the books of each industry and expose
the profits, cutting down the share which goes to the idle owners, and
increasing the share which goes to the useful workers.

LETTER XVII

MY DEAR JUDD:

The social revolution has already happened over one-sixth of the
earth’s surface, and 140,000,000 people are now living in a working
class world. Whatever may be our point of view, we cannot afford to
misunderstand what has happened in Russia, for capitalism has made the
world one, and our efforts to shut ourselves up in our own country are
bound to fail.

The Russian revolution came as the result of a breakdown in the
midst of war. The great empire was rotten with graft, and after three
years of fighting, had got to a state where it could no longer keep
its railways going, or feed the people in its cities. With starvation
actually upon them, the soldiers, sailors and workers formed unions,
and in October, 1917, they overthrew the government of the Tsar, and
formed a new government--and gave world capitalism the most painful
shock of its career.

There have been slave revolts all through history, but always blind
and futile, put down with hideous slaughter. But here in the Russian
revolution appeared a new thing; the control was seized by a group
of men who had been trained in Western ideas, and had a theory of
revolutions, and of working-class mastery of society. These men knew
what they wanted, and they tried their plan, and it worked--at least
to the extent that they are still in power, in spite of two years of
war waged upon them by the whole capitalist world, and six more years
of financial blockade, plus the greatest campaign of falsehood in all
history.

Who were these men? They call themselves Marxians, and apply the
adjective “scientific” to themselves, because they think they have
studied the capitalist system--the laws of its growth and decay, the
forces which are destined to overthrow it, and the kind of society
these new forces will establish. History, says Marx, is a series of
class struggles, and the end is the victory of the working class, and
the beginning of a society in which there are no classes, for the
reason that nobody lives by exploiting anybody else. “Workers of all
countries, unite,” runs the slogan. “You have nothing to lose but your
chains; you have a world to gain.”

The Marxian theory is, in brief, that the development of large-scale
capitalism brings the workers into factories, where they toil for the
benefit of absentee owners whom they never see; it subjects them to low
wages, long hours and uncertainty of employment, and forces them to
organize and fight for better conditions. In this fight they develop
“class consciousness,” and in the end they are forced by capitalist
breakdown to revolt, and take possession of the factories, and run them
for the benefit of the workers and not of the masters.

They had a chance to try it in Russia, and they did so; the question
of what they have accomplished is the most fiercely debated of all
questions today. To help us get it straight, understand first, that
they had to do what they did. In other countries--America, England,
France, Germany, Austria--the middle class took charge of the
revolutions; but in Russia there was practically no middle class, it
was the workers or chaos. And second, they took over a busted machine,
a country in collapse after three years of modern war, the most
destructive of all things known this side of hell. And third, they had
to face years of invasion from Europe, America and Japan, fighting on
26 fronts at once; and at the same time civil war, and a blockade, and
financial boycott, and world propaganda, besides two successive years
of famine, something which comes every so often in Russia--caused by
drought, and not by revolutions.

In spite of all this, Soviet Russia confronts its world of enemies,
eight years young, and proud and confident. It has restored its
agriculture to the pre-war standard, and its industry to nearly 80 per
cent of this standard, with the certainty of passing it in 1926 or 1927
if peace is maintained. It has turned one-sixth of the earth’s surface
from a militarist empire into a federated group of commonwealths,
governed under a new system, in which the voters are classified
according to their occupations. It has trained a new generation of
young workers, and taken some five hundred thousand of them into its
governing party. It has taught millions of men and women to read and
write, including everybody in its army, and nearly everybody in its
industries. It would seem that all this entitles the new system to
study, and to fair play in the field of thought.

But Russia is not democratic; so they tell you, Judd--and you are
strong for democracy. Well, I also share that faith; but if, as time
goes on, the workers of the world discover that democracy means
inequality such as we have here in America, while the “dictatorship of
the proletariat” means cultural freedom for the workers and a swiftly
spreading plenty for all--well, Judd, we advocates of democracy will
have a hard time in debates! But the truth is that we have in America
political democracy alongside industrial autocracy; and these two are
making a war upon each other, and we shall have to choose whether our
country is to become a capitalist empire or an industrial republic.

