The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-10-27
By Upton Sinclair

and wrote about nothing but proSt1-
tutes, drunkards, epileptics and relig-
ious mystics, and now the British
bourgeoisie, impersonated by Arnold
Bennett, halls him as the greatest
of all novelists, so great, in fact,
that it is waste of time to mention
anybody else.
The czardom with all its works is
dead in Russia; that country is in
the hands of new men, who believe
that it is possible to act, and to
bring about social changes by the
human will. So the creative forces
of art are released, and it is possible
for Russian novelists to be interested
in men who think and put their
thoughts into action. 1t is only in
Britain and America, where the
money-masters still swing their lash,
that critics gather the excrementa
of czardom, and set them up on the
altar of art to be worshipped as di-
vine relics.
We think of America as a place
of freedom and growth; and it is
true that in the superficial things of
life America changes like kaleido-
scope or lunatic's dream; everybody
has new jazz tune every night,
and new model of car every year,
and fashionable young people change
their lovers as often. But when it
comes to fundamental things, the in
ner spirit that really makes life and
art, you find that America has be-
come another House of the Dead"
where all things are fixed and the
Constitution and the Bible take the
place of the cars excrementa as
objects of worship. The constitution
becomes "the greatest document that
ever emanated from the brain of
man," and our capitalist press has
devised a tropism whereby several
millions of school children make
speeches in praise of it, and the one
who praises most blindly gets vau-
deville contract or something of thu
sort. The bible is the inspired Word
OF God, and any teacher of biology
who subtracts jot or a title from it
is arrested and fined, or more merci-
fully turned out to starve.
And what is the purpose of This
new idolatry? Simply that the money!
masters may keep the power to give
orders and be obeyed. Constitution
worship means that a group of ell
DERBY corporation lawyers, known as
Supreme Court, have power to
make the law of the land anything
the corporations want it to be: the
existing law they interpret to suit
the money-masters, and when the
people protest and pass new laws
tney call these laws "unconstitutior-
al, and the people believe it. Behind
TINS regimen of the dead hand, works
the living fist of big business. COL
lectlng from pious and dilipent
worklng class the heaviest tribute
that has ever been taken in anv mart
OF the earth at any period of histor1,
ms fist is armored with the climbs If
poncemen and the rifles of militia,
with the latest devices in armored
cars and machine guns and poison
cas- bombs. Behind the fundamental
ist cassock you find the stranpl;np
power OF ostracism, plus the black.
snake whip and the lynching moose
such is Fascist America; and these
masked forces confront the voune,
Wllter, and say to him, with the nj
most pollteness and amiability. write
what we want written, and we will
neap upon you all the honors that
your talents deserve. The vounp
writer being for the most part guile.
less, and utterly untaught in public
affairs, believes the great statesmen
anu the great judges and the great
editors and the great preachers of
ms country. H lets them take him
INTO war to validate the loans of J.
r Morgan and Company; and then,
when he discovers how he has been
bunkoed he takes to booze and motor
cars and jazz-parties and the writing
Of smart" conversation.