JACK LONDON'S 
 
 "WHAT LIFE 
 
 MEANS TO ME" 
 
 MEMORIAL EDITION 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 December 3, 1916 
 
 "Last of all, my faith is in the working 
 class." Jack London. 
 
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GEORGE STERLING'S TRIBUTE 
 TO JACK LONDON 
 
 George Sterling, foremost of California's 
 poets, stood by the bier of Jack London 
 in Oakland while Dr. Edward Payne read 
 the following poem as Sterling's tribute to 
 his life-long friend: 
 
 Oh! was there ever face, of all the dead, 
 In which, too late, the living could not 
 
 read 
 
 A mute appeal for all the love unsaid 
 A mute reproach for careless word and 
 deed? 
 
 And now, dear friend of friends, we look 
 
 on thine, 
 To whom we could not give a last 
 
 farewell 
 
 On whom, without a whisper or a sign, 
 The deep, unfathomable Darkness fell. 
 
 Oh! gone beyond us, who shall say how 
 far? 
 
 Gone swiftly to the dim eternity, 
 Leaving us silence or the words that are 
 
 To sorrow as the foam is to the sea. 
 
Unfearing heart, whose patience was so 
 
 long! 
 Unresting mind, so hungry for the 
 
 truth ! 
 Now hast thou rest, O gentle one and 
 
 strong, 
 Dead like a lordly lion in its youth! 
 
 Farewell ! although thou know not, there 
 
 alone ! 
 Farewell! although thou hear not in 
 
 our cry 
 The love we would have given had we 
 
 known. 
 Ah ! and a soul like thine how shall it 
 
 die? 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 By Jack London 
 
 (As Reprinted by C. H. Kerr & Co., from The 
 Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission.) 
 
 I was born in the working class. I 
 early discovered enthusiasm, ambition, 
 and ideals; and to satisfy these became 
 the problem of my childlife. My en 
 vironment was crude and rough and raw. 
 I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. 
 My place in society was at the bottom. 
 Here life offered nothing but sordidness 
 and wretchedness, both of the flesh and 
 the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were 
 alike starved and tormented. 
 
 Above me towered the colossal edifice 
 of society, and to my mind the only way 
 out was up. Into this edifice I early 
 resolved to climb. Up above, men wore 
 black clothes and boiled shirts, and 
 women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, 
 there were good things to eat, and there 
 was plenty to eat. This much for the 
 
6 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 flesh. Then there were things of the 
 spirit. Up above me, I knew, were un 
 selfishness of the spirit, clean and noble 
 thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew 
 all this because I read "Seaside Library" 
 novels, in which, with the exception of 
 the villains and adventuresses, all men 
 and women thought beautiful thoughts, 
 spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed 
 glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted 
 the rising of the sun, I accepted that up 
 above me was all that was fine and noble 
 and gracious, all that gave decency and 
 dignity to life, all that made life worth 
 living and that remunerated one for his 
 travail and misery. 
 
 But it is not particularly easy for one 
 to climb up out of the working class 
 especially if he is handicapped by the 
 possession of ideals and illusions. I lived 
 on a ranch in California, and I was hard 
 put to find the ladder whereby to climb. 
 I early inquired the rate of interest on 
 invested money, and worried my child's 
 brain into an understanding of the virtues 
 and excellencies of that remarkable in 
 vention of man, compound interest. 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 7 
 
 Further, I ascertained the current rates 
 of wages for workers of all ages, and the 
 cost of living. From all this data I con 
 cluded that if I began immediately and 
 worked and saved until I was fifty years 
 of age, I could then stop working and 
 enter into participation in a fair portion 
 of the delights and goodnesses that would 
 then be open to me higher up in society. 
 Of course, I resolutely determined not to 
 marry, while I quite forgot to consider 
 at all that great rock of disaster in the 
 working-class world sickness. 
 
