The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-10-24
MONEY WRITES By Upton Sinclair

Poe Somebody; the very town where
he was born shares in his reflected
glory, he has ''put it on the map"
One of the celebrities who ruled the
world during my boyhood, the late
John L. Sullivan, was introduced to
Grover Cleveland, and wanted to put
the latter at his ease. "a great man
is great man." said John L, at
don't matter if he's prize-fighter
or president" And so every year
America widens the categories of
greatness, and takes new heroes into
her Hall of Fame. The youth who
swims the Catalina channel, the girl
who swims the English channel, the
man who walks across the continent
in forty-seven days, the man who
drives a motor car two hundred and
seven miles an hour, the man who
flies over the north pole, the man who
eats gallon of beans in eleven min
utes, the girl who Stays her rival with
a hammer, the scientist who discovers
a cosmic ray, the movie star who
marries her seventeenth husband, the
preacher who reads the bible two
hundred times-each one has his day,
or perhaps his week or month, upon
the front pages of the papers, each
has his moving picture contract and
his vaudeville "time," each his en-
velope in the "morgue" of the news
papers, where the clippings about
him are indexed, and will be looked
up whenever he comes to town, or
does anything else that has ''news
value"
Strangers marvel at this clamor
and lack of restraint, and think there
must be some especial depravity in
the American soul; but this is be-
cause our thinking about human So
ciety is still unscientific. ''Vice and
virtue are products like vinegar"
said Voltaire; and every social mani
festation has its cause. The cause of
Americas frenzy is simply the ex-
tremes of social contrast, greater than
any to which human nature has
hitherto been exposed. In order to
understand the sea-urchins who swim
channels, or the 'human flies" who
climb the outside of forty-story build
ings, or the walking stomachs" who
eat twelve dozen oysters and forty
nine pancakes at a meal, it is neces-
sary to have sympathy, and realize
what it means to be nobody" in
capitalist society-an obscure atom in
a miserable mass, travelling in
crowded street car to a monotonous
job, rallied at by nagging boss,
wearing frayed clothing, eating dirty
food, sleeping in hall bedroom with
the rent overdue. The victim Of such
conditions, driven to desperation
makes some hitherto unheard of eff
fort, develops some hitherto un-
imaginable talent-and behold him
suddenly transported into fairyland,
riding in a limousine, carrying wads
Of greenbacks in every pocket, waited
pon flattered, caressed, loved, stared
at, cheered, photographed, talked
bout. Does anybody wonder that
merica is the land of unlimited pos
Utilities and that Japanese, Chinese,
Iindoos, Turks, Jews, Greeks Ital-
ans, Poles, Papuans and Patagonians
lream of emigrating to that movie
and where every farm house kitchen
s a baronial hall and every drawing
room cathedral?
All the way up and down the social
Gale, wherever you study these mob
axcitements, you find the same arti-
ficially created tropism, the impulse
to move in the direction of gold. The
reporters who write up the sensa-
tional event, in language which de-