Russia has never had democracy, nor even the ideal of it, except among
a few dreamers. Less than seventy-five years ago its farm population
were all serfs, bound to the soil. Many of its outlying peoples are
semi-barbarous tribes. Its factories are few and at the time of the
world war they were financed by foreign capital, and run by foreigners.
There came this devastating war, and then a breakdown; and to expect
those who took control to set up at once such a democratic system as we
know in America, is to be absurd. Many who talk about it are dishonest,
for they know that if their own parties get control, they will hold it
by exactly the same means as the Bolsheviks--that is, by force.

What the Bolsheviks are doing is to educate the workers and peasants,
and then take them into the governing party. The purpose of that party
is to hold power until all the workers have come into it, and the
“Union of Socialist Soviet Republics” includes the whole population of
the former empire of the Tsar. In fact, they expect to include a lot
more, because they think the workers of some other countries are going
to join them; and the rulers and capitalists of those countries fear
the same thing--which is the reason they hate the Bolsheviks, and carry
on such deadly lying about them.

The British Tories, backed by American bankers, are now conducting
a world-wide intrigue against Russia; and soon they may be calling
the American people to join in a new war “to make the world safe for
democracy.” And what then? The chances are that the American people
will join in, for they dearly love everything that is upper-class
British, and enjoy nothing so much as crushing labor anywhere in the
world. They elected Coolidge in a fervor of patriotism because they
thought--mistakenly--that he had had something to do with smashing
the Boston police strike. As I write, our government is donating a
billion dollars--in the form of a pretended “debt settlement”--to the
Italian government, because Judge Gary and our other masters so love
these black-shirt Fascisti, and look forward to the time when they can
administer the castor-oil treatment to American labor.

Yes, Judd; and we simply ladled out our money to the Tsarist
adventurers, to every nation and tribe of reactionary that was fighting
Soviet Russia on twenty-six fronts; we dressed up Polish troops in
American uniforms to make war on Russia, and even burned American Red
Cross supplies to keep them from being captured and used for the sick
and starving people of the Soviet republic. We allowed Woodrow Wilson
to send our boys to their death in his private war on a friendly
people--under the command of British officers in Archangel, and helping
the Japanese to take Siberia.

All that was done, Judd, and done with your money, and under the flag
of your country; and it will be done again when the British Tories are
ready--for the bull-dog never sleeps, and he never lets go his hold. He
has set out to strangle the Soviets, as once he strangled Napoleon--and
for the same reason, to keep his grip on the 300,000,000 serfs of
India. If, when the next attack begins, America does not hasten to
pour out its blood and treasure, it will be for one reason and one
only; because in the meantime it has been possible to reach the plain
people like yourself, and make them understand, and hold back the world
bankers from their next World Crime.

LETTER XVIII

MY DEAR JUDD:

Our country today is traveling headlong the road which has led every
great empire in history to its doom. And this is no piece of rhetoric,
but a summary of statistics to be found in our census reports.
What ruined Rome was the spread of capitalist imperialism with its
consequences--the undermining of the independent farmers, the growth
of tenantry and absentee landlordism, and the turning of the country
population into city slum-dwellers, uncertain of their employment and
dependent upon public doles.

And every one of these things is happening right before our eyes. The
price of farm-land is going up, steadily and inexorably; the profits
of agriculture are going to middlemen, speculators, and moneylenders.
Farm mortgages are increasing, farm tenantry is increasing, decade
after decade, with the certainty of a doom. The young men are leaving
the farms and going to the city, to increase unemployment and bring
down wages. The man who wants a city home pays a constantly increasing
tribute to land speculators; while in the business districts land
values double or treble in a decade, and no work can go on until the
landlord’s greed has been appeased.

