30 Aug

anno XI

Paul de Kruif Esq

Dear Sirs

Yr/ bk/ men vs/ death very interesting. Am inclined to write you a tow letter.

I. to point out a disease you omit, the cause of how many others ??

It might have been difficult to sell it to Home Journal ( Curtis peper ), akin to Lorimers dirty rag , ( Sat Eve. pst. ) wherein he was last year assuring the gt/ booblik that " Kreuger is more than a financial titan " etc.

Gard. I do mistrust that bunch, having grown up in the same village, with their bally hoo, Hooverism, preHoover all is swell ....

HOWEVER.. as you seem to have heard of Engineers.

There is one wuzza guy that was head of Westinghouse in India, and then head of airplane works in Eng. and he noticed that the mass of prices caused each week by the factory was greater than the purchasing power it turned loose during that time.

HENCE he deduced ( like those guys with the electric machine for turning out a chunk of spectrum ) that you can

with figures on 'em ( or pichors of Abe Line . etc. )
so as to cure the evil , and not burn wheat in
locomotives .

Naturally the British press tried to suppress
the news .

DID Erlich's news get into eng/ thru
usual channels, IT DID NOT, the theologico medicos bloched
the pubk the
it till they held the Ablert Hall meeting.

YOU can stop more death with C.H.Douglas economics
than with pills / only it is just as hard to get a simple
idea of currency as it is to get people to wash their
hands.

Somebody with access to the " BIG papers, devoted mostly to
blah," ought to look into the matter of modern economics.

P. 323 yr/ English edtn. ?? printers error 1917
for 27

?? clap ( as it is inelegantly called ) ??
what price

?? your last chapter not quite clear as to whether
rheumatism at large , or only rheumatic fever
is included.

?? endocrines ??

I know it is no criticism of a book, not mention omissions, cant get everything into 300 pages.

As the " first amateur CHAMBERlain endocrinologist " etc. I spare you autoblog// have tried to smoke ole Bill C.Williams into writing a book of medical horse sense. (Damn fool is interested in licherchoor ...with some excuse )... wonder if it would be easier to prid you into doing it.

State of ALL kinds of texts books in U.S.A. is anti-delusion. Pubk/ oughtn't to wait for the demand "educational authorities"

What price a P.d.K. "Horse sense about Hygene" General diseases, normal horse sense prevention, / also handy list of curables, and conjecturals,

I did not find any text in the image.

Chap named Obermer in London might interest you, quantitative analysis re/ endocrines and a lot else. practice, don't know that he published at all. At any rate, not gone of in Pende's metaphysics of the endocrine, tho' P. is practical in specific case.

and so bloody forth

cordially yrs/

2

THE SHACK
WAKE ROBIN
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

Nevertheless, I do believe that as the writing weapon gets better, I could sell your idea to either the home journal or the satevepost, even. Their rags may be dirty, but they trust me. If I could do the trick, wouldn't it be more effective, done with real facts (not Nation or New Republic facts) and spread out before all those millions?

Where can I read about your engineer who got the straight of what money is for? Is it the same CH Douglas you refer to below? Where can I read his stuff or get his stuff? I am entirely ig-norant of economics except that it isn't the system that counts but hoggishness. The best system can be wrecked by human piggishness and love of power. The worst system might be pretty good if we were more like "the little poor man" of Assisi. Am I wrong?

The Curtis in spite of my being in the radical vanguard --- medically--- have supported me tooth and nail in several serious fights with the medical profession. Of course it's safer for them to be radical medically then economically. But if they don't damn soon get radical economically, take it from me, Mr. Pound, there just won't be no Curtis left! I will see what economics tells me. It would be wonderful if Xt., St Francis, were all wet and if you really don't need good will among men. Maybe endocrinology will beat out your economists and de-hog people chemically! It should be tried.

Thanks very much for your correction of printers error in the English ed.

klap (in America or Michigan we spell it

3

with a K just as we do kunt, is now amenable to fever treatment. You have read the syph chapters in the book. Maybe it will please you to know that the predictions there made (Chap 9) are being brilliantly fulfilled, by a safe, high, fairly comfortable fever plus arsphenamine and bismuth. Even hitherto completely intractable juvenile paresis! Well klap has come along as a sort of by-product to our research and out of 12 klap men 11 are absolutely okay --- maximum number of fevers ---4. Female klap had already been conquered by Charles Robert Elliott by local fever applied intra-vaginally. You may read of it in the November Country Gentleman (Curtis!)

Rheumatism meant in last chapter was --- so far --- rheumatic fever. Coburn believes all types of arthritis may be brought under same concept. I am not yet sure. That's why I was unclear about it. Sorry.

Very funny, but your Horse Sense idea is already in sketch form and is going to be started this very autumn. Of course the greatest horse sense is outdoors. We live outdoors all year and we just are not sick. Doctor bills equal $. Not knocking wood either. In the Horse Sense book I am going to do the endocrines but am very leary of them because they are still very metaphysical. Yet I admit there is already much solid fact. Banting!

Of course I understand that poverty is no longer necessary. Absolutely. And that Men against Poverty are more important than Men against Death. Please help me to find my Men against Poverty.

Many thanks for your letter which has given me to think.

4 Sidney Howard and I are putting on a play---
Yellow Jack --- dramatization of the 11th chapter,
Yellow Fever, of my MH. It goes on just before
Xmas and I am going to NY to help stage the science.
It is really bloody with black vomit hitting the
ceiling and the death fighters themselves bitten by
YJ and dying. Experimenting on themselves while they
are dying. It has a great chance to go, I believe.
If it does, I'm going to quit the mags for a while,
or at least run under half - steam with them, and
Rhea and I are going to come to Europe. Maybe we
can then meet and by that time I should not be so
dumb as now. Maybe I can saturate LONE WOLVES
my next book with the Men against Poverty, fuguing
them with Men against Death, showing how idiotic it
is to fight death from bugs to let those saved die
from greed of others. Science has been too isolated
and that is going to be the themeof Lone Wolves. Sci-
ence is irresponsible. Searchers are like little
boys with curious weapons, a new kind of Thomson sub-
machine gun that will shoot germs or men, just by
throwing a little catch one way or the other, and
with the little boys imbecillically not caring which
way they throw the catch. Scientists have been
Lone Wolves. Are Lone Wolves. Whereas they should
be citizens first and searchers then.

You will say, de Kruif doesn't realize
there's disaster, there's fire, right now. A book
lacks the immediacy you speak of as necessary. But
de Kruif is doing the best he knows how.

I will get Fisher's S tamp Scrip. You say
you want information re honest men in public life.
I believe Henry Wallace is, but by God he shouldn't
be burning pigs. I know Henry - - he is in the
the Maize book in HF. I am going to get him your
A B C. Please write me again. I have sent
you my books : have you got 'em.