 But the life that was in me demanded 
 more than a meager existence of scraping 
 and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, 
 I became a newsboy on the streets of a 
 city, and found myself with a changed 
 uplook. All about me were still the same 
 sordidness and wretchedness, and up 
 above me was still the same paradise 
 waiting to be gained ; but the ladder 
 whereby to climb was a different one. 
 It was now the ladder of business. Why 
 save my earnings and invest in govern 
 ment bonds, when by buying two news 
 papers for five cents, with a turn of the 
 
8 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 wrist I could sell them for ten cents and 
 double my capital? The business ladder 
 was the ladder for me, and I had a vision 
 of myself becoming a baldheaded and 
 successful merchant prince. 
 
 Alas for visions ! When I was sixteen 
 I had already earned the title of "prince." 
 But this title was given me by a gang of 
 cutthroats and thieves, by whom I was 
 called "The Prince of the Oyster Pirates." 
 And at that time I had climbed the first 
 rung of the business ladder. I was a 
 capitalist. I owned a boat and a complete 
 oyster-pirating outfit. I had begun to 
 exploit my fellow-creatures. I had a 
 crew of one man. As captain and owner 
 I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave 
 the crew one-third, though the crew 
 worked just as hard as I did and risked 
 just as much his life and liberty. 
 
 This one rung was the heights I climbed 
 up the business ladder. One night I went 
 on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen. 
 Ropes and nets were worth dollars and 
 cents. It was robbery, I grant, but it 
 was precisely the spirit of capitalism. 
 The capitalist takes away the posses- 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 9 
 
 sions of his fellow-creatures by mean's 
 of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, or 
 by the purchase of senators and supreme 
 court judges. I was merely crude. That 
 was the only difference. I used a gun. 
 
 But my crew that night was one of 
 those inefficient against whom the capi 
 talist is wont to fulminate, because, for 
 sooth, such inefficients increase expenses 
 and reduce dividends. My crew did 
 both. What of his carelessness he set fire 
 to the big mainsail nd totally destroyed 
 it. There weren't any dividends that 
 night, and the Chinese fishermen were 
 richer by the nets and ropes we did not 
 get. I was bankrupt, unable just then 
 to pay sixty-five dollars for a new main 
 sail. I left my boat at anchor and went 
 off on a bay-pirate boat on a raid up the 
 Sacramento River. While away on this 
 trip another gang of bay pirates raided 
 my boat. They stole everything, even 
 the anchors; and, later on, when I re 
 covered the drifting hulk, I sold it for 
 twenty dollars. I had slipped back the 
 one rung I had climbed, and never again 
 did I attempt the business ladder. 
 
10 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 From then on I was mercilessly ex 
 ploited by other capitalists. I had the 
 muscle, and they made money out of it 
 while I made but a very indifferent living 
 out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, 
 a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked 
 in canneries, and factories, and laundries ; 
 I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and 
 washed windows. And I never got the 
 full product of my toil. I looked at the 
 daughter of the cannery owner, in her 
 carriage, and knew that it was my 
 muscle, in part, that helped drag along 
 that carriage on its rubber tires. I 
 looked at the son of the factory owner, 
 going to college, and knew that it was 
 my muscle that helped, in part, to pay 
 for the wine and good-fellowship he en 
 joyed. 
 
 But I did not resent this. It was all in 
 the game. They were the strong. Very 
 well, I was strong. I would carve my 
 way to a place amongst them, and make 
 money out of the muscles of other men. 
 I was not afraid of work. I loved hard 
 work. I would pitch in and work harder 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 11 
 
 than ever and eventually become a pillar 
 of society. 
 
 And just then, as luck would have it, I 
 found an employer that was of the same 
 mind. I was willing to work, and he 
 was more than willing***that I should 
 work. I thought I was learning a trade. 
 In reality, I had displaced two men. I 
 thought he was making an electrician out 
 of me; as a matter of fact, he was mak 
 ing fifty dollars per month out of me. 
 The two men I had displaced had re 
 ceived forty dollars each per month; I 
 was doing the work of both for thirty 
 dollars per month. 
 
 This employer worked me nearly to 
 death. A man may love oysters, but too 
 many oysters will disincline him toward 
 that particular diet. And so with me. 
 Too much work sickened me. I did not 
 wish ever to see work again. I fled from 
 work. I became a tramp, begging my 
 way from door to door, wandering over 
 the United States, and sweating bloody 
 sweats in slums and prisons. 
 
