by Upton Sinclair, 1926
Historical fiction about the early days of the oil business. Recommended by an Economist reporter in order to learn about the business. It follows Bunny Ross, a young “oil prince” and his life in Southern California with his father, J. Arnold Ross, former mule-driver turned oil magnate. Bunny is a sweet, compassionate, beautiful boy who loves his Dad but, as he grows up, sees the corruption and questions if it is necessary. His Dad insists, yes! But Bunny becomes more and more a Socialist, in favor of labor and the little people. As he grows up in the early 1900s in Southern California, he experiences worker strikes in which he takes the side of the workers (they were working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week).
In high school, he is manipulated by a young debutante who only wants him for sex and socializing (“What’s the matter, Bunny? Don’t you love me? Why won’t you pet me?”). He sees the meaninglessness and emptiness of the rich person’s life. He sees the greed and selfishness. He has true friends among the labor class. He loves these friends and has such compassion for them. When he goes to college, he discovers the corruption of universities. They don’t teach truth, they teach whatever their various rich donors demand. They buy athletes from the farms and lumber mills to win games and get trophies, forcing professors to pass them when they can’t even read. Then WWI starts and the back story of the war is more corruption, and when it is over, our soldiers are still in Russia fighting the Russian people who are trying to make a new thing happen – a country run by the people, for the people.
He falls in love with a movie actress (or it’s possible his Dad buys her to woo Bunny away from his Socialist leanings). She tells him how she had to sleep her way into the business. Nothing is pure, nothing is sacred. Through it all, though, he continues to fight the good fight. He saves his friends, who get arrested and thrown in jail to keep them quiet. He is courageous and stands up to his Dad and other corrupt businessmen. They “buy” the Warren G. Harding presidency in exchange for some Navy oil lands. Then, when they get caught, they accuse the accusers of crime. Then, they buy the Calvin Coolidge presidency. Corrupt from the beginning to the end, bottom to the top. The people at the bottom, like Bunny’s best friend, Paul, who have experienced the corruption first hand, do everything they can to try and get the message out to those who are being exploited, but they are burned at every turn. The newspapers lie and always present them as the bad guys. The lawmen arrest them and throw them in jail on false charges. When nothing works, they arrange to have them beaten and killed.
Bunny’s Dad loves Bunny and tries to make him understand that the corruption is necessary in order to run their oil business. Bunny doesn’t buy it, but he loves his Dad. In the end, his Dad marries a Spiritualist – he is in love and Bunny is happy for him. He tells Bunny she doesn’t want his money, she just wants him, so he’s giving her One Million Dollars when he dies and the children (Bunny and his sister, Bertie) are to split the remaining estate. A couple days after he marries her, he gets double pneumonia and is dead in a month. The Spiritualist denies that she is to get only one million dollars and demands half the estate. Vernon Roscoe, Mr. Ross’s partner in the oil business, insists that Mr. Ross’s side of the business is dead, and Bunny’s sister, Bertie, spends all of her time hiring lawyers and gnashing her teeth in anger and fretting. Bunny calmly goes about his business – getting married to Rachel, looking for a piece of land to buy to start a school for the labor class.
This was an excellent book. Really an eye-opener for me. All the institutions of man are tainted with corruption.
Here’s a paragraph towards the end, after his best friend, Paul, who has become a communist, has been beaten with an iron pipe and is lying in a hospital bed, about to die. Bunny has finally left his side to get some sleep. He is dreaming while his wife, Rachel, holds him:
“What was Bunny doing? Fighting those brutes with their clubs and hatchets and iron pipe? Or back in the old days, when he had hovered over Paul and Ruth, watching events that wrung his soul? Watching Dad deprive the family of their land; watching the oil operators crush the first strike; watching the government tear Paul away and make him into a strikebreaker for Wall Street bankers; watching Vernon Roscoe throw Paul into prison; watching capitalism with its world-wide system of terror drive Paul here and there, harry him, malign him, threaten him–until at last it hired the brute with the iron pipe!”
Every institution of mankind is corrupt: business, government, education, religion, media, entertainment, sports. He presents this corruption through the eyes of a compassionate hero named Bunny Ross. Excellent book!
This was a strange publisher – the book came from Mesa State Library and there is no copyright page. The publisher page says: “OIL! Published By Frederick Ellis, 8000 E. Girard, Suite 507, Denver, Colorado 80231 ISBN 1-934568-457”
In the back of the book, there are 5 pages of “Books published by Frederick Ellis (New Hardbacks) Buy Direct @ 35% Discount – e-mail [email protected], Original Editions and Printings, www.booksbyfrederickellis.com” (Wayne tried the website but it doesn’t exist anymore.)
Some of the authors listed are Jack London, Bruno Traven, Carl Frederick, Frederick Ellis and Carl Frederick, Mao Tsetung, Upton Sinclair, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, W.E. B. Du Bois, Eugene Debs, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Reed, Antonio Gramsci, V.I. Lenin, John Dewey, David Ricardo, Thomas Jefferson, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Quincy Adams