Address now Harcourt Brace & Co. 383 Madison Ave. NY

9 Jan.

anno XII

Dear De K

Opposition reported crumbring at some point.
( private from MacL/ not yet confirmed. But his letter had
been in slow post since Dec 22. )

If you're seein' yr/ pal Wallace. You might report that
the great BIG playboys and HEROES of Bizniz, and of the
Senate etc.

seem to be more scared, crawlin' on their
bellies and asking for mama // over Gesell than even re/
C.H.Douglas.

The question they dare HONI NOT breathe is :

SHOULD THE RENT ON MONEY
BE PAID by the man who has it, or by the man who hasn't it?

No answer from Bankhead / and my article, after being chucked
by five nags/ wa s promised a frontage in the the Mobile
press register, but hasn't shown up YET.

//
In the so mean time// AS THEY ARE TINKERING

I suggest to Wallace that from now on
BANKS shd/ be responsible to this extent.

When the Cha se , say , sells Chile , or Savoy Plaza ,
pocketing at ONCE its commission// and then the Bonds go
bust/ the bank be required to distribute the amount of its
id/ rake off , to the pore boobs that have boungt 10000

or one in I5 to the damn investor; but it wd/
be a great incentive to bunkers to sell good OLD
stuff instead of hooey.

{ ever see that autobiog/ of a bond salesman.... Dutch was what
he couldn't sell. }

yrs/ fer the NOOOOOOO YEAR.

CABLE ADDRESS SANMORITZ

KINGSHAM 2-5800

ST. MORITZ
ON - THE - PARK

50 CENTRAL PARK SOUTH
NEW YORK

Jan 27

F 1934

Dear Pound:

Harcourt's have seen *Jefferson or Mussolini* and also the A B C and have said no to both. I am terribly sorry. They want to pick up the negotiations for an expanded HOW TO READ OR WHY where they were left off in May, 1930. You will remember that in the spring of that year you had direct correspondence with them on an expanded book --- 50-60,000 words --- longer than your little book, HOW TO READ, published by Desmond Harmsworth, London. If you feel now as you evidently felt in your letters of March 20 and 21st, 1930, which lie before me, I wish you would write directly to Mr. Harcourt, telling him that I asked you to do so. I will tell you that I draw much water with Harcourt and Brace, both, but no water at all with their smart young man, Pierce. He knows how lowbrow I am and has contempt for it. I will see that your negotiations stay with Harcourt and Brace or either of them, and do not get sidetracked. I will even go further, and ferret out whether Harcourt or Brace ever saw the Jeff or Muss or the A B C. From my conversation with Pierce over phone this morning, I doubt it. Harcourt still is under the impression that you said son-of-a-bitch to them (i.e. HB & Co.). I demanded that proof of your ever having said it be shown me, and there was no proof whatever forthcoming. Your two letters to them and Brace's two letters to you were amiable. Apparently the dirty work must have been somewhere in the Curtis Brown organization. That's all Pierce had to offer: that Rich said you said so-and-so. I said : Cap, would suchb hearsay go in any court of law? Cap had nothing to rebut with.

Mr. Pound, I want to take trouble for you. You have opened a new world for me, with your confounded little A B C, and I thank you. If your 'e not too disgusted, will you please re-open *this* How To Read with Harcourt --- Alfred himself? I'll stick to your cause like a Michigan sandburr. I'll harrass Alfred. We can short-circuit Pierce. It is a lousey world.

You were good to mention me in your article for those college boys. It was an excellent article. Both of them were excellent. I hope you have ignited plenty of them. You know, the people in our country are now ready for anything. They adore Roosevelt. He has them eating out of his hand--- extraordinarily. They like Father Coughlin. They absolutely hate all bankers. They teehee at the gold standard. They don't give a goddamn for the Constitution. Sprague is a laughing stock. They will go anythwere with *Mussolini* Roosevelt. In his shrewd slow way he is going to lead them a long way toward where you want them to go. Please write me some more.

5 Feb

[1934]

Dear De Kruif

To begin the letter at the trivial end/

IF I had written Rich that H/B.
were S;o;B. AND Rich repeated it, HUUBHS
//A/ HZ name is spelled with B. and
not R/

He was supposed to be an agent acting
in my interest, and anything I said was
a privileged communication.

I am quite ready to believe that he made mischief.
On the other hand I am equally ready to believe he did not.

MY recollection is that I enquired // COULD any firm
represented by BRADLEY be other than bitch's cones ONE and
ALL ?

Fer HUUBHS if bradley aint the first pup of a
gelded spaniel, I am no connoisseur of the canine species.
A general osmotic non-specific by nature and not by art
bitchson of the original gun that begat the original
bitches.

And I do not mind your taking this enquiry to
Harcourt in those voids.

However I forward herewith a note that you can send
or carry to Harcourt.

Za ma'r of act Mr Warburg of Routledge is on the
highsea s / and his firm signed up for the ABC of Readin'
in Dec/ and I wrote it in Jan/ and it is now in press/ I have
had good sample page/

and that is now their affair and must be

I have never seen "our Wartburg" and an perfectly
willing to believe that the Habsburgs is ba studs by
the pied gauche and that his family is the original
vielle roche de la roche de Wartburg of Warthog
and that none of 'em ever crossed over Jordan or up
the bung side of Mt Sinai.

Is it out of place to ask if "airout's gangpop vuzza
barber/ borther of Jake and if Mr Brace is
decended of 'reitz of 'treitmann and Bretzel ??
or are all americans thinskinned ????

///////
Mr Goldberg ( or some contemnationalist izza lookin at
Jeff/ Muss.

Everything else going hunky/dory. Routledge doing ABC of Reading.
Fabor doing // Collected prose, criticism, properties ( out
of print in Eng/ ) Centos XXXI/XII takin the HIDE of
cetc//

Farrar diddlin and doodlin/ and Virgie SEZ contact
for SI/4I Centos in 5 days ( that was 4 ago ).

ANY how the god damn yenks having LOST the bloody chanet I
giv on 14 years ago of taking over the LEAD and Capney
of pib/ing from Gloony ole Lunnon/ iz now trailin/

4 books by E/P/ las' year in Lunnon/
and ONE in N.Y.

and some ole story promised fer 1977/ 1984.

I one/ a couple of pones/ one has been sent to New Democracy
(the secretary one Nicky) and the looltin to " Egsuire "
the manufashionplate of wottell ???? which mr Abramson or
SOHN sez PAYS.... godammit if got to MAT.

At any rate any hollup you can give that ( I an by now
convinced he MUST be ) young idiot Doug/ Howell
161 West 57 th.

or Virginia ( ??? helpless virgin ) Rice , 175 W. 72 nd.
to wake up the american publishing MORONS , will be
appreciated.

I found two pages of a review of you/ that I did months ago and
that got lost while I was a doing ABC Reading.

which will I hope once and for all
bust and bury at least part of the
Brit/shitish bugGERacy of /for the
smothering of all writers worth half a
hoof.