Millions of little fellows like yourself, Judd, support that system,
because you own a lot or two, and are making a little profit; just as
millions support the big trusts, because they own a share or two of
stock. They do not see that under a just system they, as producers,
would get many times what they get as petty speculators. Our first
task is to show them, and bring them to our side. We wish to take the
government out of the hands of the capitalist and landlord class; and
then to apply the remedy for land speculation, a tax on land values,
falling heavily on rented land, and still more heavily on land not used
at all. This will set free the soil, and wipe out the gamblers; there
will be plenty of farm-land open for use, and lots near the cities
will be cheap. At the same time both cities and states will have money
for public improvements, bringing high wages, and benefit to all. The
farmer will have abundant markets, because the city population will no
longer be on half rations. The land values tax is the only just one,
because it taxes the wealth created by nature, and not by human labor;
also, it is the only tax which can be fully collected--all others are
taxes on honesty, and we need that commodity badly, and should not tax
it out of existence.

There is a form of conflict between farmers and organized workers,
because the farmer has to hire labor, and wants it cheap. This conflict
is carefully made use of by the old party politicians, who wish to
plunder the two groups separately. I point out to both farmer and
workingman that their deeper interests are identical; they are the
producers, and supplement each other. The farmers grow food for the
city workers, while the city workers make building materials and
machinery, clothing, newspapers--everything the farmers need. These two
groups form the basis of the new society, and in their political union
lies our hope for the future.

When I say “workers,” understand that I mean workers of both hand and
brain: housewives and teachers, clerks and stenographers, architects,
chemists and doctors, foremen, superintendents and executives--all who
are actually necessary to the efficient production of wealth. The only
ones not necessary are the owners, in their capacity as exploiters and
parasites.

I know that many owners also work as managers, and if they are
competent, I respect them, and invite their aid. I should be glad to
see young Rockefeller managing our national oil trust--provided only
that somebody would convert him to the ideal of public service. When
the real crisis comes, some employers will realize that the making
of industrial democracy is a task worthy of all the energy they are
now putting into making millions of dollars--to be used later on in
wrecking the lives of their descendants.

The useful workers of industry, and those on the land, must get
together. They must have a political party of producers--the plan has
been fully worked out in Minnesota, and the other states have only to
follow. Also we must build up and strengthen the trade unions of both
workers and farmers; for it is not at all certain that the masters of
money will surrender to white paper ballots in whatever number; they
must know that these ballots are backed by nationwide organizations,
capable, determined, and wielding the threat of the mass-strike.

As part of the process of organizing and drawing together farmers
and workers, we must encourage business co-operation between these
groups. The farmers can feed the workers, and the workers can set
up co-operative factories for their farmer customers. The railway
brotherhoods have made a beginning at this, and so have the clothing
workers. Equally important is labor-banking, to finance such
undertakings. At present a great deal of labor-banking turns out to
be shadow--there is no real control by labor, and all that happens
is, some former labor officials become successful bankers. But that
also will be remedied--the unions will have banks which they actually
control, and whose funds they use for their own enterprises. What
could be more pitiful than the present situation--the workers putting
their billions of savings into capitalist banks, to be shipped on to
Wall Street and there used for robbing labor, and financing anti-labor
newspapers--and even breaking labor strikes!

At the present time the policies of American labor both political and
industrial, are a generation out of date; our workingmen are like the
Moros in the Philippines, fighting machine-guns with bows and arrows.
The unions are still organized according to crafts; and they face
gigantic combinations of capital, which have merged a hundred different
crafts into one. So of course the unions are beaten or outwitted at
every turn; and membership falls off, and the old officials whistle to
keep their courage up.

I remember, Judd, that in some of our arguing you asserted that many
labor leaders are corrupt; that is one reason why you are not a union
man. But go and investigate trade union corruption, and you find just
what we found about political corruption. Who puts up the money to
buy labor leaders? The employers, and the employers’ associations!
Wherever you touch this evil in our society, it is one and the same
thing--private wealth seeking to increase itself at the expense of the
poor and weak. In Chicago I once investigated a strike of teamsters,
which had kept the city in an uproar for weeks, and cost several
lives--to say nothing of discrediting the workers. And what was behind
it? A great mail-order house trying to put another mail-order house out
of business, hiring a strike and gangs of sluggers!

