Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools - Upton Sinclair - Страница 7

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Let us now survey the situation in Southern California as I settle down to the writing of this book. The storm has blown over for the moment. Twenty-eight of the strikers—the best of their leaders—have been shipped off to the jute mill for from two to twenty-eight years. The others are back in the slave-market, bidding against one another for the lives of themselves and their families. Those who were active in the strike are black-listed; even though they own homes at the harbor, they cannot find employment, but must sell out and move on. And meantime, the men who robbed them are enjoying the “swag.” Mr. Andrew B. Hammond has gone back to San Francisco, to the comforts of the Bohemian Club, and the Pacific Union Club, and the Commercial Club, and the San Francisco Golf Club; while Mr. I. H. Rice continues to run the political and business affairs of Los Angeles.

Some lovers of fair play have organized a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, to teach the people of this community the elementary idea that the Constitution applies to the poor as well as to the rich. True to our program of the open forum, we call upon Mr. Rice and courteously invite him to set forth his ideas of constitutional rights to one of our audiences. Mr. Rice declines the invitation, and so does Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, and so does Mr. Marco Hellman, the banker, and So does Captain John D. Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce—it is reported that they put up twelve thousand dollars additional salary for him, because so important a man could not afford to go to Congress otherwise!

Among the “tips” which came to me in the course of the struggle was one to the effect that Captain Plummer and Chief Oaks were each presented with a gold watch as a tribute of gratitude from the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association. At a hearing before the Ministerial Union I had opportunity to ask Captain Plummer about this matter; he admitted with evident embarrassment that he had got a gold watch. I asked him if it was engraved in acknowledgment of his services to the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association; his answer was that it was engraved “From the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association for services to the community.” He added, somewhat naively, that he could not imagine how I had got that information. “No one but Mr. Rice and the jeweler were supposed to know about that watch!”

With six hundred men packed into the filthy jails of Los Angeles, some of them with faces bloody from the fists of Chief Oaks, the chief himself went off to the convention of chiefs of police at Buffalo. He went in glory, taking the policemen’s and firemen’s band of sixty pieces; the expenses of this tour being in part paid by the protected under-world, and in part loaned by Marco Hellman, banker and chief of the Black Hand. Mr. Hellman went to the station to see the party off, and on their return he went again to welcome them. Day by day we followed in our newspapers the progress of this tour; they had royal receptions in our biggest cities—and also in Lebanon, Missouri, the village which contributed our great chief of police to the world. The local newspaper mentioned that Mount Vernon was the birthplace of George Washington, and Springfield, Illinois, was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln!

In the meantime, our Civil Liberties Union was collecting affidavits of men who had been beaten and starved and tortured in jail. We presented these affidavits to the mayor, and the mayor referred us to the city council; we presented them to the city council, and the city council referred us to the police commission; we presented them to the police commission, and the police commission referred them to the committee of the whole. As I said at one of our mass meetings: “It is called the committee of the hole because it hides and nobody can find it.” We were told that the charges would be considered when Chief Oaks came back; the chief came back, and went before the City Club, and in a burst of glory stated that if anyone had charges against any police official he would personally take them before the grand jury. Whereupon we made application to him to present to the grand jury the charge that Chief Oaks had beaten prisoners in jail—and he did not keep his promise. We had brought the charges before the Ministerial Union of the city, and the ministers appointed a committee to investigate; this committee met, and heard many witnesses, but took no action, and has never met again.^[B]

B. While the rest of this book is being written, Chief Oaks becomes involved in a factional dispute in the Police Department, and his enemies publish affidavits by the police officials of a neighboring town, to the effect that Oaks was arrested a few days ago, while parked in a lonely road with a young woman and a half-gallon jug of whiskey. So Oaks is no longer chief, but plain lieutenant of police, and is telling his friends that he intends to have the inscription cut from his gold watch and to sell it.

The ministers were prejudiced against us, because of something they had read in the “Times”; a statement that the United States Department of Justice had investigated the American Civil Liberties Union and ascertained it to be “the defense branch of the I. W. W.”: this on the authority of “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” We went to call on the head of the Department of Justice in Los Angeles, and learned that there was no “Agent Townsend,” nor had the Department obtained any such information concerning the American Civil Liberties Union. We then called upon the managing editor of the “Times” and presented this information. He promised to look further into the matter; and next morning he published another statement, reiterating the charge, this time giving a formal signed statement by “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” The matter was put before the Department of Justice at Washington, which replied in writing that there was no such person as “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” A copy of this was mailed to the “Times,” with an offer to submit the original. But the “Times” made no reply, and published no retraction. I go into these minute details, because later on I shall assert that the “Times” deliberately lied about the school teachers of Los Angeles; and I wish you to understand that I mean exactly what I say.

The theme of this book is the schools—public schools and private schools, primary and grammar and high schools; and now I have to carry out my promise, to show you that this same Black Hand of Southern California controls our board of education, putting its own representatives thereon; that it controls our school funds, wasting them in graft; that it controls our teachers, browbeating them and underpaying them and denying them their rights as citizens; that it controls our children, drilling them, suppressing them, putting poison thoughts into their minds—so that they shall come out perfect little bigots, prepared to hate and if necessary to tar and feather and lynch those people who try to apply real Americanism to America, and to protect the rights of the poor as well as of the rich. In other words, what the Black Hand wants, and what it has made for itself, is schools which will turn out a generation of children who will stand for all the infamies I have just narrated, and will regard them as right and necessary and patriotic actions, and the men who perpetrate them as courageous public officials and high-minded patriots.