( Even ole Eliot is a turnin' over in his
nausoleum and emitting more CO<sub>2</sub> than most people do. )

I dunno about the World, but I think it's
We are havin some damn fine music right here
in Repallo/ where you mightnt XIXpekt it.

Have you any influence with Houghton Mifflin ( ^ suspek them
being canines ) but young Loughlin is having a go at them/
some ole noo hengland cousin of his aunt henrietta or
something, is being forced to read a book...etc....

I can't stop for/ Woergl/ this a/m/ you'll find it in front
end of Fisher's " Stamp Scrip "/
Woergl is the right method/
regularly stamp.

( did you see New Eng/ Weekly with my review of Fisher ).

Pierce/ iz what the adv/ co/ said to Cummings when he was a clerk/
DONT you KNOW that these are people for whom it is PAIRED
to read..

Cummings had been trying to sell a washing machine by corres/
pondence to a lady in Dakota.
He though he had made
it clear that a washing machine was a machine for washing
clothes.

Now i'ma goin to write ole Kitson. who has just been
let back onto the Times/ or rather then bastuds have just
asked him to write again/ and will probably bitch his
articles and omit a few brief words like " not " and " never"
at one crucial points.

more later.

Feb

7 J/A ( did I write that yester)

Dear De K/

New day, if you still feel you
want to be useful, get me Prof. Warren's last
book or whatever.

I think he is honest as the
day/ but the lineal descendent of the farmer who
denied the giraffe.

He has bust one superstition/ i;e; escaped from
gold fiction/ but just dont KNOW// hard headed hecker.

"Is last stuff quoted in the concealing Chi. Tribune is
bunk. Hasnt read "esell and Doug/ and dont mean to
HE bigod is runnin et/en he izza gointer ...etc.

A guy high up/ now writes that F.D. is showing better.

I mean this guy wa s slightly sceptical about F/D/ some months
/ now sez it is F.D. and the brine trust is bunk.

ANY " dirt " will be welcome. I incline to hook up Astor's
weekly with the Astor grab at London Times....

Litson writing

Times accepted all my stuff, in fact begged for
more, and pubd/ about 16 articles; but since the Astors have had
controll there ; there has been nothing doing.

What about young Moley and that paper. I wrote 'on BOE!
had short answer from Moley/ complete stall/ and nothing
since.. I suspect Astor thought he cd/ melt and nould the
young inexperienced prof/ and that there has been a

If Times is having kit, it is merely
because he is so very OLD and prob/ looks safe
strong
and not a static/ Dong/ite

and some of the worst god damn lies and swind
s are played out.

It has also had news of progress in Choimunny from a guy
wot wuz very anti/Hitler when he wen't dere.

2

to get Harcourt publishing fundamental anti-poverty stuff. Nyland says Doug is going to be in this country in April. I would like very much to bring him and Kettering together. Ket is a will-o-the-wisp flitting around at a thousand different pieces of work ineessantly, but I'll bet anything you want he'd agree with every one of Doug's main theses. One trouble: he's stingy, subtly so. I know it's fundamental that them-that-have don't have to letgo to them-that-hain't --- but would Ket risk the transition, the experiment necessary to go over to the new way? Will there be a lurking bug in the corner of his soul --- a little boring bug of a suspicion that all might be lost in the process of changing over? I don't know. He has a three-decker brain. We'll see if we bring the meeting about. They're both engineers and both talk up the same alley and Ket is one of the rare human rich men but he is or is not human enough to bestir himself? I dunno. Of course what you'll say is he better be brainy enough to bestir himself. You're right. Because if they don't, believe me, Mr Pound, the temper of the folks is rising and rising.

It may interest you that I've got my first anti-poverty pison across in the Curtis? In the first section a fundamental Douglas parable --- and the whole thing built around the miserable mal-nourishment and under-priveleged state of American children --- and they cheered it. Didn't cut a word, and I laid on and laid on the imbecillity of forgotten kids in the midst of plenty. I believe my first drive must be at that end of it --- using them kids and poor forlorn forgotten folks (with healing science all round them) for the shock troops. Holding the prevailing plenty up the bitterest ridicule. Believe you can do it more powerfully, sarcastically, bitterly, ironically --- by telling of a want of healing than by expostulating about want of bathrooms, motors, radios et cetera. I'm going skirmishing for thousands of actual examples --- bitter ones hard by nauseating wealth. Schuler, the Curtis editor, after he read my Forgotten Children hardly had the stomach to eat the

bountiful meal of coldcuts they put before us. He was
really ashamed to be eating them. If I can only keep
getting them in the guts like that.

Meanwhile I will labor earnestly and rapidly as
my slow Dutch brain will let me to get my head round the
constructive end of the Douglas. The other night I put
Nyland up against three hard-boiled bankers. They couldn't
dent him. But I haven't got the mechanism myself,
you --- of how they 're going to bridge it. I don't
know the bankers' lingo well enough. It's all a new land
to me --- and my stuff will have no power unless it's
absolutely devoid of mere argument and entirely made up
of irrefutable fact that will force agreement from
everybody. And then work and work and work at putting it
caressingly. Do it the way you got the A plus B theorem
into Canto XXXVIII. That was swell.

Right now Doug himself must not be too much
dwelt on because the name itself is used to scare the
children. But I'll use it.

Sorry not to have got to meet Woodward or Mac
Leish --- not meeting anybody during rehearsals until
very last of stay in NY when Nyland and Munson of whom
Nyland by far the better. I will relay your message
to Wallace --- tonight. Haven't written to him in long
time. Will write again soon.

Mar 27

Here is the reason --- after having slept over
last night's letter --- why it is doubtful that
a bloodless transition, a la Douglas, will
occur: The mass, the consumer, "John Q Public",
is ready for anything here. The industrialist
and the banker is only ready for more of the same
thing he's always had. And he's stupid, Jesus,
he is stupid. He's only smart one way: the indus-
trialist at turning out his stuff, the banker at
juggling figures. But do you know they're both
so dumb they're not even scared at the mutterings
and rumblings? And so dumb they don't even see that
you need consumers with dough to buy their product-
ion? Last week I had lunch in NY with Judge Wendell
Wilkie. He is the Insull of today's America. He
is only 45, and is President of the Commonwealth and
Southern Corp. --- the greatest American Public
Utilities Trust. He is charming. He is modern.
He ascribes absolutely all of our troubles to what
he calls "politics to the left."

So you see why we'd better just dig in now?
Crawl into our holes till the storm blows over
and then start from scratch --- farming or day-
laboring? But I don't want to do that. I want
to tell'em. You, Pound, are the great discoverer, &
the teacher of the writers. Why don't you get all
of us --- Hemingway, Woodward, MacLachlan, and the youngsters
(leaving out those ineffable farts Lewis and Drei-
ser) --- to devoting ourselves only to telling what
ought to be told?

I'm trying my best to tell 'em, but I can't
until I've seen through and through it.