The remedy for that is not to desert the unions, but to put new blood
into them, a new policy and a new ideal. The task of labor is no longer
to get five cents more per hour for its members, or an extra hour
off on Saturdays; it is to reconstruct society, and make a world of
producers, managed by producers, for the benefit of producers. And for
that every worker is needed, and the place where he is needed is in
the union with his fellows. If there are officials without vision, go
in and teach them; point out how the employers have formed trusts, and
how the workers must match them with great industrial unions. If labor
officials are dishonest and betrayers of their cause, kick them out,
and find others who are class conscious and loyal. I know that is easy
to say and hard to do; yet surely, Judd, labor cannot lie down and give
up! Get it straight--this is a changing world, and you can’t stay as
you are; there are forces at work that will beat the workers back into
their age-old status of serfs, unless they have the courage and brain
power to master these forces, and lift themselves to the new status of
citizens of industry. Join, and do your part; and some day the law will
provide that every man who works at a trade becomes automatically a
member of his union, an equal citizen of the industry, with no power to
exploit others, nor fear of being exploited by others.

LETTER XIX

MY DEAR JUDD:

We have come to the end of our task. I have tried to show you what is
going on in our country, and the job you have to do.

We are moving towards a new American revolution. That does not mean
riot and tumult, as our enemies try to represent; but neither does it
mean slavish submission to every repression of government. There is
the best American precedent for resistance to tyranny, and those good
ladies who call themselves “Daughters of the American Revolution” would
be shocked speechless if I were to quote to them the authentic words of
Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
on the right of the people to overthrow unjust governments. Said
Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address: “This country, with
its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they
shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their
constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to
dismember or overthrow it.” There can be no question that those words
come precisely under the specifications of the California “criminal
syndicalism” law, and a man who said them today would be sent up for
fourteen years, to cough out his lungs in the jute-mill of San Quentin
prison.

We have to get rid of the capitalist system. It is close to breaking
down, and will soon be unable to run the factories it has built, or
to bring food to the people in its giant cities. We have got to stop
producing goods for profit, and learn to produce them for the use of
those who work. I have pointed out the way to make that change under
our Constitution. I say: if there is violence, let the capitalists
start it--and then you, Judd, and the rest of the workers, can finish
it!

Abraham Lincoln hated the slave power, just as I hate the capitalist
power; but he moved carefully, keeping the mass of the people with
him, and pushed the slave power against the wall, until presently
it revolted and began the fighting; then Lincoln called for seventy
thousand men to put down the rebellion, and presently he called for a
million, and before he got through he had freed the slaves, and put
an end to that evil forever. And maybe that is going to happen again;
maybe when we get seriously to work, the capitalists are going to
organize their armed bands of rowdies, as they did in Italy, and as
they are now doing in France and Germany and England, and set out to
thwart the people’s will as expressed at the polls. If that happens,
Judd, let us have the traditions of America, and the moral forces of
America, on our side.

I am one who believes in those traditions; coming, as I do, of a
line of naval ancestors. My great-grandfather once commanded the
frigate “Constitution,” and I am standing by the old ship--while our
money-masters and their hired political servants are trying to torpedo
it. When I try to read the Constitution of my country in a public
place, and a drunken chief of police throws me into jail, and drunken
newspaper publishers shout with approval--well, Judd, I bide my time.
I once spent two years reading the history of the period prior to the
Civil War, and I know what the moral forces of America are. I know how
long they wait, and how slow they seem to be in getting into motion;
nevertheless, they are there, and I make my appeal to them, and I
expect to hear it answered. I am taking care of my health, with the
idea of living to sing once more the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

I have written these letters as an act of service to my country. I
personally am not suffering, as you know; I have won my fight, to
the extent that I am an independent man, and no one can muzzle me.
But how can I be happy in this so-called civilization, where I see
on every hand about me war and the preparation for war, poverty and
the despair which poverty brings, crime and prostitution, suicide and
insanity--such a mass of misery that I cannot face the thought of
it, and all those beauties of nature and art which in my youth set
me a-thrill from top to toe, now mean hardly anything to me, because
of the wrongs I see about me--and all so needless, Judd, so utterly,
utterly needless!