 I had been born in the working class, 
 and I was now, at the age of eighteen, 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 beneath the point at which I had started. 
 I was down in the cellar of society, down 
 in the subterranean depths of misery 
 about which it is neither nice nor proper 
 to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the 
 human cesspoffl, the shambles and the 
 charnel house of our civilization. This is 
 the part of the edifice of society that 
 society chooses to ignore. Lack of space 
 compels me here to ignore it, and I shall 
 say only that the things I there saw gave 
 me a terrible scare. 
 
 I was scared into thinking. I saw the 
 naked simplicities of the complicated 
 civilization in which I lived. Life was a 
 matter of food and shelter. In order to 
 get food and shelter men sold things. 
 The merchant sold shoes, the politician 
 sold his manhood, and the representative 
 of the people, with exceptions, of course, 
 sold his trust; while nearly all sold their 
 honor. Women, too, whether on the 
 street or in the holy bond of wedlock, 
 were prone to sell their flesh. All things 
 were commodities, all people bought and 
 sold. The one commodity that labor had 
 to sell was muscle. The honor of labor 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 13 
 
 had no price in the market place. Labor 
 had muscle, and muscle alone, to sell. 
 
 But there was a difference, a vital 
 difference. Shoes and trust and honor 
 had a way of renewing themselves. They 
 were imperishable stocks. Muscle, on the 
 other hand, did not renew. As the shoe 
 merchant sold shoes, he continued to re 
 plenish his stock. But there was no way 
 of replenishing the laborer's stock of 
 muscle. The more he sold of his muscle, 
 the less of it remained to him. It was his 
 one commodity, and each day his stock 
 of it diminished. In the end, if he did 
 not die before, he sold out and put up 
 his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt, 
 and nothing remained to him but to go 
 down in the cellar of society and perish 
 miserably. 
 
 I learned further, that brain was like 
 wise a commodity. It, too, was different 
 from muscle. A brain seller was only at 
 his prime when he was fifty or sixty 
 years old, and his wares were fetching 
 higher prices than ever. But a laborer 
 was worked out or broken down at forty- 
 five or fifty. I had been in the cellar of 
 
14 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 society, and I did not like the place as a 
 habitation. The pipes and drains were 
 unsanitary, and the air was bad to 
 breathe. If I could not live on the parlor 
 floor of society, I could, at any rate, have 
 a try at the attic. It was true, the diet 
 there was slim, but the air at least was 
 pure. So I resolved to sell no more 
 muscle, and to become a vender of brains. 
 
 Then began a frantic pursuit of knowl 
 edge. I returned to California and opened 
 the books. While thus equipping myself 
 to become a brain merchant, it was in 
 evitable that I should delve into soci 
 ology. There I found, in a certain class 
 of books, scientifically formulated, the 
 simple sociological concepts I had al 
 ready worked out for myself. Other and 
 greater minds, before I was born, had 
 worked out all that I had thought, and a 
 vast deal more. I discovered that I was 
 a Socialist. 
 
 The Socialists were revolutionists, in 
 asmuch as they struggled to overthrow 
 the society of the present, and out of the 
 material to build the society of the 
 future. I, too, was a Socialist and a 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 15 
 
 revolutionist. I- joined the groups of 
 working-class and intellectual revolution 
 ists, and for the first time came into in 
 telligent living. Here I found keen-flash 
 ing intellects and brilliant wits ; for here 
 I met strong and alert-brained, withal 
 horny-handed, members of the working 
 class ; unfrocked preachers too wide in 
 their Christianity for any congregation 
 of Mammon - worshippers ; professors 
 broken on the wheel of university sub 
 servience to the ruling class and flung 
 out because they were quick with knowl 
 edge which they strove to apply to the 
 affairs of mankind. 
 