Sorry we can't now come to Europe --- but it
is our inflexible rule to stay always in the black.
That way the bastards can't catch us. If you're
coming home, please let me know.

have just chewed up Warburg and Robbins/ as far as space
permits.

Started my new vol./ on econ day before yester/ wd. like
Esquire to use at least four articles. or some of it.

ABC of reading in press ( sale Unv. Press ) They want my
LITERARY etc. Jeff/ Muss, still hung up.

Seven Essays/ new edn/ Propertius/ in press ( Faber ) and
Cantos 31/4I proof corrected Farrar, with Faber following.

Wish somebody wd/ do the Jeff/Muss. Woodward wrote a corking
recommend for Livright/ but it didn't carry. All I shall get with
be documentary proof 20 years late, that I saw it was so
in 1935.

[Summee, 1934?]

Dear De Kruif

Will you please forward this or copy to Wallace.
If I said nothing about the questions needing simple yes and
no (at least I can't remember having put a limit on the
number of words used in answering/

Two dozen good economists HAVE answered. The
only ones who have complained about the phra sing of the
questions are those who wish to avoid them. The rest have
often written very interesting answers, augmenting or enquiring
further.

However, a stronger question presses/

CAN WALLACE supply ONE IOTA of proof that the
administration is free of International semitic controll ?

That is the rising tide of counter opinion. I know ANY official
can DENY it. It fact he w/d/ and possibly s/ould deny it.

But for argument with IMPARTIAL foreigner,
what INDICATION is there, there we aren't being sold down the
river to preserve the bankers, and sold by process of
borrowing, and refusal to face Douglas and Gesell.

WHAT earthly indication that the smothering
of Bankhead bill in committee is HONEST / or that Penkhed/
hasn't
simply been told to shut up/ by the WORST interests in the country;

WAKE ROBIN

RURAL ROUTE #8

HOLLAND

MICHIGAN

Aug 18

Dear Pound:

Just back from Ny, Maine, Quebec and your letter here among about 300 others and most welcome and first to be answered, excepting that I at once wrote to Gingrich, strongly commending your Gaudier sketch, and earnestly demanding he get you to do economic pieces for Esquire, recommending that, if he hasn't done it, he read A B C. I do hope something comes of it. I'm also terribly glad that A B C of Reading is being done by Y Univ Press, though sorry Harcourt's didn't do it. Harcourt is very strong for my continuing full tilt on my present line of MEN AGAINST POVERTY and it is very likely I'm coming to England this autumn to see Soddy, Douglas, Kitson, et al. The XIth Hr Emergency you had sent me is swell --- it is better than N E W because it tries to unify all the money reformers and takes the best out of every one. I at once sent in subscription for a year and also got Wilson's and Soddy's books and pamphlets. Now all of a sudden the Goddamned XIth Hr Emergency has stopped coming. Has it folded?

I don't blame you a damn bit for not wanting to read the LHChoinal --- but just the same, they are printing my stuff FORGOTTEN CHILDREN DOLLARS OR CHILDREN IF WE GET RAIN and HEART BROKEN CHILDREN with out taking out a word. It is far and away the strongest meat Curtis has ever published. It is stronger meat than those piss-willies on the Nation and NR would ever think of publishing. It is right straight at the great "Booblik" and it has a simple notion behind it --

namely, that the best weapon with which to swat a
banker is a sick and neglected child. I had a long
talk with Schuler (LHJ Chief Ed) at his camp in
Maine last week --- on the whole money subject,
and he is absolutely hot for my going on to the lim-
it with it. They (GHL) might stop us, but so
far there has been enthusiasm. The next story is
to be CHILDREN OF THE SHADOWS and it is to be about
the marvellous correlation with infant and child
mortality and economic level, particularly housing.
Am going to rub my and Rhea's noses in the Cinn-
ati slums to get the real dope on it. And then
absolutely blister -- bankers and realtors for
letting 'em go on dying that way. Poor Henry
Wallace! His ass is in a sling, his balls are in
the most terrible lemon squeezer right now --- since
old man drouth came along to help his crop reduct-
ion program. I went after him and his A A A in
IF WE GET TRAIN and want you to see it. Since you
don't like to read the Choinal, I'm going to have
copies made of all four of the above ms and send
them to you. I believe that Wallace, Tugwell, et
al are absolutely hopeless --- much more than FDR,
though I'm beginning to despair of him too.

Have you ever read Tolstói's WHAT THEN
MUST WE DO? He is certainly in advance of his time
on the money business.

Please write me again soon. I've missed
your letters. And once again accept my thanks that
you've put me for the first time in my misspent
life on a road that I must follow to the end of my
days. For that, dear Master, my gratitude!

Paul

STORY CERTAINLY A BIG ONE WRITTEN WITH EVEN MORE
THAN YOUR ORDINARY VIGOR YOU ARE DOING BIGGEST AND
BEST WORK YOUR CAREER.

So far they haven't cut one bloody word.

We'll see. I have a revivified old friend,
or rather the renewal of friendship with a very old
friend: Otto Carmichael, Muncie, ex newspaper
porter, ex-new paper proprietor, ex Washington & orr-
espondent, ex public utilities pay-off man, ex
Wall Street gambler, rich, terrifically learned in
Americana, violent and witty shower-up of usury,
reader of Douglas, reader of Jeff Mark's "Modern
Idolatry" which should have been called "FREE MONEY"
possessed (I mean Carmichael) of very fine
Hoosier prose, and he and I, my dear friend, are
plotting to storm the inner citadel: Lorimer. Don't
laugh! Carmichael first entumor has used most important
analysis: money is = modern view.

Can you give me quotes from Muss's speech
*explavicating* how he's buried scarcity? Very, very
important.

Extremely interesting your stuff is leaking
out through so conservative rag as Morning Post,
well then maybe it is tories who will have to do
it. Do YOU hope anything from New Republic or
Nation? Of course not. By the way, Wells is veer-
ing, decidedly, in his Experiment in Autobiog. Don't
be too harsh, till you see way he acknowledges his own
blunder about hope in International Finance. He real-
ly is coming round. Absolutely.

Yrs,

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

January 8, 1935.

Mr. Paul de Kruif,
R. R. S,
Holland, Michigan.

Dear Paul:

Your friend, Mr. Pound of Rapallo, Italy, has written
me the following:

"I have just received and read with interest and in-
dignation your address to Union League. Until you have the
moral courage to face the problem on MONEY, what is it? who
makes it? there is no use your trying to save your conscience
with pious platitude.

"A man in your position has no more right to preserve
his black ignorance of Gesell and G. H. Douglas than I have to
walk into your office and shoot you. Money is not a commodity.
Tell that to your colleague Perkins. The Secretary of Labour
ought to know that money is not a commodity and that WORK is
not a commodity. Why dont you read your friend De Kruif's
articles, if you object to reading the work of strangers?