And something just as bad as the misery of the poor, the decay in the
souls of the rich! To see a whole society chasing false ideals, vanity
and luxury and waste; admiring and imitating wretched parasites, who
have millions of dollars and not one useful thing to do! I know a
few of these people, Judd, their lives touch mine here and there,
and the truth is they are just as unhappy as the poor, and just as
much to be wept over, with their jazz and their bootleggers and their
petting parties and their pitiful empty heads. A brief little hour of
excitement and display--and then so much suffering, and bewilderment,
despair about life, and cynicism about everything sound and true. I
think of the millionaire youth I know, drinking himself to death; and
the gay young society matron with a venereal disease in her blood and
terror in her heart--I feel like calling upon the useful workers of
America to organize and save the rich from the misery of being out of
work!

What we want, Judd, is a world with neither rich nor poor, but with
people who live by producing, and not by taking what others have
produced. We want to make that sort of world, and we call to our aid
all men and women who are willing to work for it. We want to study this
problem, and fill our minds with real information, and stop reading the
poison press of our enemies. Indeed, Judd, it is not too much to say
that we want to make over our moral and mental life, so that we cease
to admire the ideals of our exploiters--waste and the display of waste,
plundering and the power to plunder. We want to teach ourselves and our
children to admire useful labor, and social vision, and loyalty to the
cause of those who produce. We who serve that cause call one another
“comrade,” or “brother,” or “fellow-worker”; and we invite you to join
our ranks.

UPTON SINCLAIR

PASADENA CALIFORNIA

March 15, 1926.

DEAR FRIEND:

I do not think that since the world began there has ever been a people
so lied to as the American people to-day. There are 110,000,000 of
us, and at least 105,000,000 are completely befuddled by a campaign
of deception, backed by the whole power of American big business, the
newspapers, the magazines, the movies, the radio, the vast machinery of
government, and the two major political parties. I am supposed to be
working on a novel, “Oil,” to the writing of which I had hoped to give
the next year; but I couldn’t stand it, so I took a couple of months
off, to pay a debt which an honest American owes to his ancestors--to
help break the power of the organized knaves who are looting our
country in broad daylight.

I have written a little book, “Letters to Judd.” It is running serially
in the “American Appeal,” where some of you may be reading it. Judd
is an old carpenter who has worked for us off and on, a typical,
old-fashioned American; I have taken him as the type of person I
want to reach, and have written him a series of nineteen letters,
telling those elementary facts which our ruling classes are trying so
desperately to keep hidden from us all. This is the first time I have
covered our political and social problems fully, since “The Industrial
Republic,” which was published 19 years ago, and has been out of
print more than half that time. My mail is full of letters asking for
something of the sort, so here you have it.

The book tells why there is poverty in the richest country in the
world. It proves that in America for the past thirty-five years the
rich have been growing richer and the poor poorer, and it shows
exactly what the rich have done to bring this condition about, and
exactly what the poor will have to do to change it. It explains
unemployment and hard times, the money system, inflation, stock
watering and manipulation, the tariff and the trusts. It studies the
world situation, explaining the wars we have had, and showing how the
present system is preparing new ones. It discusses Russia and the
revolution--in short, everything the average man or woman needs to know
about affairs at home and abroad, and all in plain, everyday language.
It is a 100% American book, intended for 100% American readers, and it
is written and published as an act of love for our country.

