The bourgeois civilization is, in one word, and organized system of repression.
In the physical world it has the police and the militia, the bludgeon, the bullet and the jail;
in the world of ideas it has the political platform, the school, the college and the press.
-Upton Sinclair
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Saturday January 14, 1905
From the Appeal to Reason: Something Doin' Next Week
In today's edition of the
Appeal to Reason, we are told in bold letters that there will be "something doin'" next week. What that Something is, they do not say. But by following the clues left in two articles, one from the December 31st issue and the other from this most recent issue,
Hellraisers is able to discern that the
Appeal will begin serializing
The Jungle next week. The
Appeal promises us that:
the book that the young author is working on now, "The Jungle," is destined to be a masterpiece of Socialist literature.
From the Appeal to Reason of December 31, 1904:
To My Comrades Who Read the Appeal
BY UPTON SINCLAIR.
JUST before election the Appeal printed two papers of mine. Some of the comrades have told me of a few votes that these papers made. It is very pleasant to know of that. The editors liked them. That is also pleasant to know of. I am encouraged enough to hope that I may have won a little influence with the readers of the Appeal, so that they will listen to me, now that I have something to say which I believe to be of a great deal of importance.
Every year, when the Socialist vote shows its wonderful increase, the capitalist papers are forced to break their silence about Socialism and to let their readers know that we are in business. They make perplexed and uncomfortable admissions-and then they wind up with the placid assurance protestors will have forgotten all about it. Then they go on their way and forget all about it themselves-and the Socialists grit their teeth together and get down to work. The Socialists know just as well as the capitalist that the protestors were in the mood to be taught and to be taken in hand and made into intelligent and life-long Socialists; and that if they are not so taken in hand and so made over by the next election the party and the party workers will be to blame.
The meaning of half a million votes in 1904 is very simple and easily told-it is that you and I, comrades, have got to get down to work!
I am going to try to do my share. I am going to try to write a Socialist novel this winter-to use what talent I may have to open the eyes of the American people to the conditions under which the toilers get their bread. I am going to put all that I have into it. The Appeal is going to publish it, and I am going to write it with the feeling that a million readers are following it and demanding that it be well done....
[photograph added]
From the Appeal to Reason of January 14, 1905:
GENIUS AND SOCIALIST
ALL down the long history of the world we find geniuses alive with a foresight that is denied ordinary mortals, and arraying themselves militantly against the powers that be, even to the point of persecution and death. Socrates in Greece, Savonarola in Italy, Luther and Wagner in Germany, Shelley and Leigh Hunt in England, Tolstoy in Russia, and-in America?-well, they do say that Mr. Jack London is a genius, and Jack London is a noted Socialist.
And there is another new star that is burning clear, steady and bright in the world of letters-Mr. Upton Sinclair. Mr. Sinclair is also a Socialist of the militant, class-conscious sort. In olden times and in other countries revolutionists were forced to drink hemlock, were burned at the stake, banished, denied the rites of the church, etc. None of these persecutions have come to Jack London or Upton Sinclair. But these men are young yet; neither of them is over twenty-six, and the Socialist movement, as an organized political power, is only in its incipiency in America. What the future holds for these young men and for the movement with which they have allied themselves we cannot say. We do predict, however, that they will "never give up the ship" whether its passage into port be storm-tossed or sunlit and peaceful.
Jack London wrote the "Call of the Wild," "The Faith of Man," "The Sea Wolf," and a number of magazine articles that have given him literary fame. But his "Children of the Abyss" is a story that every Socialist and every Socialist sympathizer should read, because it is a thrilling recital of the lives of the people in the poorest quarters of London. And what is true of the London poor is largely true of the poor of our American cities.
Mr. Sinclair is best known, probably, for his new book, "Manassas." This is not only a literary gem, clear, clean, without strain or effort, but it is also an intensely interesting tale of the opening of the civil war. "Prince Hagen," "Journal of Arthur Stirling" and "King Midas" are also brilliant literary productions, but the book that the young author is working on now, "The Jungle," is destined to be a masterpiece of Socialist literature.
Out in the New Jersey woods, in a little cabin he built with his own hands, far from the fads and fashions of the world, Sinclair writes. Here was born "The Journal of Arthur Stirling." And if you would know the heaven and hell of a poet's soul you can never know it better than by reading this story. It is not a Mary MacLane production; it has not created a sensation among the sated consumers of latter-day novels; but it takes hold upon the minds of its readers, and, as Richard Le Gallienne says of it, "In the weary waste of clever imitation books it is an oasis of originality, indeed."
"The opening chapters of "King Midas,'" says Rev. Minot Savage, "are to me a perfect delight; the first scene is simply superb, and the heroine is one of the sweetest, truest most lovable characters I have met with for many years." The Boston Times, speaking of the same book, says: "Lovers of music will be especially interested by the skill with which music is made a language for the expression of emotion and the revelation of character."
If our author strives for anything it is for simplicity and clearness of expression. He is an artist and the sensational is abhorrent to him, as it is to all who see things in their true light. This doesn't mean that he is without feeling. He does feel. And he not only feels, but he makes his readers feel. He picks his words as a good duelist picks his swords, that they may cut deep and clean, leaving no insensible, jagged edges.
He created something of a furore among Socialists lately by contributing an article to Collier's Weekly in answer to Mrs. Atherton's attack upon American literature, in which she claimed that it was distinctly bourgeois. Mr. Sinclair retorts that it is bourgeois, and that it cannot well be otherwise since it springs from a people who are bourgeois in all their ideals. He says:
The bourgeois civilization is, in one word, and organized system of repression. In the physical world it has the police and the militia, the bludgeon, the bullet and the jail; in the world of ideas it has the political platform, the school, the college and the press.
But the fact that such men as Sinclair are becoming militant Socialists promises much for the future of our literature as well as for our political institutions. May his tribe increase.
[photograph of London added]
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SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Dec 31, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Jan 14, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
The Jungle
-by Upton Sinclair
Chicago, Illinois, 1920
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Text from Appeal & photo of Upton Sinclair
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Socialist Party Button
http://www.marxists.org/...
Jack London
(search with Jack London and choose page 122)
http://books.google.com/...
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The Commonwealth of Toil - Pete Seeger
But we have a glowing dream
Of how fair the world will seem
When each man can live his life secure and free;
When the earth is owned by labor
And there's joy and peace for all
In the Commonwealth of Toil that is to be.
-Ralph Chaplin
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