Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual

6. World’s End, 1940–1949

133 chapter six World’s End [1940–1949] I wish I were terribly rich, I wish I had an inexhaustible quantity of paper: for I would supply a whole set of the Lanny Budd novels to every boy and girl graduating from high school. I think they would then have a better chance of entering the adult world with an understanding grasp of what life holds for them. irving stone, 1947 In 1937 Sinclair published No Pasaran! Intellectuals in America and around the world were aware that the first war against fascism was being fought in Spain, and if the Spanish Republic was defeated, fascism could succeed in neighboring countries. Sinclair wrote to Alice Stone Blackwell:“I am trying to make my contribution to the Spanish cause in a novel. I have worked out a plan to get it printed in cheap edition for mass circulation.”¹ Blackwell responded that she would send five dollars in support,“though I fear the die is cast, and all that can be done is to expose the iniquity.”² A month later, Seattle educator and journalist Anna Louise Strong wrote him. She’d been at the Spanish battle front and had recently reported her observations to Eleanor Roosevelt. Strong proposed to Sinclair that they “exchange some of my knowledge of Spain for yours of California,” explaining that she was planning to “get to Los Angeles to see Mrs. Barnsdall and Mrs. Gartz.”³ These letters reveal Sinclair’s inclusion in the powerful alliances World’s End 134 of Depression-era women activists like Roosevelt, Strong, Gartz, and Aline Barnsdall. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a socialist and feminist labor organizer who by the thirties was a member of the Communist Party. In a 1939 letter, Flynn wrote to Sinclair. She disparaged the “New York radicals who seem to think it’s all there is of America, ”and who spent their time in“endless debate and personal affairs. Especially amorous ones. ”She wrote that he had been wise to leave the East for the solitude of California:“I admire your industry and your devotion to the cause during the last twenty years when so many of the promising radical writers of yesterday have fallen by the wayside.”4 Despite the dispute between the socialist and communist parties, which had grown ever more bitter, the Gurley-Sinclair friendship continued even after the Eisenstein debacle. George Bernard Shaw and his wife, Charlotte, came to visit in 1936.The Sinclairs were sad to find Shaw much aged at eighty.Mary Craig wrote,“Mrs. Shaw, stout and blonde, looked as if she would live longer than her husband. But Shaw’s smile was as sweet as ever.”5 In 1937 Sinclair wrote to Albert Einstein, by then one of his closest friends, requesting assistance for David, who was having a difficult time as the son of the infamous Upton Sinclair. Although David and his wife were members of the Norman Thomas Socialist Group, Upton wrote, “they have never carried their political convictions into their work, and they have never taken part in any activities which conventional people would consider objectionable. ”6 He asked Einstein to find a physics department “which will judge a man on his merits and not on his father’s politics.”7 Einstein replied within a week to say he would help, and Sinclair thanked him: “Just a line to express my gratitude at your great kindness to David. I hope to have a new story to send you in a couple of weeks. It deals with Henry Ford and his struggle with the labor unions.”8 The project was called The Flivver King. Mary Craig believed this book was the way for Upton to succeed,as he had described before their marriage, upon “the path he would follow in future, if it lay 1940–1949 135 in my power to keep him on it. No matter how attractive he was as a platform speaker, he reached more people with the printed page.”9 Victor Reuther, vice president of the United Auto Workers, printed two hundred thousand copies of The Flivver King in order to educate autoworkers.“This excellent book,”Reuther declared in a German documentary made in 1978,“was a very useful weapon; the workers passed it secretly to organize; it publicized conditions of the Ford workers.”¹0 Feminist novelist Vera Brittain wrote to Sinclair how much she looked forward to reading the book:“I was...