 Here I found, also, warm faith in the 
 human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses of 
 unselfishness, renunciation and martyr 
 dom all the splendid, stinging things of 
 the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and 
 alive. Here life rehabilitated itself, be 
 came wonderful and glorious; and I was 
 glad to be alive. I was in touch with 
 great souls who exalted flesh and spirit 
 over dollars and cents; and to whom the 
 thin wail of the starved slum-child meant 
 more than all the pomp and circumstance 
 
It; WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 of commercial expansion and world- 
 empire. All about me were nobleness of 
 purpose and heroism of effort, and my 
 days and nights were sunshine and star- 
 shine, all fire and dew, with before my 
 eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy 
 Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm 
 human, long suffering and maltreated, 
 but to be rescued and saved at the last. 
 
 And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this 
 to be a mere foretaste of the delights of 
 living I should find higher above me in 
 society. I had lost many illusions since 
 the day I read "Seaside Library" novels 
 on the California ranch. I was destined 
 to lose many of the illusions I still re 
 tained. 
 
 As a brain merchant I was a success. 
 Society opened its portals to me. I 
 entered right in on the parlor floor, and 
 my disillusionment proceeded rapidly. I 
 sat down to dinner with the masters of 
 society, and with the wives and daugh- 
 UTS of the masters of society. The 
 women were- -owned beautifully, I admit ; 
 but to my naive surprise I discovered 
 that they were of the same clay a& all 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 17 
 
 the rest of the women I had known down 
 below in the cellar. "The colonel's lady 
 and Judy O'Grady were sisters under 
 their skins" and gowns. 
 
 It was not this, however, so much as 
 their materialism, that shocked me. It is 
 true these beautifully gowned, beautiful 
 women prattled sweet little ideals and 
 dear little moralities ; but in spite of their 
 prattle the dominant key of the life they 
 lived was materialistic. And they were 
 so sentimentally selfish ! They assisted 
 in all kinds of sweet little charities, and 
 informed one of the fact, while all the 
 time the food they ate and the beautiful 
 clothes they wore were bought out of 
 dividends stained with the blood of child 
 labor, and sweated labor, and of prostitu 
 tion itself. When I mentioned such facts, 
 expecting in my innocence that these sis 
 ters of Judy O'Grady would at once strip 
 off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, 
 they became excited and angry, and read 
 me preachments about the lack of thrift, 
 the drink, and the innate depravity that 
 caused all the misery in society's cellar. 
 When I mentioned that I couldn't quite 
 
18 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 see that it was the lack of thrift, the in 
 temperance, and the depravity of a half- 
 starved child of six that made it work 
 twelve hours every night in a Southern 
 cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O'Grady 
 attacked my private life and called me 
 an "agitator" as though that, forsooth, 
 settled the argument. 
 
 Nor did I fare better with the masters 
 themselves. I had expected to find men 
 who were clean, noble and alive, whose 
 ideals were clean, noble and alive. I 
 went about amongst the men who sat 
 in the high places, the preachers, the 
 politicians, the business men, the pro 
 fessors, and the editors. I ate meat with 
 them, drank wine with them, automobiled 
 with them, and studied them. It is true, 
 I found many that were clean and noble ; 
 but with rare exceptions, they were not 
 alive. I do verily believe I could count 
 the exceptions on the fingers of my two 
 hands. Where they were not alive with 
 rottenness, quick with unclean life, they 
 were merely the unburied dead clean 
 and noble, like well-preserved mummies, 
 but not alive. In this connection I may 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 19 
 
 especially mention the professors I met, 
 the men who live up to that decadent 
 university ideal, "the passionless pursuit 
 of passionless intelligence. " 
 
 I met men who invoked the name of 
 the Prince of Peace in their diatribes 
 against war, and who put rifles in the 
 hands of Pinkertons with which to shoot 
 down strikers in their own factories. I 
 met men incoherent with indignation at 
 the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, 
 at the same time, were parties to the 
 adulteration of food that killed each year 
 more babies than even red-handed Herod 
 had killed. 
 
 I talked in hotels and clubs and homes 
 and Pullmans and steamer chairs with 
 captains of industry, and marveled at 
 how little traveled they were in the realm 
 of intellect. On the other hand, I dis 
 covered that their intellect, in the busi 
 ness sense, was abnormally developed. 
 Also, I discovered that their morality, 
 where business was concerned, was nil. 
 