"The President made a start in "Looking Forward" and
then stopped dead in his tracks. Possibly because his cabinet
is too bullheadedly ignorant to assist him. You yourself don't
know what money is. You don't know the history of banking.
And given your position, this is inexcusable, and posterity will
nail you to wall not learning you job. There men in America
whom I have never met, who DO know something. Why doesn't the
administration consult them? Crate Larkin is no fool. Jake
Baker knows a little econ, Edison had hold of one paw.

"Gesell saw thru Marx. But you people REFUSE knowledge.
You won't think unless you are scared of hell fire. The whole
of this administration is scared out of its pants by a gang of
piddling bankers."

Inasmuch as you are responsible for this outburst, it would
seem that you should send me a copy of your articles. I did not

Dear Paul,

It don't NEED any comment ( as pure intellectual
exercise ) but as dutiful citizen, perhaps you shd/
translit such as has been made.

FOR god sake go SEE him/
TALK TO HIM/ ( even better than sending copy of letter , ) read it
to him.

FACK ( get his paper , 309 Madison St., San Antonio, Texas)
now agreeex that Doug/ is ally. Stamp scrip is the NEXT step/
apart from what is being done in Italy.

Doug/ too complicated/ but I rockon it is stamp OK
blood.

I can see s/s/ throwing banks out of power/ and
dividends following abolition ( poss. gradual ) of taxes.

MUSSOLINI buried Scarcity Soon/ on the 6th of Oct.
I have said so in Morning Post/ and think Next CRITERION will pub/
hong artel/ as letter/ about 5 pages.

Will the LIJ use article on ITALY/ Just facts , no theories/
I can send the facts and you can use 'em.

an sending some printed matter.
piled letters/ three intelligent once yester/ I.J.P. / Jeff
Mark, and Flint, almost a record.

Wallace/ isn't phrased properly!!! It is phrase# so the blokes
who answer have to tell the truth or dodge.

And I don't mean if the scientists alone had the dough, but if all the people had the dough --- of course that's what I've been pounding at in the children's series. Of these CHILDREN OF THE SHADOWS is by far the most drastic. And it takes the first step toward what you recommend in your letter, i.e. that I allude to the noble efforts of Gesell, Muss, et al. In this story I ask Pres why he doesn't go to men ---" they do exist" --- who could show him how to cure this social anemia this lack of society's life blood that is the chief cause of dying. Getting nearer and nearer, and of course when I finally come to it, they'll throw me out on my ass. Don't care.

Am writing to Fack to day for Gesell.

Believe Mark's Modern Idolatry excellent, destructively, but the hell of it is they always get mathematical and diagrammatical --- and the great mass of us Homo boobiens (who(re going to have to do the revolutin' finally) don't understand it.

A tip for you (way off there in Rapallo) as to U S condition, psychologically: All lower ranks --- all laboring men, all men on welfare, all expert mechanics, great bulk of engineers, technicians, firmly grasp present potential plenty and its suitability for all.

But middle, merchant class (little as well as high) and lawyers, and doctors, and preachers, are still united in belief that plenty would be morally bad for all. There is the real enemy, my friend. Kill that one, and Morgan-Karman- et cie wouldn't last 48 hours!

Dear Paul

Ask the god damn buzzard WHAT people EARN ?
aint it MONEY ?

What the bleedin hell does he know about
MONEY ?

Also tell him a N/Y/ business man ; whom I find
intelligent , sez Morg/ has a brain about the size of a pea.

The old man MAY have know something, but the li'l
boy wiff the spoon in his adenoids ?? wot OH !!

You are right toniss Orage/ he sounded very tired over radio,
in fact he had a break down, when he took that vacation
last summer / there are several people now qualified to
write about Soc/ Cr/

BUT editorial experience has its weight.
Nobody as level headed for the front page/

On the other hand, I don't think one ed/ have lived up
the literary pages;

remains to be seen if one CAN , anyhow.

Back has 5 kids, and I don't imagine they are old enough to help
him with his publishin/ yr/ cable reed/, so thass O/K/

esell, as shoehorn for Doug/ more comprehensible, but Nat/
DIVS, are the main proposition. I mean esell is not a substitute
for Soc/ Cr/, but a HELP toward it. ( at least that's my view )
and both educative. Wallace letter to you is IDIOTIC.

Measure of ANY man's honesty today is his curiosity re/ nature of
money, and his willingness to participate knowledge of same.

Tell Henry , that young Morgenthau is nearly as much
of a joke in N/Y/ as young Warburg , and tell him to see wot

I did to "arburg in " Tine and Tide "/

Warb/ %/ has no reply, soz letters wont
do, hopes to SEE me when he comes to Europe, etc/

I don't know how to get you back numbers of M/Post
but will ask young Butchert to get 'em, He is in London.

You might accelerate things by writing to tanley Nott,
69 Grafton St. London W.I

an asking WHEN my pamphlet and 'sonson's poems will be ready.

"e also promises to pub/ AT LAST, my 'efferson/Mussolini.
but exxrist lmoze how LONG that'll take. I spose about
OCTOBER... or ???

Every day "on/ and his friends KEEP OFF the problem of
money, is just one day nearer the ash can for THEM.

WAKE ROBIN
RURAL ROUTE 8
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

Feb 25 '35

Dear Ezra:

There is quite a lot of news. In the first
place Larkin sent your letter to him, for me to read,
and it touched me a great deal. Because of your
humbleness to know how to write for the mass, and
your eagerness to have him tell you where you were
wrong in trying to reach them, and your eagerness
to know whether the Esq ec story was all right, or
whether it fell short of hitting the big circ crowd.
Well, as an old booblik-bumper, let me tell you,
that, for a man who has always gone out of his way
to avoid bumping the booblik, you are getting along
pretty good. I had a long talk with Gingrich the
other evening in Chicago. He told me he had not
written you because you, for him, were an authentic
BIG SHOT. And that he would only write when he could
sit down a whole evening and write and not trust a
letter to his 2 secs who write almost all his letters
He agreed with me that you were good in there in
that ec piece in Feb; then I told him of your in-
terest in Gesell, and the piece you wrote about Ge-
sell in N E W; and I suggested that he ask you
to do a sketch of Gesell, and what he was a~s a
man, and what his fundamental critique of money sys-
tem amounted too (MONEY SHOULD ROT LIKE ANYTHING
ELSE), and what repercussions his work has already
had, as at Woergl--- a plain vivid sketch a la
HF or MH which you could do a million times better
than I could ---

I think it is wonderful there is as big a
circ a mag as Esquire running your ec stuff ---

28 Dec

XIII

[1943]

MEMO//

Miesell's N.E.O. most useful in dealing with Marxists, and
left over single taxers/
you shd/ get it from H.Fack, 309 Madison St. San Antonio. Tex.

///

Also the american tendency to celebrations etc/ shd be FOCUSED .