A few times past we have had great crises, and it has been found
possible to reach the people by a pamphlet. Paine’s “The Crisis,” and
Helper’s “The Impending Crisis,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Progress and
Poverty,” “Looking Backward”--these books have helped to make our
history. I am making a try at this kind of thing; I mean, I have put
aside everything else, and done my best to make a good job, to get the
facts, and make them fool-proof, as well as knave-proof, and to present
them in such a way that anyone can understand them. Thirty years’ study
of our problems has gone into the book, also thirty years of learning
how to write. Having faith in our people, I have borrowed money, and
gone ahead to make the plates and print twelve thousand copies; now I
am appealing to you to do the rest of the job--to see that the “Letters
to Judd” reach the millions of “Judds” who need them.

The book will be in two editions: first two thousand cloth bound,
price $1, to enable my friends to pay the cost of the undertaking;
and second, ten thousand copies, paper bound, a neatly printed
wire-stitched pamphlet, to be sold at meetings, and passed about among
workingmen and women; this is the form for which I hope to get a
million or two circulation, and I have put the price so low that nobody
will suspect me of making money--15 cents a copy, or ten copies for
a dollar. This 15 cent price for a single paper copy is a price for
meetings and book-stores--I cannot mail the book for that, because,
including postage, wrapping, and overhead, it costs about 15 cents to
handle an order in my office. What I ask you to do is to order at least
10 paper copies to give to your friends, and in addition a cloth copy
for your library. I will take a gamble and say: place a $2 order, for
one cloth and 10 paper copies, and when you have read the book, if you
don’t find it worth distributing, you may send back the whole lot, and
I’ll send back your money. I ask for a prompt response, as I want to
advertise the book, and haven’t the money. Both editions will be ready
for shipment by the time your order gets back to me.

Our reprint of “The Moneychangers” has been ready for a couple of
months, and if you haven’t seen it, here is a reminder. This novel,
first published in 1908, tells the story of the panic of 1907, how and
why it was brought about by the elder J. P. Morgan. I do not recommend
it as a great work of literature; reading it over, I found many
crudities, some of which I remedied. But I will guarantee it a lively
story, full of facts about Wall Street which the American people do not
yet understand.

Also, my wife has published a new volume by Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz,
author of “The Parlor Provocateur.” The new volume is called “Letters
of Protest,” the price is $1 cloth and fifty cents paper. The book is
full of that burning indignation at social injustice, combined with
motherly tenderness, which has made Mrs. Gartz the bewilderment of
the prosecuting officials of Los Angeles county. They want so much to
send her to jail, but they don’t quite dare! I was talking the other
day with a prominent physician of Los Angeles, and he mentioned his
intimate friend, the president of the Better America Federation, the
propaganda society of big business here in California. “He doesn’t love
you, Upton,” said the physician, “but Kate Gartz is the real one who
gets his nanny.”

The money which has come in from our “Loan Plan” has gone into the
printing and binding of “Bill Porter” and “The Moneychangers,” a part
payment on a new edition of “The Cry for Justice,” a new binding of
“The Jungle,” and finally, this circular. More money is needed for
a new printing and binding of “The Profits of Religion,” and for
advertising the “Letters to Judd.” Also my novel, “Sylvia,” is out of
print, and I’d reprint it if I could afford the luxury. So I tell you
again about this “Sinclair Loan Plan.” Those who believe in my work
and want to promote it lend me what they can afford, and the money
serves as working capital, to pay for the new plates and stock of
books which a publishing business has to keep on hand. The lenders
receive a certificate of indebtedness, and have the right to buy each
year a quantity of my books at half the retail price. Thus, if you
lend ten dollars, you can get $5 worth of books for $2.50. These books
must be ordered in one shipment, so as to save handling costs; under
the Loan Plan you may place one such half-price order every year. The
saving takes the place of interest on your money; it amounts to 25%
interest--a pretty good rate, but not so high as millions of poor
farmers are having to pay to national banks all over the country--see
my “Letters to Judd”!

