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. CQ ^ 03 "2 o CO CO I-H CO u S I oo c 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.) i fc CD