There ought to be an alter ( very plain , but of permanent stone
to Mark Carleton, and spring and nuturn festivals of ABUNDANCE
performed about it.

That wd/ tend to make 'em THINK.

Much better than this Arkansas " museum " of poverty, dead copy
of Moscou/ . Idea all right , but retrospective, and NOBODY
w:ll want to LOOK at the bloody stuff,

Carleton altar, useful to teach " cultural heritage " / fount of
values.

yrz

9 March

Dear Paul,

I, I wrote Larkin yester/ re/ advisability of a PAPER (weekly, that w/d/ sell as article of commerce ... live and readable GENERAL paper, running Soc/ Cr/ not merely a house-organ ).

We ought to be able to run one.

II. My bet at the moment is Ickes. Seems to me you and Larkin ought to SEE him. One man in cab/ that appears ( from this distance ) to have enough back-bone to be some USE, once he saw we were right.

correct me if this idea is an error.

III. Any dope on A t. General Cummings ??

reactionary ? but straight ?

IV. and by the way, you might note name of Tibor Serly, if you are meeting musicians, philadelphians, etc.

V/ Have just read /"two myths evaporate . I consumer protection/ 2 that Wallace and Tugwell have retained any power in new deal.

If you write to Hen/ tell him this don't surprise me. Tugwell was just as sort of Sat/ Eve/ Post windbag, and Wallace has no guts.

As he hasn't answered my last/ it is not for me to wake him.

But you may see a chance. Paper sez Wallace wants to THINK... waaal go'n say -to THAT, now.; whacher

What about Sigrid Arne (Assoc/Press) and Geo/ Durno, McClure
syndicate.

oughtn't they to be TOLD ?

I INT there jess NO sense in the Veterans/ is there no
way of getting hold of ANYone in that lot/ can you or
the N/S/C/A send me a list of veteran's officers. ?

CAN you get me a congressional directory for THIS year ?

and does anybuddy know anyfink abaht Alva B. Adams
senator

3

(4) It is absolutely fundamental that Douglas --- granting the truth of all his contentions --- is exotic, that his own writings (this is confirmed by my having put them into the hands of many influential people) are incomprehensible to high-powered Americans.

(5) Therefore --- to get them across, the only hope, as I see it, is from men like Larkin --- who talk in American terms, and who are willing, having given honest and due credit to CHD, to present CHD's ideas in our own idiom entirely, and with a total absence of that obsession with technique which makes journals like Newsmen Democracy so futile. It is doctrinaire. It is piddling. It convinces only those already converted --- and their influence is next to nil.

(6) Sometime in May, I am aiming to convene a small dinner in NY. At it will be: Otto Carmichael of Muncie (72 yrs old, chronic drunk, rich, with optimism and forward look of boy of 25, absolutely unprejudiced, gouty, unreliable, and the wisest man I know in our country.)

Jeremiah Milbank. (Chairman of Board of Southern Railway, Director of Chase Bank and Metropolitan Life, my close associate on President's Infan-tile Paralysis Research Commission.)

CN Thomas, described above.

Walter Fuller (new President Curtis Publishing Company.)

Alfred Harcourt.

Crate Larkin. and myself.

4

At this dinner --- at which there will also by my very close friend Mr. Keith Morgan --- mystery man of America and close friend of FDR, there will be discussed the project of BUILD AMERICA, with this fundamental dominating : YOU CAN'T BUILD AMERICA WITHOUT MONEY, PERMANENT, BUYING-POWER, GENERAL

At this dinner --- which will be done with utmost care and last refinement of dry sherry, '21 Liebfraumilch, Clos de Vougeot '26, and good brandy --- no ism will be allowed to intrude itself. ONLY MONEY WILL BE DISCUSSED. ON ITS TRUE BIOLOGIC (NOT ECONOMIC) BASIS OF BEING SOCIETY'S LIFEBLOOD.

We'll see where we can go from there. I wish I didn't have to write for my living but I must. I wish I could spend all my time organizing --- but I can't. I am extremely pessimistic --- not for the long pull (in terms of aeons) but in terms of decades. Because, as Otto Carmichael says: "The ragged army is being opposed by the investments in finance, power, and industry. . . . I think most of the leaders in this three-fronted movement are willing to bring the country to the brink of national disaster (good old brink of disaster) in order to bring country to realization that it'll starve and freeze if it does not depend upon the provisioning of the old order."

There's the crux --- Ezra. It can only be resolved by ---????????

You say Ickes is "Iron-Menning". Okay. But do you realize my ignorance (of course you do) at the stage I wrote Iron Men? And if he's only got that far now??????

Dear Paul.

Feb/ issue of the English Journal P.142

that Louse's shit Mordecai Ezekiel, saying

The more urgent problem is to increase productive efficiency.

If this dirty excrement of all the ghettos is still
drawing pay as hen Wallace advisor.

It is time to start a program.

At any rate you better wire Henry to disinfect his own
office before excusing himself for not being the Tresuary
of the Sukkertariat or whatever.

10 April

XIII

Dear Paul

TWO JOBS

I. Get that damn idiocy about " relieve unemployment " OUT of the draft bill for National Soc/ Credit.

Bullshit/ it is as bad as Perkins and Ezeldel.

The purpose of a monetray system is to enavle the WHOLE people
to use what the WHOLE people can produce ;

to get the STUFF producable TO the people who need it
or can use it.

Unemployment is NOT a disease / all attempts to CURE it, are
superstes from past age.

II.

Get Fack to see reason/ he must SEE need of Nat/ Dividend :
and of a PROPORTION between fixed money and stap scrip.

He is still in purely regigious dead biblical superstition re/ work.

//

god damn muddle/ they must see WHAT monetray system is/
not mix up beds and lawnmowers/

Apart that idiotic clause / the proposed bill os pretty good
though compli ations re/ discount etc/ are a difficulty.

Dear Paul

CONcentrate on the Dividend. Arouse public
i parental instrinot / ONLY WAY to insure yr/
childrens future is the NATIONAL DIVIDEND.

pay it in stamp scrip/ that leaves no d ebt/

consumes it s own smoke/ borrowing by bonds/ makes
SLAVERY it is selling yr/ children.

Dividend is just/ it is fruit of HERITAGE/ Cr Carelton
etc/

W/E/Woodward says/ " OF COURSE we shd/ finance consumer.
administration has the wrong end/

Woodward finds joker in discount etc/ CONCENTRATE on
DIVIDEND/
and hold Gesellites by paying it in S/S/

Fack must be make to see the ETICS of dividend.

Gesell's ethics focused on injustice of privileges of MONEY
that is SOUND. but it sint the WHOLE justice.

have writ/ the rest to Larkin.

20 may 35

Dear Paul and Crane ( this goes to both
as an doing it with carbon. )

Paul not forget the alter to Carleton/
Connection with Delphian society not to be neglected.