I want to cover all the details of this Loan Plan, so as to avoid
having to write long explanations. If you have already come in under
the plan, and have your certificate of indebtedness, you may order
books once in the year 1926, to the amount of one-half of your loan.
Thus, if you have loaned $10, you may order $5 worth of books for
$2.50; you can get, for example, one cloth and ten paper copies of
“Letters to Judd,” one cloth “Mammonart,” one paper “Bill Porter,” and
one paper copy of Mrs. Gartz’s book, all for $2.50. I will throw in a
copy of my wife’s “Sonnets,”--and if you know any place in the world
where you can get as much value in books for the money, I do not!

If you are not at present at subscriber to the Loan Plan, you are
invited to join. Send $12.50, and you will receive a certificate for a
$10 loan, with the privilege of getting your money back at any time on
thirty days’ notice. Also you will receive $5 worth of books, and will
have the privilege each year of ordering another $5 worth of books for
$2.50. Most of my readers say they don’t want the certificates, but I
send them just the same; paste them in your autograph album, and some
day they may be worth the price in that form, and without hurting the
publishing business!

Sincerely,

UPTON SINCLAIR.

P. S. We have received from our German publishers, the Malik Verlag of
Berlin, five stately volumes, the “Collected Novels of Upton Sinclair.”
From Gossizdat, the State Publishing House of Moscow, we have a list of
various editions of our books which have been issued in Soviet Russia;
counting, not new printings, but separate publications under different
titles, there is a total of sixty-nine. Michael Gold, recently returned
from Russia, writes: “The sort of people who in America know Charlie
Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, in Russia know Upton Sinclair.” We are
advised by the Japanese translator of “The Jungle” that the book has
just been issued, but the government compelled the publisher to recall
all copies, and cut out the last chapters, dealing with Socialism. The
Japanese translation of “Mammonart” is about to appear. From Warsaw
comes an offer from a large publishing house to issue twenty of our
books in a cheap library, at .95 zloty per volume, about thirteen cents
American. A Czechish publisher applies for all books not hitherto
issued. We have a review of “Mammonart” which was broadcasted from the
radio station of the Labour Party of Australia; also a letter from a
Ukrainian writer, telling how our plays are being acted there, and
our novels made into movies. We have established book-store agencies
in London, India and South Africa, and we learn that readers are
circulating our books in Java, Honduras, and Iceland. We await returns
from the U. S. A.

     “Letters to Judd,” cloth $1.00; paper 15 cents, 10 for $1.00.

     “Bill Porter,” a drama of O. Henry in prison. Cloth $1, paper 50
     cents.

     “Mammonart,” an economic interpretation of literature and the
     arts. $2 cloth, $1 paper.

     “The Goose-Step,” a study of the American colleges. $2 cloth, $1
     paper.

     “The Goslings,” a study of the American schools. $2 cloth, $1
     paper.

     The following at $1.50 cloth, $1.00 paper:

     “The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism.”

     Who owns the press and why? When you read your daily paper,
     are you reading facts or propaganda? And whose propaganda? Who
     furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it
     honest material? No man can ask more important questions than
     these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a
     book.

     “The Profits of Religion”: A Study of Supernaturalism as a Source
     of Income and a Shield to Privilege. The first investigation of
     this subject ever made in any language.

     “King Coal”: a novel of the Colorado coal country.

     “They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming.”

     “Manassas,” called by Jack London, “the best Civil War book I’ve
     read.”

     “The Metropolis,” a picture of the “Four Hundred” of New York.

     “The Moneychangers,” a novel of Wall Street.

     “The Journal of Arthur Stirling,” the literary sensation of 1903.

     “The Fasting Cure,” a health study.

     The following in cloth only, at $1.50:

     “100%: The Story of a Patriot.”

     “The Jungle,” a novel of the Chicago stock-yards; new edition,
     cloth-bound.

     “Plays of Protest”: four plays in one volume.

     The following at $1 in “hard covers”:

     “Samuel the Seeker,” a story of Socialism.

     “Jimmie Higgins,” a novel of the World War, a best seller in
     Russia, Italy, France, Germany and Austria.

     “Sylvia’s Marriage,” a novel.