 This delicate, aristocratic - featured 
 gentleman was a dummy director and a 
 tool of corporations that secretly robbed 
 
20 WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 widows and orphans. This gentleman, 
 who collected fine editions and was an 
 especial patron of literature, paid black 
 mail to a heavy-jowled, black browed 
 boss of a municipal machine. This editor, 
 who published patent-medicine advertise 
 ments and did not dare print the truth 
 in his paper about said patent medicines 
 for fear of losing the advertising, called 
 me a scoundrelly demagogue because I 
 told him that his political economy was 
 antiquated and that his biology was con 
 temporaneous with Pliny. This senator 
 was the tool and the slave, the little 
 puppet of a gross, uneducated machine 
 boss; so was this governor and this 
 supreme court judge; and all three rode 
 on railroad passes. This man, talking 
 soberly and earnestly about the beauties 
 of idealism and the goodness of God, had 
 just betrayed his comrades in a business 
 deal. This man, a pillar of the church 
 and heavy contributor to foreign mis 
 sions, worked his shop girls ten hours a 
 day on a starvation wage and thereby 
 directly encouraged prostitution. This 
 man, who endowed chairs in universities, 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 21 
 
 perjured himself in courts of law over a 
 matter of dollars and cents. And this 
 railroad magnate broke his word as a 
 gentleman and a Christian when he 
 granted a secret rebate to one of two 
 captains of industry locked together in a 
 struggle to the death. 
 
 It was the same everywhere, crime and 
 betrayal, betrayal and crime men who 
 were alive, but who were neither clean 
 nor noble, men who were clean and 
 noble, but who were not alive. Then 
 there was a great, hopeless mass, neither 
 noble nor alive, but merely clean. It did 
 not sin positively nor deliberately; but it 
 did sin passively and ignorantly by ac 
 quiescing in the current immorality and 
 profiting thereby. Had it been noble and 
 alive it would not have been ignorant, 
 and it would have refused to share in the 
 profits of betrayal and crime. 
 
 I discovered that I did not like to live 
 on the parlor floor of society. Intellect 
 ually I was bored. Morally and spirit 
 ually I was sickened. I remembered my 
 intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked 
 preachers, broken professors, and clean- 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 
 
 minded, class-conscious workingmen. I 
 remembered my days and nights of sun 
 shine and starshine, wtere life was all a 
 wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise 
 of unselfish adventure and ethical ro 
 mance. And I saw before me, ever blaz 
 ing and burning, the Holy Grail. 
 
 So I went back to the working class, 
 in which I had been born and where I 
 belonged. I care no longer to climb. 
 This imposing edifice of society above 
 my head holds no delights for me. It is 
 the foundation of the edifice that inter 
 ests me. There I am content to labor, 
 crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder 
 with intellectuals, idealists, and class- 
 conscious workingmen, getting a solid 
 pry now and again and setting the whole 
 edifice rocking. Some day, when we get 
 more hands and crowbars to work, 
 we'll topple it over, along with all its 
 rotten life and unburied dead, its mon 
 strous selfishness and sodden materialism. 
 Then we'll cleanse the cellar and build a 
 new habitation for mankind, in which 
 there will be no parlor floor, in which all 
 the rooms will be bright and airy, and 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME 23 
 
 where the air that is breathed will be 
 clean, noble and alive. 
 
 Such is my outlook. I look forward to 
 a time when man shall progress upon 
 something worthier and higher than his 
 stomach, when thertT~will be a finer in 
 centive to impel men to action than the 
 incentive of today, which is the incentive 
 of the stomach. I retain my belief in the 
 nobility and excellence of the human. I 
 believe that spiritual sweetness and un 
 selfishness will -conquer the gross glut 
 tony of today. 
 
 And, last qfall, MY FAITH IS IN 
 THE WORKING CLASS. As some 
 Frenchman has said, "The stairway of 
 time is ever echoing with the wooden 
 shoe going up, the polished boot descend 
 ing." 
 
 (Copies of this memorial edition of 
 "What Life Means to Me" may be had 
 at headquarters of Socialist Party, 1530 
 Ellis Street, or at McDevitt's Book 
 Stores, 1346 Fillmore near Ellis, and 
 2079 Sutter Street, near Fillmore.) 
 
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