Mary J. Burd, Delphian quarterly, 67 North Michigan Ave., Chicago

(Mrs Bell and sister (Freeman) brought in lot of news viva voce
to me a few days ago. personal slants etc.

Delphian has condensed and publ/ by ABC/ econ. and Miss Burd is
live wire. whole Delphian membership. Can be mobilized
for 3/4

also ideal carriers of Carleton celebration.

II.

I have done what I can with New York Weekly. I thought Mrsiret
was functioning well, and believe slight gain in circle has
been attained.

BUT
on looking thru my files at WHT Mrsiret has not printed
I SINK.

It is no G/D/N/F/ good. England is a stinking little island
and Soc/ cr/ has been hastrung by sprouting in
class full of inferiority complex, ineradicable...

We haven't this impediment/ heaven know we have ENOUGH
 impediments but not that particularäßity/ or insularity.

My rage at the fahrt of Canby and Canbitsu is that it
cuts off the U.S.A. from Europe,
and takes nothing that
isn't fed into it from the London DRAIN pipe.

Janson is tickling up the secretariat/ but that isn't ENOUGH.
Mrsiret has got proper letters from hoosta/ and the dean
has been to Scandinavia/

But NO continental news and NO
consciousness of the existence of Latin Europe/
France, Belgium, Italy.
where most of Europe's brains have existed.

WAKE ROBIN

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

May 26 '35

Dear Ezra:

The reason you haven't heard from me for such a long
time is that I've been doing CHILDREN CAN LIVE. It is the story
of the Dionne quints. It was the hardest story I've ever had
to write because it is so fantastic that you have to write it
down instead of up to get the effect. It is a very sad story
because it proves that if Children are only freaks of nature
the wealth of a continent is turned loose on them and they
then become super-children, which those five little brats cer-
tainly are. You ought to see them. They are mystical. This
chapter is going to be the last of the Children's series. I'm
going to knock off now and gather all this children material
into the book CHILDREN MUST LIVE. It is going to consist
in all the children's stories of the LHJ, as they appeared,
in that succession, and then it is going to have a Part II
which is going to be a maximum flaming incitement for a revolt
of the competent against the money power. It is going to
have your first letter to me in it as the light that hit me
on the road to Damascus. That's exactly what it was like, and
if it hadn't been for you I might still be living in a Fool's
Paradise. The ms is due on Brace's desk at HB & Co October
1 and the book will be published early Spring or late Winter,
'36. You must forgive me for being such a slow worker, but
I suppose that's the Dutch in me. It has to be as nearly as
possible right. I have a fine motto for the book THERE IS
NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. (Ruskin). Who had his moments.

Now about Social Credit. I am worried about it. It
is mainly in the hands of the wrong people. They row among
themselves. The Social Credit Ass'n is at war with the New
Economics Group. How can anything be accomplished when there
is no solidarity? Nothing can be. They are all more interested
(except Larkin) in their own little aims and ambitions than
they are in the abolition of poverty. Also there is a disingen
uousness about the Douglas stuff that I do not like. They
say to the bankers: we do not want to nationalize banks. You
can go on being private bankers. When, for Christs sake, the
moment a real monetary system got going and doing it stuff,
the whole goddamn kit and kaboodle of bankers would be nothing
but bookkeepers. Why kid the bankers, or try to? I tell
you it is going to have to come to blood or it will never go.
It can't be Douglas; it can't be Gesell. They are too exotic
for USA. It will have to be their principles, certainly, but
it will have to be in the mouth of some American rabble-rouser
talking United States and nothing else. Next month I'm going
up to see Gov Olson (Minnesota). Howard Hunter (Regional
supervisor of FERA and bitter anti-banker anti-Roosevelt)
says Olson is a realist. He is also a whiskey drinker. So
are Hunter and I. We three are going to drink Bourbon all
night and come to some understanding. Long's no good--- too
clownish. Coughlin's better. Coughlin ought to click with
Olson. I have abandoned the plan to talk with the bankers---
Milbank et al. They are fundamentally useless because they
are timid. There will have to be as rigorous a purging of
bankers as there has been of kulaks in Russia. There will have
to be absolute adherence to the fundamental that UTOPIA IS NO
PERCENT. I will follow your suggestion and arouse the "parental instinct" re children by the Dividend. FDR is shaping up
for the Tory leader of USA.
Paul

EQO San Gregorio

VENEZIA Italy

July etc.

Dear Paul

And please forward to Larkin.

Every thing is so god damned slow m and NO use being made
of my energies. I ought to be syndicated. In the mean time. A
Am losing ground. strong opposition developing to Esquire stuf
and IN Esq. ( I dunno if its the old rump of the Broad way hair i
oil gang. Rascoe m Nataaanm Seldes or HEAT from outside.

Anyhow m if it aint counteracted by RALLXm I shall
be FRIED.

KKKK ----

Kind word in Conoversym but everything SLOW.

To save time please NOTE and PRINTm quic er than I can m eith
either you or Crate.

Josiah Stamp has said : Two out of every three possible
causes of war are economic.

This ought to KILL Butler m the Carnegie m and all out
red peace HERRINGS.

red peace HERRINGS.
You people will NOT see that Butler
as HEAD of American academy can still ( despite the
fact that journalists are onto him )

do a lot of harm.

Europeans think : head of American academy.

they dont see . STINKm represents
worse of Hoover and Mellon .

Carnegie bleeds half a million a year frol Am. People and it
is practically embeww zzled.

That COULD be used on ECONOMIC
educationM and it is an outrage that it is not.

AND social creditors howling for MONEY.

Gannet or someone ought to be ONTO it.

Peaceways ought to be ONTO it. IF they are real.

I have had no reply to ly second letter. they answered ONE.

Nye was STOPPED. when he got near the REALITY.

SECONDLY, Gannet or solone ought to send me to France for
some NEWSn there is AT last a French situation.

ideas ( not social credit m but economic
realism ) beging begining to leak thru.

Alsom I trust you noted my remark on parallel with Louis XVI
in recent N.E.W.

Does the U.S. press print ANY fench news C ?

current New. aimed at Coughlin. Ought to be quoted.
I mean in daily press.

You understand I get GRUMBLES m but I never get any
constructive criticism. Nobody I" the U.S. ever suggests how
I cd. say it BETTER.

Since Cutting's death they don't even send me the Santa Fe
N.Mexican.

Palookas wantin me to be refined. and ly kicking Angell in th
the face possibly the best bit of propaganda I have done.
( and that merely because he was an ass as well as a shit )

Morning Post stuck at my proposition for Valdis.

310 San Gregorio

VENEZIA, Italy 17 Ag

[1934]

Dear Paul

Roosevelt going or pretending to go Huey
is one thing. BUT Huey is far from a fool. No use
accepting newspaper estimate. Huey's speeches have
gone farther toward sense that Goughlin and much furthr
than Townsend. something MUST be done to get the
public mind back ONTO money.

all sorts of red herring. SOMEONE ought to
get to F.D.

danger of Huey doing 3d. party, and splitting demos.
I don't know how much time wd. be lost if the
repub. reactionaries got in. 4 years time, and trouble.