     “Sonnets by M. C. S.,” 25 cents a copy, 8 for $1.

     “Hell” and “Singing Jailbirds,” two plays, 25 cents each.

     “The Parlor Provocateur,” also “Letters of Protest,” two books by
     Kate Crane Gartz, with an introduction by M. C. S. Price for each
     book, $1.00 cloth, 50 cents paper.

     “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social
     Protest,” cloth $2.00, paper $1.25.

     “The Book of Life,” a Book of Practical Counsel: Mind, Body, Love
     and Society. Price $2.

     “Damaged Goods,” novelized from the play by Brieux; cloth-bound
     only, $1.00.

We offer for 85 cents a complete set of the following works in the
Haldeman-Julius 5-cent Pocket Library (now ready): “The Jungle” (6
vols.), “The Millennium” (3 vols.), “The Overman,” “The Pot-Boiler,”
“The Second-Story Man,” “The Nature Woman,” “Prince Hagen,” “The
Machine,” “A Captain of Industry” (2 vols.).

Order from Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, California

Books by Upton Sinclair

+The Brass Check+: an exposure of the corruption of the capitalist
press. $1.50 cloth, $1 paper.

+The Goose-step+: a study of the class control of American
Universities. $2 cloth, $1 paper.

+The Goslings+: a study of the American schools and what the money
power is doing with them. $2 cloth, $1 paper.

+Mammonart+: a history of the world’s culture, showing how it serves
the ruling classes. $2 cloth, $1 paper.

+The Profits of Religion+: how the churches have been used by the
enemies of Jesus. $1.50 cloth, $1 paper.

+The Book of Life+: a work of practical counsel, Mind, Body, Love and
Society. $2, cloth only.

+The Cry for Justice+: an anthology of the world’s literature of social
protest, from twenty-two languages and five thousand years of history.
890 pages, 16 illustrations. $2 cloth, $1.25 paper.

Novels, at $1.50 cloth and $1 paper

+The Jungle+: a novel of the Chicago stockyards.

+King Coal+: a story of the Colorado coal empire.

+100%+: The Story of a Patriot: the spy system which rules America.

+They Call Me Carpenter+: how Jesus came to Los Angeles.

+The Moneychangers+: how Morgan caused the panic of 1907.

+Jimmie Higgins+: a novel of the Socialist movement in the world war.

+Manassas+: a novel of the Civil war.

+Samuel the Seeker+: the misadventures of a young idealist.

Order from UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, California

Books for You to Read

If you wish statistics as to social conditions in America, get the
+American Labor Year Book+ for the current year. $3.

If you wish to know how we squander the wealth-producing powers of our
country, read “+The Tragedy of Waste+,” by Stuart Chase. $2.50.

The most useful book of general information about the movement for
justice is “+Social Progress+,” a handbook. $2.50.

The best text book of information about Socialism and related movements
is “+Socialism in Thought and Action+,” by Harry W. Laidler. $2.50.

The most informative book about Russia is “+The First Time in
History+,” by Anna Louise Strong. $2.

The most important book about prison conditions in America is “+In
Prison+,” by Kate Richards O’Hare. $2.

The best book on our banking system is “+The Strangle-Hold+,” by H. C.
Cutting. $2.

The best book on the late war is “+Shall It Be Again?+” by John Kenneth
Turner. $2.50.

The best book about our growing imperialist system is “+The American
Empire+,” by Scott Nearing. Cloth, $1; paper, 50 cents.

Organizations: The Socialist Party, Chicago; the Workers’ (Communist)
Party, Chicago; the League for Industrial Democracy, New York; the
American Civil Liberties Union, New York.

The best periodicals: for art and literature, the “+New Masses+,” New
York, $2; for general information, the “+Nation+,” New York, $5; for
Socialism, the “+American Appeal+,” Chicago, $1; for Communism, the
“+Workers’ Monthly+,” Chicago, $1.50; for labor, “+Labor+,” Washington,
D. C., $1.

Any of these books or periodicals may be ordered along with the books
of Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, California.