Roosevelt must do something REAL before the end of his
term.

I dunno who but you has ANY chance of getting nea
near him.

Something OUGHT to be done re publicity for the summary
of Jefferson, after P., 112 in my Jeff/M.

Also I ought to putt thru to some large cirs. for
Woergl HUMAN story' as Unterugsenberger was up the
mountain, - had two hours talk with his wife, more
profile etc. than I wd. have got with him,
it
whether we cd. 50/50 into for Home Jo

Journal I dunno.

Dear Paul

Do you see " The Delphian " . keep after 'em

Can you get social credit into the head of Genevieve F
Forbes Herrick ?

Will you ask Wallace how the hell he expects
posterity to pardon him for NOT examining in monetary
question, and reading my Impact, etc.

I hear the ladies took him as a joke.

WAKE ROBIN
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

September 26

Dear Ezra:

Reason for long silence explicable: due entirely
to my having been submerged during the past two months and
a half with the finishing of the book which you told me I
must write, in your first letter to me in 1933. The basic
theme of the book is twofold: that poverty is the chief
cause of death; and that science is bitched by the money-
system. The title of the book is WHY KEEP THEM ALIVE.

You get the implication. That phrase is the last
part of the last sentence of the book, as well as the title.
I believe it is a fighting book as well as a fighting title.
It is based upon the Country Gentleman and LHJ stories of the
past year and a half, but it is enormously expanded and
emotionally deepened in its final form, and has a real con-
tinuity from the first word to the last; it is not simply a
gathering together of mag stories.

We are shoving off from this camp today to deliver
the ms to HB & Co in NY. On the way I shall try to see Lar-
kin in Buffalo. The book will appear in Feb and will see to
it that you have advance copy.

Believe Social Credit: An Impact, the best thing
you have done on money. I borrowed from it heavily for the
book. Also, in the book, on page 4 of the ms, have told that
you are the guy I must thank for putting me onto this
line of work. Extremely complimentarily, godblessyou Ezra. The
Jeff-Muss I didn't go for as much as the impact. It is not
so simple, so direct, so cleancut. It is more allusive,
which I take it is the consequence of your enormous goddamm
store of learning wanting to bust out all the time. It would
not be very easily followed by a mass American audience.

About Aberhart: agents from Alberta tell me he is
a big noisy politician nothing more. These are not unsypath-
etic agents, either. You know how the SC people here de-
nounced Aberhart, before he was elected, even saying Doug
was brought to Alberta to backfire Aberhart. However I will
watch. I have met several people who have a more downtoearth
grip on monetary change than any social creditor. SC is
cursed with its insistence upon leisure. In America we still
think work is basic. Maybe wrong, but how does that change
it if the mass thinks it? They sit looking at their idle
hands (I've seen 'em) and they want to use 'em. The insis-
tence on the leisure angle, by Munson, et all, absolutely
ruins SC so far as a mass movements goes, here. I believe
SC is too exotic for us. It wont transplant. Even when
it is skilfully translated as Larkin has done it. I have
spent hundreds of dollars giving Douglas to technical men,
scientific men, et cetera. NONE of them go for it. NOT ONE!
So what the hell?

2

The most practical moneyreformers in this country that I have met are three in number and are: (1) Mayor Dan Hoan, Milwaukee, who freed his own city from the bankers, and who is a real monetary revolutionist. He is tarred by being an oldline socialist but he absolutely recognizes that Marx was wrong when he said (quoting you) that he saw nothing wrong with money. (2) City Mgr C A Dykstra of Cincinnati. He evolved a plan, based on Hoan's monetary ideas, whereby cities, issuing their own money on their own basic credit, with the help of the US Treasury, could have wiped out their slums, brought about the beginning of freedom from bankerdom. This plan was put before Morgenthau. Who said: I am afraid the banks wouldn't like all that money. I have got that in my book. With the query: who runs our treasury? It is the most objective evidence extant on which side our administration really stands. The third moneyreformer is my very old friend, Otto Carmichael, retired stockmarketgambler and highfinance payoff man --- keenest head in America so far. I know them. He starts (independently) from your work-hour concept of money and from the fact of now limitless energy possible. He says: Money is only bookkeeping of work-hours; bookkeeping is nothing but arithmetic; arithmetic can't be anybody's property. FUNDAMENTAL.

But none of these men has any chance to influence the administration, which is now busily organizing poverty on an unheard of scale. The folks take it and like it. They don't grumble so long as they and their children are only moderately malnourished. The idea of plenty has absolutely not got any real grip on the mass, yet. So long's there's not plenty of money, there's not plenty of nothing. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I am now convinced that it will not be done by reason, but by blood, if it is done at all, at least by blood that will have to show the necessity of reason. All that can be done now is to go on sowing seeds. So that when the machineguns have stopped rattling and the bombs stopped busting, there may be some left in whom these seeds of reason have taken hold and are developing. I believe the blood will begin with international war, which the folks will go for, BUT WILL NOT TAKE THE WAY THEY DID THE LAST ONE. Then--- anything may happen. I'm not going to the war. And I am going to be with the underdogs when they decide the war is hooey. Meanwhile I will go on sowing seeds as long as they'll let me.

Best!

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

WAKE ROBIN

BLUE WATER
RURAL ROUTE 6
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN

should be interested in my work at all. It is amusing
what you say about yourself being possibly dangerous as
ally. To hell with anybody who don't like it! It
doesn't matter a goddamn what Curtis Pub thinks about
what you think about my stuff. If they don't like it
they can stick it you know where. I certainly agree
with you about Am Weeklies. The New Repub is run by a
lot of gigolos (intellectual) of Mrs. W. Strait, and how
they hate my guts! The Nation is the reflection of OG
Villard's incessant whining. He whines like any Jew,
though not one. From his nose I should say he was a con-
gen.luetic and should have ten doses of 105 Farhenheit
plus bismarsen --- about 20 shots. He has been nice to
me however through the reviews of Mencken or by Mencken.

Now in re the failure of works to get publish
ed here: I do not understand it at all. You say agents
are lousey: they are lousey. They always play both
ends against the middle. I have had agents and no longer
have them but do all dealings direct and not even by lett
er but by personal contact. We have a very powerful
fast Buick equipped with special non-skid blow-out-proof
rubber and whenever anything to sell or any kind of cris-
is we get up at 3 in the morning and are in Phila or
n NY that same evening --- much faster than XXth
Century. It is dangerous, yes, but very relaxing after
too much headwork. In the long run eye-to-eye contact
saves time. However, since you are in Rapallo that's
out.

Here is what I will do. I am going to spend
the weekend next week with Harcourt my publisher and
extremely close friend who knows I know he steals me
blind and knows I don't care. This is an excellent
basis on which to do business.